Category: Poetry

Saturday night found me sitting in my hotel room (at a convention), drinking Coconut Rum and pineapple juice, and listening to an eclectic mix of party music. Resting my black and green leather flogger on my knees, I contemplated my next step. Finish the writing I had started earlier in the day? Wander into the hallway with the flogger and stir up trouble?

In a one-on-one situation, I have little trouble gaining ground with people. Group dynamics are trickier, particularly when I am in the role of the outsider. It can be a very thin line between ‘interesting fun guy’ and ‘creepy guy’.  The second label was one I didn’t want to even come close to inhabiting.

A disturbingly strong headache made the decision for me and I crashed early (only to be awoken briefly for a rather intriguing, and eye-opening phone call – a topic for another post). When I woke, I packed up my things and slipped out. I felt some regret in not having had the chance to speak to a couple of people I had intended to spend more time with, but I did manage to get some writing onto paper. Such as the poem below.

—

Four breaths
the distance between your
throat and breasts

Three to your stomache
two between your thighs
one to take you in

No breaths to find
the limit of you

Staying with a poetic theme, here is something I wrote in college. As you can see, I have a rather warped sense of humor.

***

The sex life of a doorknob
is a peculiar thing, indeed
I’ve never seen them having sex
yet even doorknobs must have a need

So callous people are,
when opening a door
they twist, they yank, and then it’s done
and they regard the knob no more

How must a doorknob feel
used everyday like so?
No loving caress, no soft spoken words
no tangible afterglow!

Next time you rest your hand upon a doorknob
it is possible you might find
letting your hand linger there,
is an act from you most kind.

Crimson blossoms pale
the silent freedom of pain born
the art of her skin

***

You speak in my head
silence prefers company
whisper softer please

I was alone until it rained –
and faltering words on lips were stained.

You taught that words were promises,
in a feast made of your pride.
And I bought them with the silver
in the tears that you denied.

But when all the rain has passed tonight,
taking all the things I’d soon forget.
The one lesson you failed to teach me,
was in the words we’d both regret.

Wake up, wake up
no time to wait
so much to do, if it’s not too late.

Where’s your keys, where’s your car
your own two feet can’t take you too far

Wake up, wake up
no time to waste
you’re almost thirty, have to find a mate.

Gotta marry, gotta make the grade
So many to love, lest love degrade.

Wake up, wake up
no time to consider, too much’s at stake
A few more tumbles, a couple of kids to make.

You must raise them to be just like you
talking shirts and super glue

Wake up, wake up,
you’re almost dead
pass on your wisdom from all the books you’ve read

You must be a teacher, a mentor, to lead,
Pass on your life, it’s your life they need.

Wake up, wake up,
now it truly is too late
you’re gone now, it’s over, but for curiosities sake –

Were you happy? Were you merry? Did you smile enough?
Did you make a life out of life, or was it just filled with…stuff?

I can’t recall if I wrote this or picked it up somewhere along the way.

Hourglass murmurs
trickle kind notes
into amber filled dreams
where songs lie in askance of soon told creatures
birthing light amidst dawn’s crying darkness
until the words bead like unshed tears
and weep across the empty page

It is the ten
sion between
nervousness and anticipation
churning like an
unborn fever in the stomache
waiting to give way
to expulsion

I have these moments, when typing away (and with no drugs involved) where I feel like I’m floating a few inches above myself. These moments are often preceded with a tightness in my pelvis, an eagerness, a craving that threatens to splinter me. It is the promise that this craving will be fulfilled, that surreal acceptance of inevitability that such a thing is mine to have.

There is beauty in being delicate, in being fragile. This may strike at the reason I find vulnerability so enticing – a magnet to the predatorial side of me. In it’s presence I feel both the need to devour and to protect.

I do not desire a partner who is not resilent; but those rare moments where she has let go so completely in the faith that my hands will be there to keep her still and safe…

We treasure most what is easiest lost.

***

And then the weight of the gathered angels, not perched on pins,
But on the delicate housing of a broken angel,
Shattered the house made of glass,
cutting clear to ebony bone, swift death
to the child of speculation and half-formed hopes.