Let me fan the flames of your fandom tickling ‘like’ and painting praise watching out for typos You and I should duck out of here you and I should get a room
What would we do in there behind the locking door? Turn two armchairs facing inwards swap endless breathless monologues clinging on to voices hanging from each word at what point would we be satisfied at what point would we be done
Let’s assume there’s a bed in that room or an armchair or a shower at what point would we be satisfied at what point would we feel like one
Afterwards, the peace glide and searching open eyes scanning for silent truths for glimpses of emotion, for clues at what point would we be satisfied at what point would it feel enough
There’s an ocean of desire between your pen and my paper there’s an ocean of water between your hem and my wrist
You and I should duck right out of here you and I need to get a room…
These paths we walk grounded by responsibility well-worn routine practiced intimacy I could only smile when you whispered in my ear ‘Take me away from this take me anywhere but here’
Living in the moment it’s all we know to do as you pepper my shoulder with kisses my fingers explore every inch of you You said ‘the world is a minibar cold and empty but now we’re blessed by this heat tonight, we’ve broken free’
You’re biting my shoulders as I worship at your chest real life left at the door shed like the straps of your dress Then you’re climbing over me and I taste it on my knees every drop is so addictive just like you said it would be
The way you bite your lip and your softly closing eyes when I gently twist my hip as I bring myself inside My thumb is in your mouth measuring the pleasure It’s a holy hell in this airport hotel
Those moans are low until they’re as high and loud as the planes above it’s a rush, it’s a ride to any escape that pleases us…
We scratch, I bite, you claw
the most arresting violence
I have ever known
takes place between these sheets of ours
as you growl, as I lash out
a stream of fire
I am a violent man, tonight
I am consumed by love
and lust
by love and lust for you…
Hair is pulled, skin gets grazed as we beat against the wall as this takes place between us You murmur, high Senses heightened and alive as I spit out a shower of crackling sparks I am a violent man, tonight I am birthed again In love and lust for you In love and lust for you…
Laura Lee, she was my first love tangled in her parents’ bedsheets and shadows from the attic window With my army-surplus shirt slipping from her shoulders
Laura Lee, she was my first love my first taste of intimacy her loving hands upon me guiding that desire, so deftly through our discovery and naivety
Laura Lee, she was my first love our fumbled teenage kisses quickly blossomed and were washed in ever deeper waves of lust and learning a new language
Laura Lee, she was my first love she taught to me the chorus of that lover’s song she handed me the blueprints I would forever build upon
Laura Lee, she was my first love I’d ascend for hours into the bottomless darkness of her eyes and the lines of those lips her quiet radiant beauty
Laura Lee, she was my first love as I learned how two hearts will knot a little death, a birth as she sang the lover’s song deep into me
It’s a melody I’ll chase perpetually Thank you, thank you for the tune I’ve carried always with me…
Now I wasn’t looking out eyes down quietly working satisfied and gently living loving in time with the tick of the clock or the beat of her heart O, I was a good man I was doing alright
Then the poison found me crawling surely noosed my arm tapped my vein and came and came and came violently derailing loudly rerouting all that loving to the rev of the engine skewed to the thrust of this new heartbeat O, I was quickly turned I was too easily bent
And all I would know from there all I could know to see the only wants that dwell
They’re bad thoughts bad wants bad things bad thoughts bad wants bad things
All I’m wanting for is bad things, bad things with you…
Come on, come on, close! Won’t these lift doors ever close? You breathe into my mouth my fingers invade your finery I was hypnotised across the table by the explicit silk of your bare shoulders Now hot air slathers at my forearms as our legs entangle their thick reef-knot Behind this crashing waterfall no one can hear us moan as you’re bitten for the thrill of it
And in this lift, we write together the oldest poem, it’s the oldest poem a poem as old as time
You don’t know this but you’ve re-lit the fuse of life in me I’ve been feeling dead for months in some subtle crushing ways I’d lost my grip upon the rip chord of that passionate parachute Now, I’m risen and roused heart beating in my lower lip as it crushes itself to yours My sleight of hand restored your clasp magically unlatching All hell is breaking loose as I soar across your skin
Come on, come on, close! Doors; gift us some privacy Lost in the moment, penning together the oldest poem, it’s the oldest poem a poem as old as time
You say you love my mind the sensuality of all I say how you long to craft a reply answer all the longing I’ve raised You lie awake wondering of my words ‘A glimpse is not enough’ you say ‘I want conversation deep I want to memorise your soul’
Still I shiver for that burning connection a longing less-refined can’t you boil for an inch of this can’t you itch for my lips to be held in these thin arms again You’d sweat and burn at night for our next physical encounter
Your fingernails should mark my skin There should be bruises left like sonnets In the meteor impact of our collision You’ll see the spark of my soul there As I shiver up inside you
You bite your lip as I show my strength and repeat until we melt into one Forget the reading, forget the speaking bite my shoulder prolong this feeling Away with words Cut this talk let me at you
Away with words, fuck these sentences I want silences split with kisses Sucking sounds and bitten skin Trade intellectual for the sexual As we do those things we do So, away with words Cut the talk let me at you
[2010]
Thanks for reading this old poem.
