Like scars and puncture points
In your cold soul
Stopping you from ever
Moving on
Again
Fill the cracks and puncture wounds in your heart
Inflicted by the callous acts of others
With the mortar of self-love
Kintsugi
He ripped her world apart with his bare hands
Sucked out the poison and spit out the bones
Until all that was left was
Possibility and choice
He handed back to her with his lips
In a kiss.
Definition:
When the cards are played face up and visible to all the players.
Someone once asked me,
“Why poetry?”
And I said,
“Why does the sea kiss the shore over and over like an eager lover
With a salty tongue?
Why does the moon reflect the sun turning golden rays into
Silver fragments?
And why does the bee visit the spring flowers
A buffet of pastel blooms?
Because it is only natural
Because they are born with a purpose written in their code
Just as mine is penned in prose.”
Poetry gives words to feelings with no end
A road map for the vast plains of the heart
A lighthouse for those lost in its inky depths
And an oasis for those wandering its desserts parched with thirst.
I hide you in my poetry
As unsubtle as a gun beneath a blanket.
I want you to feel your spirit in the words
Know that as I craft this prose
It is you seeped in the ink
You I feel moving my hand across the page
And you in the beat of my heart as it times
Each legato phrase.
I don’t want to text.
I want to press my fingers to the page and
Smudge my print in the ink
On the paper
As I write you a love letter.
My soul scrawled in script for you to decipher.
The first time I read a book
I found I had hooks in my heart
Where the words could hang
And ornament my soul.
I am a hoarder of language. A gorger of verbosity.
“Look at her,” I whisper.
“Look at the way she breaths like a tsunami pulling a tidal range of energy in through her parted lips.”
“Look at the way she moves like her muscles are tied to the rhythm of a song only she can discern.”
“Look at the way she reads a book with her finger resting on the page like a cartographer mapping new lands.”
“Look at her,” I whisper. “Is it any wonder I stare?”
I was an old book
None one picked up at the library
To spread their fingers over my pages and
Absorb my words
I was almost forgotten
A dead language like Latin
Until the girl with the glasses
Who dreamt of days long past
Pulled me out of the dust
Cracked open my spine
And exposed my pages to her light
I read novels
To live life
While I waited for more
I struck my hands between the books
On the shelf at the library
And waited
For someone
To take it in theirs
To make with me
A life more beautiful
Than the strangest fiction
Fit to me
Made for me
Bone of my bone
Broken
Lost or freed
You are a state of mine
Eternal
Bone
Of my
Bone
That first kiss was a promise
Sealed in the petal pink wax of your lips
That my mouth
Would be yours until
Our very last kiss
Dreams shine like pearls in her eyes.
I become an artist, a collector; stringing salt water gems on necklaces
That she may wear around her throat.
A secret in her smile
Tucked in a rosy furl
I want to pull it out with my teeth
Soothe the paper cut with my tongue
Dip in the well of her blood and write
My own secret on her lips
So that every time she speaks
Every lick of those lips
And drag of breath through her mouth
She feels me
Her tongue scraps the scar of my secret on
The inside of her pout
And she can’t deny the truth of it
Of me
Of us
I’ve branded her with it
She’s mine
I pressed a kiss to the center of a rose
It twisted
Unfurled
Dew in its folds
Sweet on my lips
Cool against my tongue
I suck at the fragile bloom
And feel like
God
As it blossoms under my touch
Her amber eyes trapped every tragedy of her past in the dark flecks and inconsistent whorls of brighter gold. I knew if I took my time, I could read her story in them as eloquently as hearing it from her lips.
She was too much heaven
And I everything hell
We met clandestinely
At the kiss of dawn
And the death of day
It was forbidden to connect
Because together we would have made
A heaven of hell
And a hell of heaven
And where is the sense in that?
There are no rules in love.
She was gorgeous
Like the edge of a sharp blade in the light
Striking as a flint against rock
As deadly to my heart
As an arrow tipped in poison punctured through
My chest
I woke up to the sight of you
Dawn sluiced across your skin like gold
And for the first time
In a long time
The dream of you was not a nightmare
Because my reality matched the fantasy
I found love when I was eight
Pressed petals the colour of blood
Hidden between the pages
Of a book I was too young to read
Again,
At that awkward time
When my voice lacked depth
Then suddenly
Fell to the bottom of a well
That signaled maturity and I thought
“Finally, I am old enough to love.”
But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,
Lust like brass when I would have gold
Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn
At eighteen,
My half-formed soul felt fallow
My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds
I was old enough for first love, they said
But my heart yearned for that and more
They couldn’t have known what would happen
That same year
When I saw you across a parking lot
How my heart would age a decade with each beat
And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled
In a second, I was found.
Too young, too old, too every single thing at once
Because with you I was made and unmade
Everything was possible because of you
Yet nothing was necessary
Because my ten-year journey
For the other half of my soul
Was done.
And that was all I ever wanted.
