78 – Keys wallet specs phone

And when we’ve finished, and I’m at the door,
Before we cheek to cheek and almost kiss,
I stop a minute, check my pockets for
The outlines of the things that I might miss -
Like wallet, keys, specs, phone:  to semaphore
My temporary thought paralysis -
A moment while I struggle to ignore
That what I leave is so much more than this:

Because you are the keys that let me in
A place that feels like home. You help me see
So clearly, curl such riches in your skin,
And call across the spinning world to me:
Compared to which these objects zipped within
My pockets are mere outline, memory.

77 – Guts

So you prepare your implements. Attach
Weights, pulleys, needles, wires, clamps, metal teeth
To dig out all the gold that swims beneath
My surface: angle deftly for your catch.

And here they come: tears, blood, screams, groans to match
Your appetite and taste: but other stuff
As well, from deeper down, you don’t expect
Or can do nothing with, nor care enough to:

A tangled knot of need you never cut
- Still less unravel – though it seems to me
Much closer to the point, and precious, but
That’s when you smile, and vanish for some tea,
And leave me here, with pieces of my gut
Still hanging out for everyone to see.

76 – Forge

Deep in the forge, you glimmer in the dark,
A demon blacksmith dealing out your blows:
You grace each lump of metal with your spark
And bring it to the heat, until it grows

More pliable and soft, and quick to bend -
Then beat it into any shape you like.
There on the bench, it tapers to the end
Of what it was, and moves with every strike

Of your fixed temper into something new.
And you could turn me into anything -
Break me in pieces if you wanted to -
And yet you make me stronger, help me sing:
With such delight I cool into a blade
That’s at your service, sharp & unafraid.

75 – Undressed

You keep your clothes on – never get undressed
Show just enough to make me want to stay
But never give more than you need away
Maintain the fiction that you know what’s best

How cleverly you tease my interest
Suggesting so much more than you display -
And I fill up the gaps in what you say
With what I hope will one day be expressed:

And I go naked – totally exposed
I shout and scream my love into the air -
While you remain immaculately posed
I could go crazy and you wouldn’t care:
But this is also true: I couldn’t bear
To be so open, if you weren’t so closed.

74 – Utterly

There’ll come a day I’ll wake up and you won’t
Be what I think of first, when you won’t be
The sun and moon and every star to me:

I’ll wake up in a world in which you don’t
Keep showing me that edge down which I want
To smash myself in pieces, utterly.

Then you & yours will vanish utterly
Except for these brief scars across my wound.

I’ll wake up in a country where you can’t
Lift me to heaven on your silver chain,
Then lock me up inside my hell again
So often that my daft head loses count.

And it’s a day that cannot come too soon
My darling sun, and stars, and precious moon.

73 – Not me

It isn’t me you tie up nice and tight
It isn’t me who mustn’t get away
It isn’t me who needs to put things right
It isn’t me who is supposed to stay

It isn’t me you torture with delight
It isn’t me whose pain has got to pay
It isn’t me you hit & hurt & bite
It isn’t me who might make you OK

I’m just a faceless dummy you can burn
A voodoo doll in which to stick your pins
A substitute who isn’t your concern
A whipping boy for someone else’s sins:
What does it matter if I don’t return?
This wound is ancient. Neither of us wins.

70 – Shopping

I think of you whenever I go shopping
We bump into each other up the aisles
Amongst the breakfast cereals in piles
Of Special K, and tubes of magic topping.

And how I wish instead I could be dropping
Into my basket one of your dear smiles,
A twist or two of the electric dials,
Some nipple tweaks, and half an hour of cropping.

You sell yourself to me, in little pieces,
So accurately weighed, and finely wrapped:
And every time I buy my need increases
(Like a burning well that won’t be capped)
You are the only place I know where peace is:
Could I be more absolutely trapped?

YOu sell yourself to me in little pieces
Carefully weighed out and wrapped
And every time I buy, my need increases
Like a burning well that won’t be capped:
You are the only place I know where peace is:
How dangerously now you’ve got me trap

69 – Monster

I am your monster now. Not what you meant
But what I have become: an almost man -
A golem made of clay, or Caliban,
Your shapeless, misconceived experiment.

And I both bless and curse the day you sent
Your current through me first, when I began
To twitch with this existence. And I ran
With rivers of desire and discontent.

How should I live this life? What can I do
With what you’ve made me – jagged, incomplete?
Your creature, only fit to savage you -
And your mad, brittle pride -  in shared defeat:
Unless I can, somehow, myself renew
Turn all this sharpness into something sweet.

68 – Heroin

My heroin you are, my hit of choice:
Your needles need no juice to get me high
Your looks inject themselves into my eye
One sniff of you and all my cells rejoice:
And you’re not cut with rubbish – pure Rolls Royce -
And I’m addicted to you: months go by
With just one thought, which is: how soon can I
See you again, suck on you, taste your voice?

You keep on pushing. Every time I need
A bit more pain to knock me off my face
Your lush plush limo keeps on adding speed
Until my spirit finds itself in space:
And you are such a drug – your rushes feed
A gap I’ll never fill, though I still chase.

67 – Limits

Such cold, hard limits to the things we do.
You help me to so much, and then no more.
Show me fantastic things I never knew
Then massive silence, when I shut the door.

This must be how it works – so well – for you:
You fold me up and tuck me in a drawer
Marked neatly with a label, out of view -
Back in the dark, not knowing what’s in store.

But in my head my thoughts are always leaping
Out of their boxes, throwing themselves like fish
Over the rush of water, always keeping
Their eye upon the source – and I just wish
That one day you could come and swim with me,
Shake off your suit and dive into this sea.