I’d posted an extract from this one on Twitter last week and people seemed keen. This is actually part of a much longer poem but I’ve robbed all the best lines from it for other poems over the years. These are the remaining (previously unshared) parts.
Click to listen to audio – it’s worth it. Right-click and ‘save as’ to download the MP3.
Let’s make a pact let these shadows hold us swaddled in secrecy and breathing quickly I see you draw in close to me sense those lips loosening my foundation questioning the forcefield of your sly grin and the delicacy of those fingers upon me exploring
Let’s make a pact let this moment be our blueprint to not accept a fading or a softening of this urgency I feel that magnetic pull strengthening see the bond between us as pure light drawing my every cell back into you the atmosphere of your swelling heartbeat and the longing in those murmurs you’re whispering expressing
Let’s make a pact as these shadows hold us close the night in around and bury us breathless breathless and beating hard…
In the shining eyes of the girl below me lit by the dim glow of a Paris night I see the distance growing that I’ve been running from for so long
And there, I gasped lay by her side, and said “What have I become? Do I mean anything to you?”
Inhaling on a cigarette she looked at me, sideways and said “You have lost so much most of which you gave away drunkenly, or deliberately Trying to be something else but to yourself you’ll always stay a stranger in this wasteland”
And that’s me a stranger in this wasteland Yes, that’s me…
[2004]
Thanks for reading this old poem.
Note: I’m going to post some older poems which I’ve never shared before over the next week or so. They’re all quite early in my writing and are flawed in all sorts of ways (aren’t we all) but I thought they might be of interest to people to see where I started. T.A. 18th June 2021.
Click play or right-click and ‘save as’ to download the mp3.
Once around the sun with no touch from anyone with no fun
Such a strange and lonely time in the history of this planet I dream of little moments like brushing past you on the stairs your aroma so sweet upon my senses your hair so finely spun between my fingers
Round and round but never close enough In my past life it might be weeks, sometimes could be months between those shivering connections molten to the core on fire, inside another But now I count in “years”…
Heaven knows, we cracked the code perpetual motion– Won’t do what we’re told can’t douse our passion Forget trying to explain it I need hands-on demonstrations You and me weren’t meant to be alone
It’s been too long since I worked the buttons loose on your jeans It’s so long since I pulled your head to my bare chest let you listen to my heart Round and round yet never together Endless motion yet no connection
Now it’s once around the sun all these months without touch without caress without our fun
How I dream, how I burst for the memory of that breathless surrender eyes connecting and the quietly blinking pleasure as we shiver beside You bite my shoulder prolong the moment So many barren seasons, now O, I’ve been aching for you
My fingers/nails my fists/wrists so dissatisfied… My arms/sighs my thighs/hips so prone… Once around the sun so many months between without touch without caress without undress without breath O, an end must come…
[2021]
Thanks for reading.
