Blood in the Crystal Space

For a moment,
she fingers the cold length of chain
that stretches between the cuffs,
before she snaps them on her ankles, and leans back.
She thinks of charm bracelets that she played with as a girl,
collecting star and moon bangles to hang from them,
closing the pointed silver stars tight in her hand,
because the pain in her palm felt strangely good.
She thinks about her ex-husband;
a wash of crimson slides over her thoughts,
and his permanent absence from her life
positively turns her on.
Her mind for so long has been as detached
as a locked cabinet of Waterford.
Could she have been capable of staying so long?
Of sinking into so complete a lie?
She must have been.
How shallow we can be, to think that a pleasure tinged
in the caress of pain, requires cruelty for a companion.
Sometimes we just batter against the walls of life,
embrace in need without awareness, with some manufactured excuse,
just to feel something, to feel anything.
She had no regrets in leaving the bastard.
Charm, elegance and cruelty; he was a jagged crosshatch
of pictures she had toyed with for years, ashamed of her desire
for a harsh edge to her passions,
thinking she had to be punished for it.
But regret was for idiots.
She rolls over, buries her face in the bed pillow,
comes up on her knees, and stretches her feet apart,
so she can feel the metal taut against her skin.
She owns the key now; she has placed it right on the pillow
next to her head, to remind her that her pleasures belong to her.
They always should have.
All those years, she had bought the lie
that she was a possession too, just another crystal glass
in the display cabinet, to be broken on a whim.
Finally she’d wiped the blood off her mouth,
Thrown cruelty out of her life, and when she had finished crying,
how she had laughed.
She’d kept the cuffs he’d liked to use, because the metal
had no malice, and her skin loved them; they made her mouth water.
She reaches to the waiting heat of her cunt, and she smiles.
Her own hands know just where to go, and she will revel for an hour
with circlets around her ankles that will exact no price
for their removal.

Animation by Bdazzled

In the Primal Light of Morning

As the evening gathers,
the day’s heat settles into her eyes.
Awareness of tenderness, grasp of thought
all fade, veiled in a surging curtain of want,
that allows jagged visions only.
That the scent of her breath
will cause his own to grow heavy,
that her red nail, inscribing the finest line
along his cock, will make his eyes
become copper vessels of burning brands.
As midnight comes,
his muscles ache from pinning her to the floor,
refusing to allow her to rise, because the lightning
seeks the earth; and the curl of her hair,
damp with sweat that glistens across her neck,
makes the tendons of his fingers spasm
with a need to grasp those strands,
to see her head arch back, mouth gasping.
Then all words are weak, and power
is in the rush of air she swallows.
As the grey hours are entered,
an echo of tenderness returns, and she touches
the skin of his chest, and thigh.
Remembering the hours that they have pressed
into hers, the weight of separateness banished,
through grateful instants of melded being.
Her mouth longs to rest on his,
but for him to remain asleep, so she can drink
the essence of his dream.
In the primal light of morning,
she stirs, and moans, asking
in the articulate bend of her back,
the graceful, slow bowing of her leg,
for him to take her again, and for them
to sink into the languor of fulfilled animals
who have felt the passing of the night wind.
He will stay within her as her love,
cherishing the bond that returns as the veil rises,
and the weariness of the body
brings unending remembrance of its strength

The Bridge

The rain starts just after dark,
so he pulls the battered Ford under a highway bridge,
because water would leak in around the windows,
and he didn’t want his baby to be cold.
They live in the car together; he tries to get work
in the day hours, and sometimes, even does.
They are always hungry, and when there’s no job
to be had, he’ll steal from the supermarket.
He loves her, she is light,
she is life.
She’s not pretty, and he’s no prize;
his parents were glad to see him gone.
Her dad used to hit her, which was more
than he could bear; so one night
he went to her house and took her away.
They hit the state line, and kept going.
He knows that he’s awkward when they fuck,
but she doesn’t care.
She tells him that the touch of his hand
on her breasts, on her face, makes her burn,
and all day while he’s gone
she longs to lie naked in his arms.
The rain pounds, cascading off the bridge
and the dark is a roaring thing, to be feared.
Watery lights from the highway ramp
light their nest, as she lies
in the back, under their blanket,
the one warm thing that they own.
He loves her, she is joy,
she is life.
Even under the bridge the wet car leaks,
but she doesn’t care; she laughs
and says she will wash her hair
in the night rain.
He comes to her under the blanket;
they wriggle free of their clothes, and the warmth
of their bodies makes him dizzy, makes him hunger
for her hands on him, for her mouth,
gasping to breathe him in.
He will keep her safe, make love to her;
hold her close, and dream of her when he sleeps.
In the morning, their stomachs will be empty,
there will be rusty water on the seats.
But there will be a bridge above them,
when she wakes, and says his name

The Tattoo Artist

You will be my masterpiece.
The lips that brush my forehead
stealing me from sleep
long for the needle’s touch,
splash of ink
to run, burning under skin, to flow
with blood rhythm colored by rich green,
blending into yellow, edged with black.
As I cover your arm
with hell’s Eden, fruit-laden
branches and devil’s tail
in serpent’s guise,
as you lay
on the table and the image takes shape,
my hand strays to your breast
as yet unadorned
though vines and flowers, hidden suns
and shadow
will reach it in time.
As the artwork
grows, your moan makes my hand shake.
So I cannot draw, and you rise,
your lips now
and tongue, on my own breast
my hands, so that I am the one
to gasp now.
I would die to fuck you,
unformed, while the stinging ache
of metal under skin
resounds through you.
Instrument of my want,
blood and flesh in my hand.
No sleep tonight, your leg arches,
curling me in.
I will mark you
as you take me in your mouth,
my fingers stained, holding your head,
wanting to graft beauty
onto beauty, until you cry out.
Because it is a vision
to leave the soul blasted, flesh
exhausted, leaving the permanent scars
of captured lust and grace

There Are Graces in the Hours

In a moment of release
there are wastelands beyond number,
instants, inscribed into the once-empty landscape;
hard grains of unyielding sand, beneath bare feet.
There, in a single drop of sweat
that trickles into her mouth, is an echo of life
in a desert of seeking.
I look into the eyes of my love
and see her wisdom under
the shimmering heat waves of her lust,
knowing that the curved road of surrender
can be walked for a moment
only after the furthest horizons of trust
have been measured, and found measureless.
In a crackling instant, walls fall
and to fuck in that place where safety, found
is released into my care;
to offer a spiked touch, key to want,
a barb of clean pain, unpoisoned,
is the grace of a thousand hours shared
before one can be offered, can be taken.
In her eyes, then
spring waters of fulfillment, once crushed
now held, and freed to walk that curved road
as my hands pin her wrists, and her teeth clench
so she can swallow the ecstasy on her tongue.
Rising in a cry that will not be voiced,
except within, to the hungry soul that waits for its call.
It is a greeting to herself, candlewick in the desert,
an invitation to be burned but not consumed.
To revel in flame from the full rays of a hammering sun,
and bring an end to a long exile, of trusts once betrayed.
In her instant of release,
silence, uncaged,
becomes a gift of faith honored.
After hours of a gasping fuck
that no longer wavers in restraints of fear,
no burn remains,
no poison rages.
The single drop of sweat has become a sheen,
for my fingertips to gently welcome home.