She spoke about the sensual joys of putting on a bra
and her feelings of arousal wearing miniskirts with sheer;
of confidence and pass and the vulnerable’s thrill…
and maybe I would walk with her a while?
So we’d explore a path, our mirrors left behind ~
We could share and talk and laugh and flirt
over our barista cups – and hope to dare a touch,
perhaps to linger closer, perhaps to steal a kiss?
(and don’t forget to breathe!)
Before we’d sever; back to drab, until another day ~
“Someone was there / a moment ago”
It did exist…
Life erodes, slowly –
lacking options to reverse, far less rebuild,
despite the booster’s lies –
as limestone calcifies around our joints
and we find touch, once sure, now trembles;
excepting avatars
We are besieged by little fears, shivers of anxiety
sprung up like jagged dragons’ teeth,
sown broadly before dawn;
clenched against the Other, tomorrow’s visitor,
we sit bereft of actual conviction, confecting
false intensity to blast across the ether
Pale forlorn Spartans, bearing up our shields,
echoing a richer life which we have come to dread;
“Now we see as through a glass, a scanner, darkly” –
busy on our treadmills, we have become our shadows.
Locked into our own decline ~
Locked out of evidence ~
Shaking out the wrinkles – from our clothes, but not our skin –
needing to reduce, somehow,
the mass of people we don’t know;
If we were to recognise and even greet vague fluttering freedom,
pallid from confinement, weakened by disuse,
what would we see?
Having swallowed whole the scattered lies of charlatans –
puffed full of empty, hollow, self-congratulation –
we trailed behind; we’ve worn away our differences
until we must conform, until we are the same:
too choked by passive dust to thrive alone
and too inflamed to flourish through our touch…
Jolted
I cried for you my dear, it seems
and said some words I found
among the rituals, socially-approved,
that frame the sullen emptiness of grief. Our loss.
Paused:
dodging fleeting bolts of sleep and dreams,
I am afraid to stir the lees of times –
once-experienced, excessively-remembered –
whose less-than-perfect certainty
and smooth-worn grooves of memories
afford me no protection;
against the flooded pits, the silent slate-quarries
you did not wish to see
Crowded
by oppressions, by a muffled world seen from a window,
draped in soured traces of older, gendered, roles:
would you dare admit your part in this?
Is it my time to go? Since timing is what matters…
A game of sofas:
gripping gain without profit;
comic, tragic, flaws.
Gold-plated rattan
to paper over old lies;
bodies unburied.
Hallo again today.
Alone Again Or
I started there, stayed here;
I left them all behind. Except
the drumbeat of incessant thoughts
against my windowpane…
Is it time for coffee yet?
Hot frothed stimulus, swallowed whole;
…it is the drug and I need to score…
The grown-up stimulus shield is useless
against an other rusty tang, like radiation –
relentless, hanging springing in the air –
under which life must mutate;
Life will distort, life eats itself,
more life becomes a static inflammation…
Which should best be thrown away:
that accustomed outer shield, or life?
That is the question. Today.
Is it bins day yet?
Because lubricants congeal:
fit to salve or to inflame?
We are glued, at random intervals
in an unaccustomed patience,
waiting muffled for some sharps to let us go
Dancing across the water / with galleons and guns
Waiting…
~ while strength leaches from our conflicted fabric
~ hope seeps into the saturated ground
~ moss thickens, rust gathers, in damp corners,
crystallising like despair in old arthritic joints;
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is…
Is it bins day yet?
Who cried those tears?
Who are you, with your first world problems?
There’s a pandemic on you know
and they have to make us more secure
than we have ever been before…
It’s a nasty little virus, from la Chine profonde,
sprung from venal filthy exploitation,
unsuccessfully suppressed by lies
they’d prefer we didn’t blame them for,
compounded by our populist complacency
Who cried those tears?
This is just the dress rehearsal.
Did you really want to live forever?
Can we afford some empathy?
(Though it’s no kind of life with none)
Why did you want to have it all?
I admired
her slender build, her haughty eyes,
her cheekbones hinting at Olympian descent;
electrified by subtle words and open phrases
that spoke frankly of alternative attractions
I traced
through thoughts of boundaries and sharing
a path to what she wants and what she offers
from those shadows, side-lit by illuminations
stretched out along her inky, silky limbs
I touched
beneath her bushes, dense and bold:
fire altars, honeyed lures or viscous wells,
redolent oases or quick-sands;
her deeper secrets brazenly concealed…
I inhaled
a fetish ~ icon of our visceral conception ~
changing nature, changing tone, as it engages;
which in engagement changes the engager,
mirroring our flickered, sublimated lusts
And wondered
what tribute you would bring,
humble explorer,
what mysteries you may evoke –
should you be allowed??
Once more – uphill – once more! We still try.
Despite knowing perfection, inherently,
will always be denied us.
Though others, in simplicity, have come close:
♫ Scottish Music – My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose (LYRICS) ♫ – YouTube
Maintain the Advance! 