A second collaboration with Bree from Secret Thoughts Within. We wanted to write a poem about two people who’d been kept apart for a year because of lockdown and this is what we came up with. I’ve been struggling to find the time or inspiration to write this winter but collaborating with someone else is a really good way to tease out ideas and keep going. Check out Bree’s fantastic writing and audio at https://secretthoughtswithin.com/
There is quickly surging in here a rising stream of what has been A thousand lovers now, to write about their pursuit is my only want some nights
Another night of over-driven charm another taxi ride of careless kisses home A thousand lovers, they soon add up too many names, too many faces come and go
A life is lived the wrong way around I’ve grown up to grow down…
That amiable and likeable image is soon in tatters stains all over the character and the name A thousand lovers negate it all phrases repeated too many times to be true
In this dark chamber, pretty birds linger some circle so wantonly around here A thousand lovers just for the taking I forget how to simply speak a ‘no’
I’ll become a notch on a thousand bed posts I missed the point of what I miss the most…
Can’t let them think there’s something more to this or soon enough I’ll find myself too deeply in with a thousand angry hearts to answer for A thousand lovers all of whom so badly hate me
Bleak lists form on scraps of paper in dirty bedrooms, on sweaty sheets These thousand lovers do not ignite me there’s no inspiration in these unfeeling flings
A thousand lovers; there may soon be the more they add up the less there is left of me…
We move slow in time with our slipping youth We don’t rush, no we were slow to go home
Passing the coffee shops and bars I would later make my home I couldn’t have ever known they passed by, a blur, unseen
Her hand held loose in the heat There’s no need to push things we’ve time…
Then one night on a sofa in the kitchen at my mother’s house She turned slow, smiling and said “we should”
I could have laughed I must have beamed and all at the same time I was cautious
We moved slow tip-toeing down to the car I didn’t know if I could take another one another person’s innocence away
So, I paused… and time slipped away…
In a daydream I had more recently in a bar, when I was feeling particularly old I thought back and couldn’t remember why I didn’t have her If I could do it now I would do it now
Then it hit me I was honest then I was decent O, I was a real man back then…
Years are piling up around us the shape we make get whittled more precisely Tongue and groove lock ever tighter I want to spell it out the way we did when we were younger I want to paint my love across his skin but I’m blocked before I try My body gets in the way…
The house we built swaddles us so comfy The nest follows our shared blueprints Complimentary thought in tessellation I want to speak this deep connection plainly The way I know he longs to Wash our busy brains for some short instant but I’m stopped before I begin My body gets in the way…
Not tonight, not any night it’s too much to deal with I’m told it’s not an issue but I can’t hear it I know the barrier won’t lift and no matter he says my body gets in the way…
The heat shifts between rooms from the front of the house, to the back on the bed, your curled form is laid I watch the sky as it cries in the street blowing my nose, counting the people they carry bags of food to their cars filled with treats and sweet desserts As I move to the kitchen, you stir for a second this day is turning dark in the light from the loft shadows dance, from the candles you lit
By the stove, I pause to warm my hands not sure what to do, I don’t want to wake you I sit back at the window, take up my book but there are no new words to read and I place it back if only the story would change of it’s own accord O, I think it’s time for some movement a raising of the silence, let the music in just some small tune to warm this room and your sweet progression of chords kissing my ears I lie down beside you, cup your face whisper some sickly greeting as you focus up on me
Come on love, we should make a song you are the music and I am the words you are the music and I am the words we should make a song, my love we should make a song you are the music and I am the words you are the prettiest music and I am the most grateful words…
She came to me with pride and her sealed conditions said she wanted someone she could trust with a rousing proposition to ease her cobwebbed lust
It was cold out there on the avenue I’d been walking lonely for some way it was the idleness of her greeting it was the hint of warmth within
There was little choice to make and nothing smart in my reply ‘just come inside, keep it between the universes of you and I’
It was an idle flame that we both tended its very dimness was the whole idea but standing up to leave one morning I must have knocked a pillow into the flame…
The Lighthouse 