The Crafted Face
(from a painting by Bedazzled)

Features masked in gold, she stands,
her bearing proud and haughty, her eyes half-closed,
lids graced with emerald and blue
to match the peacock’s plume that curls from her crown.
She is transcendent.
To enter her place of perfect freedom from identity
requires only to brush fingers against the gilded art
that her face has become.
It is cool, shaped from the memory
of a queen embarking on the soul’s final journey,
unconcerned with any inevitability of pain;
of a reveler in the House of Prospero,
unafraid of the red death outside.
Her body, nude except for a mantle
of the finest silk lace,
has been severed from the doubt of being known.
Her neck, her breasts, the curve of her stomach
are sculpted now, the power of facelessness
infusing them, until they inspire both passion and awe.
As she looks out into the warm dark
from which her lover will come,
two futures flicker beneath the crafted face.
In one, he will come to her with naked eyes
that long to gaze at the height on which she stands;
he will kneel, place his hands into the arch of her back,
and put his tongue between her thighs,
while she inclines her head downward to watch.
In the second, he will come with a black length of cloth
over his eyes, blind hungry tower,
that she will rise on her toes to kiss.
Then she will take off her mask,
to let it clatter on the floor.

Magus/Satyr

There is a voice that he longs to hear/there is an arc of thighs,
a curve of breasts, that he hungers for.
No book can equal the beauty of a woman’s thoughts; echoes
of the goddess in every word, crafting life,
offering that which is secret,
that which should be known by all/inarticulate cries
are his harsh, delirious music,
wrung from a mouth that gasps to be filled by him,
strangled in ecstasy’s clutch.
He knows his lover will be beautiful with silver in her hair,
and lines grooved softly into her skin;
time’s grace will emanate out from her,
a circlet of eternal stars, captured
by eyes that have known evening, loved morning/in the rush
that fills his body with electric blood, she is a blur;
curled toes, hard nails, mouth breathing in the taste of musk,
her sweat his holy water, muscles become engines, roaring their power.
He takes her hand in his, and her smile is the benediction
of wisdom shared, and love earned/he tangles his fingers in her hair,
his mouth on her neck, his cock inside her.
He will sit with her in the gathering dusk, looking out over lamplight
that shines on night water, knowing that no depth is beyond
their ability to plumb; delighting together in the shimmering textures
of that light, as it folds over liquid deeps/he will rip away
every boundary that sheathes her body from his sight,
until her eyes are feral, and they are mindless in the frenzy of their lust.
Thought to thought,
moving to the rhythms of soul’s joining, they are one.
Fucking to burn away all knowledge
except the body’s mad language of need, they are one.
There is the incense of wisdom, whispering, to speak of grace in the dark/
there is the scent of primal animals, grappling with the glory of the dark.

Offering

She doesn't want his soul.
That offer
is for blind lovers
and she sees clearly enough.
She wants him to push her
against a wall of rough plaster,
in a dim room,
the scent of his want
making her insane.
She wants him
to spread thorns around her bed,
so that if she tries to leave it
her torn feet will cry for him
to pull her back.
She wants a fuck
outside, in the hot night.
Grass and earth under her
and red flowers
beneath her eyelids, pouring
their poison into her brain.
She doesn't want his soul
and he can't have hers.
She wants to fuck until she forgets
that anyone could ever make
a gift as stupid, as frenzied
as pure, as that.

Possesed

In the raw moment, in the dark of the room,
there is no doubt who stands there, coupled together,
locked in a fuck shot through
with the harsh transcendence of violent want.
Lovers, simply lovers, hungry beyond thought and words;
he has pushed her against a wall and holds both her hands
stretched above her head, her wrists pinioned by his grip,
and she twists her body into his,
so they both gasp and cry out.
But they are not alone;
she calls to her goddess, wanting two things:
join me and guide me,
to go into my deepest core of flowing need.
In his pleas to his gods, a challenge:
let me grapple with you, wrest from you
the divine spark, for an hour, for a minute.
So we are possessed by our gods,
catalogued by the minds of science: consummation, desire
by the minds of faith: water, fire.
When she is answered,
her body flowers outward, opens inward.
When he is answered,
the struggle is often brief,
wrestling with his gods until they throw him down.
He has not yet learned the woman’s art
of welcoming her divinity, and so he sees vitality
in conflict; she in joining.
For him, then, those triumphant gods take his body,
reanimating limbs broken as they fought.
His blood burns with their presence, and he sees
his woman waiting, already one with her radiant goddess.
Elegant circle, violence of desire, possessed and possessing.
Her call to him is fuck me, fill me, take me,
I blossom in the heart of flame.
And his to her is pour me out into those waters, sate me
with the power to be quenched,
for the burning to ease, before I grapple with them again.
Two lovers fuck against a wall, in the room’s dark.

The Freeing Bonds

He ties her hands with a swatch of red silk,
and she is grateful.
Unbidden, her muscles tense, a vast clenching vise
of steel, taking hold of each muscle,
her lungs constricting until she wants to sob.
It is the primal companion, marshalling its power
inside her, to protect her.
How she has hated it
for long years; freezing her body,
walling out all feeling, smothering perception,
killing awareness.
Summoned,
by every touch that approached her.
She doesn’t hate it any more.
It will pass, and its presence, welded by fire to every nerve,
honors the knowledge that her body, betrayed
may have yielded when choice was stolen,
but not without trying to defend her.
He places the blindfold over her eyes;
the fear in her throat eases, as the loving dark comes down.
That fear is old, and has no place in this moment,
which is a bond crafted in love, and choice restored.
What was taken from her, is hers again,
to place in a channel where the dammed river
can flow, where the silenced voice
can cry out in the language of passion.
She can speak now, to the lost girl
that lives in her body, tell her that the woman
she has become, has found the key to their prison door,
and the key is in the shape of a lock.
Bound and freed, she can feel her lover’s caress now,
her flesh no longer numb and cold,
her spirit no longer needing to flee into the isolate dark.
There is knowledge; anticipation of lingering kindness
in the arms of her partner, later.
She closes her eyes behind the blindfold, and melts
into the hunger that was sealed in iron for so long.
He kisses her breasts, holds her firmly to the bed.
She knows she will be filled, and will be able to feel it.
Her fingers curl in pleasure, intertwined with one another,
held together by the gift of silk around her wrists.
Her eyes beneath the blindfold are hot and moist,
but from strength,
from joy.