Delicious Seclusion of Two Skin Skeins

Humility sears her grace 

to bonfire of eyes, 

I fumble to strike a match 

Would you tremble 

if tearing your lips to shredded flesh 

and kissed you deep into bone? 

It takes 17 milliseconds to live in the now 

so what burden will devour time 

when ghosts can undress in 

swinging wings of seagull flock? 

Late night Harbour Street 

and it’s not just streetlights which are erect, 

tambourine strokes a moonlit piano 

and lisps the sonata of tongue between legs, 

exposition is my fingertips drawing 

Sinatra songs across your breasts 

The heroin dead beg for money 

offering blow jobs for royal sum of £20, 

but only change in my pocket 

are the bank of dreams 

letting tributaries flow into the sea 

Spinning bottles, suitcase roulette

I slept you into forgotten jet streams

which just crash into poetry ocean;

don’t listen to rhymes within sonnets

stories inscribed upon stolen dimes,

just feel my mouth upon your flesh

and know that my lips are not gallows

I recall the Belgium waitress 

selling sad songs with coffee 

‘In Bruges you will find my heart,’ 

let our breaths suck the canals 

and resuscitate each sunken heart.

Flemish flames burn longest

when lovers sculpt candle wax

into the thighs of hotel beds

In Bruges,  

we could seek each other 

until we are found,

hide and seek,

if desire be held within sunrise

the first gold of each morning

are simply my eyes turning to amber.

Please tell God to stop the pillow dreaming

At family grave I hear familiar voices 

begging me to only read language of care, 

and here I am, your braille words 

lost to translation and speech

tender as the earth’s last limbs

just waiting to hold you