Your voice is between the lines, my queen
Echoed in the white before the black
It is the swell of words that rest
Behind the apex of my throat
Your scent is caught between my teeth
Sinks among the grooves there and gives them taste
Of clouds
Dew upon my palate
I hide you under my tongue
Your body walks my lines at night
It warms the skin beneath my arms
Settles against my chest
A thumb in the hollow of my collarbone
It whispers your breath into mine
Your heart rests in the gaps
Between my ribs
It sits and breathes my breath
It webs the links between my toes
And when I swim, my queen, it is on you I float
She was sun-warmed
The skin behind her ear like ripe summer fruit
A peach split open on wet grass
I wondered
If I pressed my lips to the crease between her thighs
Would she still smell of sweet stone fruit?
I would fall from grace
Again and again
If it meant living in sin
With you
The woman I love has eyes like the forest floor
Dappled in golden daylight, dark with evergreens and light with spring frost.
I get lost in the treed twilight of that gaze
And don’t care to ever be found.
They say
You are too bold
Your smile so wide it could swallow
The world
They say
You are too strong
When atlas is the man who holds up
The world
And you are only a girl
They say
You should mind your place
In the kitchen or the bedroom
Outside the home beside your man
You are his accessory
They say
These things
Because
If they let you shine
You would blind them all with your light
I say
I would live the rest of my life without sight
If it meant feeling the warmth of your glow
Every day until I die
Her laugh reminded me
Of the pop
When the cork escapes champagne
And effervescence spills over my hands
Bubbling with joy
I want to drink her laugh down every day
When the world comes for you
When it tears at you with vicious teeth and cracks open your bones to eat out the marrow
Mercilessly aimed at your destruction
I got you
When the villains come as they do
In every shape and size
Masquerading as friends or announcing themselves as foe
I got you
When there is danger
A sword swinging at your head or a lance aimed at your heart
A bullet ready to pierce your armour and obliterate your priceless life
I got you
Bent and folded
Like origami
Into the shape of my desires
I craft you as art and paint you in the red colours of my lust.
You want it harder
Darker
So long it hurts
You want it with a sinner
A bad boy
A man without a plan
You want it the way they tell you not to
The way the villain likes it
The way the harlot has it
I want it darker too
Harder
So long it hurts
Sometimes love
Isn’t sugar and sweetness
And everything fine
Sometimes love
Is rough bites and deep moans
And making you mine
I want to love you hard
Fill all your holes with my fingers
Stop you up at every puncture point
Give you my every breath to breathe
So that you are full up with your love of me
And you will never yearn for anything else again
Pinned to the mattress like a butterfly by the wings
I run my fingers
Down
Her soft, vibrant body
Dig them
Into the tender places
That make her keen into my mouth
I eat her moans
Like a glutton
And fill her with my love in return
You wouldn’t think
Such a little miss
Could yell so loud at night
With her ankles bound
And her hands chained
To the headboard
Banging against the wall
You wouldn’t think
Such a little miss
Would make a big guy like me bend
But while she may be the one tied up
I am the one she has wrapped up tight
Around the crook of her little finger
I loved her darkly,
And I didn’t care if that damned me to Hell
So long as I could rule there with her.
And looking at her in that moment
––The setting sun gilding her face like a Klimt painting as she smiled demurely out the window, blood on her delicate fingers, my gold at her long throat––
I finally understood what love was.
I look at you
And suddenly
I believe in magic
And mythological beings with wings
Who reign over heaven
And only fall to earth
When they find a man
Worthy
Of their divine kiss
What if ancient things are true
What if we were once born
With four arms
Four legs
Four eyes
And two hearts
But the Gods feared the power of that force
Of one complete soul
And broke us with a lightning strike
In half
Now when we are born
We wander and are lost
Until we find the person
We were split from
At birth
And become once more
Whole.
“I love you.”
Isn’t it incredible
That one phrase can be
A truth, a lie, and a weapon?
I fall
I fall
I fall
And it is your choice where I land.
She loves me. She loves me not.
I never liked to dance until we started to tip toe
Around each other
Waltzing through the halls in time with one another
We tapped out a repartee that said
We didn’t care
But the spin of our hard shoes against the ground
Entangled like ballerinas in a Russian music box
Forever spinning as one
Said differently
The language of desire
Is the tracks of red worn down the back
All roads leading to sin
It’s the colour of her sex
As it blushes blossom pink
And unfurls like the blooms in spring
It’s the slope of the valley between her breasts
Brushed in dew like dawn over the hills
And the sigh from her lips
Breaking against mine
Like the waves against the rocks
The language of desire
Is written here
Between two bodies in the dark
But I find it often as I walk the earth
Betwe
en the flowers and the glades
And I’m reminded again
As I often am
That desire is a natural thing
She is written in a language I don’t understand
Something dead and ancient
With hard consonants where there should be
Soft vowels
I want to spend the rest of my life
Learning to be fluent
Love is bilingual.
I had a taste for her
The wet between her thighs like salted pasta water
The skin behind her knees smooth as a plum beneath my teeth
If I pierce it with my teeth I could break her open
And drink her right up
I was an epicure at a feast of delicacies
She is like the sea
Just because she chooses to kiss you
Again and again
Sweetly lapping at the shore of your boundaries
Do not forget
Like the sea
She could swallow you whole
She tastes like fresh brine
Like sea water
I’ll ride her in softly
Rocking
Like an incoming tide
And even when she ebbs after the crest
I know she’ll flow back to me again
The sea always returns to kiss the shore