“My heart wanders the mossy mess of wet country, reliving a time when youth had charm, hand held hand, letters were written with not a classroom blot in sight, kisses were blushed.. and boys ran home to hide their eagerness.
Life was what it was, merely a game of engendered differences.”
scribbled the poet with his special pen. Leaning against an oak - as proud a tree as he was a man.
There was no need to make excuses for his silence here. Why apologise for watching space fill with swirling prisms across such a wonderfully vast panorama? So many greens in this god-forsaken county. But it was refuge for someone like him, was an escape route to whatever the future held. Anyway, where he was concerned, guilt was neither muse nor amusing, it merely lay a rough stony path ready to trip the careless walker he‘d almost become.
‘Oblivious to life in the real world’, he’d been told at least once a week for far too many years. He laughed, those words would never be uttered again.
“Shadows
of buttery budding green
dripping flavour ‘cross soil,
moaning,
muttering,
life.to.come.
fruitful.”
He shook his head, trying to be rid of thoughts, emotions: ‘I don’t want to think of her. ‘HA, too late! There and then the six o’clock in the morning drew his woman from the shadows of deception. He smiled. In his ragged mind she became .. she became a sapling formed of malleable clay. ‘I want to shape her.. a touch here and here so her ******* flourish with pleasure. Then, I‘ll stroke her right side.hip.thigh. to where the skin is both silk soft and a touch of treble plaited gossamer, that trimmed topiary of woman awaiting her future.
Who knows, in my next life perhaps I’ll be a sculptor and lay claim to the master’s crown. I’ll become lord of much and more.. why not, someone has to!’
“Memories,
hands soft as sugar spun
in quadrants arched quiescent,
harmonic pleasuring,
all.frantic.full.
ripe as berries brown
and fatal flawed.”
Man scratched the pen against vellum, then.. oh then, heard its crickling cry; remembered the rippling of her moan.. the call of his name.. the echo of his weeping into her. Then her - fingers gripping where space permitted.. palms moist and made fluorescent.. back arching.. hair flying.. falling onto each of the four crumpled pillows. Then, then.. becoming a streaming sway of tressed love battling breath. And the smell of wild garlic filled the air
never to ward off his fears, nor outsmart his demons. He was meant to be taken by the sight of a woman both too good and bad for him.
“Feeling night
a creep of nails tip touch
in devil’s bliss
where all men meet a foe,
but headlong thrills
deep.diving.hot.
as hell”
He took his pen and with a mighty shout, ****** a myriad of dark memories into his own heart - his memories, his memories - not hers. She’d laughed when he asked her to stay with him, to be his .. forever. Until that moment the pen had been softly ****** between his full lips but moved to be gentled between index finger and thumb. Her rampaging words struck home. They broke his silence, they hurt.
Whirling and swirling it over her *******, his pen became a weapon. He taunted her skin with a pen ripe with red ink, swore and wept, swore again. His hand fell screaming into her flesh, not once but a dozen frantic times. Finally her breath became a dense gushing cloud which swiftly rose so dark that, within seconds, once pure angels fell to earth looking akin to a chimney sweep’s boys - unregonisable as once human.
“Harvesting
kiss kiss full lips
gleaming at the point of red,
so sharp whilst ..
poppies parchment pollen
trembling.moisted.dark
unloved”
The body was found months later. It had laid until bronze leaves and golden were drifting upon and across what had once been a face, and now discovered by shocked, sickened walkers. When the police arrived, all they found lying near to the man was a pen and dulled pages within a leather binding.
A forensic scientist is still trying to decipher the wording on the vellum, what words he’s found to date are quite beautiful - or so he told his wife in an aside. She shrugged, he’d always been a strange man. Should have married her own kind .. too late now. Marianne looked away, unused to anything remotely like conversation from him. She smiled, turned the mirror to the wall and waited ..
© 2012 Emma Joy
