The Feminine Masculine

I was a rampant angle,
an acute stab
in her tenderest parts.

But acute is only cute
for so long - becomes obtuse,
and obtuseness
becomes baseless:

an open wedge, flung 
ever wider, flipping 
to horizontal, then inverted,

before my arrow
became her bow, 
my shield
became her sword.

And now, she hunts me
in the night: her moon
a watchtower, her stars spears
penetrating

the darkest spaces 
of my heart
with light.

And I take it like a wolf
lulled by a soft dream 
of saffron and silk,
yet still ravenous for meat;

licking his wounds,
licking his lips,
whimpering for milk.

And, O, I have known pain....

And, O, I have known pain:
I have cut into hardwood's grain, and seen,
in those rings, stories of woe, and rain.

I have heard tales of waiting for season again:
for the soft touch of spring's refrain;
the return of summer's sensuous blaze.

And, O, I have heard women complain
that womanhood's joy is but a bane -
that every tear of joy is slain,

cut down by some tyrant's blade,
whose ego made him weak and grey -
they have nursed my ears with soft tales of pain.

And the sun that sets alone in orange flame,
and the widowed moon in her frozen frame,
waxing, as the stars onwards train, into absence, without a soul who came.

And me? Well, I have known pain.
Yes - these wings were once bound in chains;
now heavy feathers, like stone engrained.
But one day they shall flutter - and I shall fly away.

A Short Aside

In this cold universe,
try to give a little warmth;
try to sing into verse
the very colours that haunt
your most beautiful dreams.

And remember:
we are here to fight entropy.
And nothing
is as it seems.

The Best Things About You

Your laugh
is the upper and lower mandibulars
cracking back and forth,
like the tail of a whip.

Your handshake
is a clinking trove
of small bones.

Your smile
is a defecation
in the mouths of children.

Your heart
is a plant pot
full of earthworms.

Your joy
is a murder of crows.

Your lungs
are slabs of filmy sac
grabbing for air.

Your brain
is a bath of acid
dissolving dead animals.

Your words
are rusted 19th century shells,
removed from the dead bodies
of brave soldiers.

Your liver
is a leaking car battery.

Your tongue is a severed tentacle
feeling its way about for sense.

Your teeth are flecks of snow
struck white, and fossilised,
in fear.

And your thoughts are the
impatient crunch of gears
on a sweet dispensing machine

as you turn and turn,
and feast on a small prize.

The Love Song of the Dolphin

At first I was protean:
no more than
a gelatinous blob
in love's hands.

As I grew,
inflated by sensation,
like a gallbladder,

love seemed something
serene and blue; tingles
twinged down my notocord.
I felt a feeling beyond words.

But soon, I felt a feeling
like drowning: my lungs
filled with water, my little blue heart
a dwindling pearl,

love merely a playful mate,
a joking game: a heartbreak.

But then I clicked onto her;
more like a flash on a radar,
my echolocation failed to reveal
her elusive nature;

and, eluded, my desires only grew,
until the ocean was but a pond:
my heart like the blue-lit shore-arms
of some azure spiralling galaxy.

The stars fell down from the sky;
the algal blooms cyan-awakened,
the eddies of my heart
a swirling eruption of glittering light.

Balanced on her Aquarian scales,
like a dry measure of powder,
I felt more like a feather.

And then I breathed:
two lungs filled my chest.
A love-lung too squeezed.
It filled up my breast.