Christ died for this: the hot hard press of your bony hips

against me, your hand between my thighs.

I take his name in vain, scream it at the ceiling

until the neighbours bang on the wall.

Outside, the church bells are ringing,

people dressed in their Sunday best walking to Mass;

but in this small hot square of a room, our worship is fierce, primeval.

I taste the bread of your body, bite for the warm red tang of your wine-blood.

You speak in tongues across my collarbone,

bless me hard against the soft yield of the mattress.

Oh yes, darling, yes: some sins are worth dying for.

I Knew It Was A Bad Idea

 

I want, he said to me,

He grasped my wrists with thick trembling fingers.

You, me, we, us, this.

 

I shuddered and submitted.

Outside, the wind blew in circles:

a storm brewed like a metaphor.

 

Love Song To A City I Would

Claim For My Own

City,

City, I trace the contours of your cobbled paths

with my questing toes,

run my eager fingers over your delicate roofscapes,

press my hot palms against your stormy mountainous hips.

 

Oh, City, I lick my impassioned lips

and feather kisses across your ancient jawbone,

your statues of people greater than I.

 

I explore your strange subterranean passages with my mind and my heart and my soul,

breathe in the sweet nothings of your whispered crowds,

return what you pledge me with your whooping midnight revellers,

comfort you after the screams of distant sirens.

 

City, dear City. I sigh like this – ohhh.

Cadaverine Magazine 2009