Category: Poetry

Words, the blood of poets. Slick, wet, hot, pouring over the page in a curtain of sultry satin red.

Finely Tuned Instrument

Lines are where it all begins and where all good (bad) things end. They delineate. They divide. They border, they bind, they define. Lines are blurred, stirred, concurred and perturbed by the right questions and wrong answers. Words paint lines in broad bold strokes that encircle, entice, intrude. Words resurrect you. Words nudge aside, limbo underneath, and soar over the lines in our lives.

I love a good word whore. The syntax of their needs is a language I speak in many tongues.

***

futile finger length concepts
Slip, supple, sap, spilling across the page
dripping sarcasm like lovers
feels like frosted torture against black veins
that spider across the white parchment
we call skin

mediocre maybe –
     but I take my lessons from the pen

lap the edge like honey,
     and take this line, from behind my innuendo

you can play it like a violin.
   or wrap it around your finger, lest you forget
you can wear it like jewelry,
   or weave it into a web for unsuspecting honesty
you can hang yourself from it,
   or you can wind it about your body like a cocoon

just don’t trip over it on your way out.

because this line

can hold you together

Terrible Storms and Recollections

It is the details that stay with you. The way I caught her lower lip between my teeth, how it felt plump and elastic, springing up to brush my upper lip upon its release. The way the head kept sliding just inside as she tried to impale herself against me; only my hand, wrapped tightly around the base, kept her from getting what she – and I – wanted; teasing myself, torturing her. The way I would play her, making her wet and wet and wet. She could never stay dry. My fingers couched just barely inside, and I would whisper, “mine” in her ear only to feel the blood rush downward, opening her and leaving her slick in a groan of frustrated need because no matter how many times I did it, it was never quite enough for her.

***

Mention my name.
swept in swift lettering, steed to a deft tempest
terrible storms.
drenched.
and left.

slick with the tide,
awash in silk-like sand
drowsy with release, unaware
that you are buried to your neck
and facing the waves alone.

secrets alone keep company, rules beg interference
and the sight of you
wet and hungry
stirs me to part the ocean.

I am the moment you break free, head above water
the first breath like mint.
the piercing cry to the heavens
the fountain
you have become.

our kisses taste like
your tears like
the ocean like
I think I remember the last time
I wept against your skin
and tasted myself
between your sighs

Woman I Never Quite Met

I didn’t know her. I didn’t really want to know her. It was the idea of her that pulled me in.

***

Times
I forget
Of times I slept
Dreaming of amber trees and lightly hooded thieves
Who crept through the ice like so many
of the things I want.

Some things are too good to be exposed,
like the embers hidden
or the curve of your hips,
making me wonder
if you taste like toffee
or maybe
you’ll look as pretty
as i think I might
picture you might
be.

I could say I know hunger
I’ve cut myself on it,
teethed with it until my
adult teeth grew in.

I’ve let it slumber inside me,
fearing that stirring it
might drive it to drain me from
the inside, consuming me until
I let it feed on the skin of my favorite
person of the moment, or maybe
I can just hold it against the wall
and take it, in a pressing of flesh
or maybe its you, I’m holding.

Slumber

It’s why people cut themselves; some literally, most against those closest to them; anger, joy, desperation – these things slit deep enough to let life slip through like a breeze, too delicate to hold on to for very long.

Awake, awake!

I fear my personal knife is lust, but as vices go, there could be worse. I beggar myself for a hint of skin; the whole is often not as desirable as the small parts that are hidden, locked away – taboo. Forbidden things twist the senses just as well; breaking rules is often an aphrodiasic too subtly addictive to escape.

***

I led the silence with a gesture.
And followed with a kiss.

Holding too tightly lest
I bleed my hunger all over the page

This one hunger is an ache
Like a wordless play
Or a silent choir.
Reaching a slumbering sin somewhere deeper then my heart can touch.

My hand, your neck,
In a tighter embrace then air or blood or skin.
Captured in a fist, in a glance, in a shiver of skin and
I move you, consume the expression on your face with my fingers

D

Staying with poetry, here are some words of mine that I can’t quite get out of my head. Particularly the last four lines. Depraved. Raunchy. Dirty. Filthy. All words that make one side of us recoil and the other side salivate. Everything is relative, of course. For some, dirty means saying the word ‘fuck’ while making love. For others, dirty means going at it on the restroom floor of a fast food joint. And then there are those who take it to a whole different level.

Doesn’t matter. We all know what it means to be depraved. To be slutty.

To be free.

***

Wrapped in binds of abstinence,
And wept into an ashen grave,
I lay to rest the word ‘depraved’.

But starved of hunger, guilt, and fear,
Inner demons slept each tear.
To dream of times before.

When teeth were sharp and wolves would play
Flesh a feast, each curve was prey,
And lesser words to inner gods would pray
What happened to the word depraved?

Hunger in the baser side,
Left too long, too long denied.
I think it seeps between inside.
Why now?

So I let loose the wolf and beast
Gave leave to hunt the worst and least.
Let free the bounds, though leather frayed
And lived again the word depraved

Some whispers beg indifference; some whispers beg for more

I am taken with the idea that certain moments have a life of their own. A sigh. A kiss. A look. They are more then their parts. People, no matter how often I dissect them in word or wit, are the same. Even the clumsiest of people are capable of a moment of grace so sure that you’re left breathless. The most cynical people capable of giving hope. The most lonely people capable of being filled.

***

Her whispers were not unlike her lies,
which were silky and slid through my fingers,
or like her smiles
which would spend time with the chauffeur downstairs

or even like her laughter
which would crawl up my spine
and kiss the back of my neck

No, her whispers were sultry things
and they liked to spend their time in her bed

Yes.

My sentiments on this word haven't changed in the last two years.

The first yes is easy, a single concession to a simple request.

The next comes with some hesitancy, for you begin to understand just how far I plan to take you, and now there is an edge of fear to your acquiescence. But it's too late, the yes is already poised, trembling on your lips, and it slips out with a soft gasp. The next yes follows swiftly after, chasing the second, and the next, and the next, until they become a litany, a cry for more, until the very sound of the word is etched in the devotion of your body.

—

Why do I coax you to speak when I have you in my hands? I want to hear it in your voice.

“Why are you bent over my desk?”

You look back at me, eyes half-closed, “For you.”

“Louder.”

A gasp as my hands tighten on your hips, dragging your naked ass back against me, “For YOU.”

“Yes. For me. For me, you are wet. For me, you are ready to beg. Now say it like you mean it.”

Shivering, a low moan, “FOR YOU!”

“Are you sure?”

“YES, YES, YES.”

—

Just say yes.

Yes, you want to be alive, to remind yourself what it is to experience life by defying it, by stepping over the line and forgetting everything but how it feels to exist between one kiss and the next.

Yes, you want to be owned by a moment.

Yes, you want to be pulled in, to drown yourself in whispers and promises. You want hands that will hold you still, that will coax you to life, that will drive you near the edge and hold you there until it is almost unbearable.

Yes, you want someone who isn’t afraid to take what he wants while giving you what you need.

Yes, you want to sin until you are made into a prayer on his lips.

Yes, you want your wrists held, your breath stolen, your body laid out for a thirst that will drink you in and taste the sweetest parts of you.