Know not

I tell her that I know not who I will be. She laughs and tells me that she knows all too well who I am to be. That she knows that she will change my lonely life. 

I lay holding her in my arms, her head nestled on my chest. Her dark wavy hair falls in a cascade off my side and I play with it, my fingers alternately caressing and teasing apart the strands. I long to see her lustrous dark eyes but I don't break the silence. Rocking her gently, I squeeze her weight into me feeling her curves and her softness against my body. In these slow and quiet moments everything feels so right. Bending my neck to kiss the top of her big forehead, I whisper softly, "baby, I love being with you."

Soon we will go back to our lives. But for these moments, she is mine and I want to know what love is. 

When next she comes back into my arms, I ask her to tell me slowly what I don't know. 

She looks at me with her softly penetrating eyes and tells me of the mountains she must climb, of the weight of decisions upon her shoulder. I read between the lines and cuddle her tighter into me waiting out her shy apprehension. In time she tells me how his eyes lit up when they met, how he held her hands after dinner, of how he moved her body with his strength and size, of how his roughness melded into her softness and everything was real as his athletic body pressed into hers and they made love in the way she so likes. 

She tells me of how he reminded her of me. 

I trace gently the shape of my heart on her forearm with a finger over and over again as I hold her close and listen to her. 

Write me a story

You could be my poison, my cross
my razor blade
I could love you more than life
If I wasn't so afraid

                      -----  From "My favourite faded fantasy" by Damien Rice

"Tell me a story, beautiful man," she says as she settles into my arms and on my lap as we sit on the sofa backed against the wall of windows that look out at the water in the distance. It is twilight. I smile and kiss her dark hair, whispering "you are the beautiful one," as I reach for her hands with mine to intertwine our fingers, squeezing gently.

I tell her about my first love, about how in those college days she made me the man I still am. She wants to know more. I tell her about the drugs, about making love in the stairwell, about intense explorations of body and mind that shone light on the darkness in me. She wants to know more.

I have told her a hundred stories. A story for each kiss, for each caress, for each animal want, for each liquid desire, for each trembling intimate feminine submission from her. I cover her body and mind with a steady stream of lust and words, marking her and binding us together in shared secrets. 

"Tell me a story, my love," I whisper to her as we sway together in a slow dance surrounded by people and music in the club. As we hold each other in the dance, our bodies moving languidly, our hips pressed against each other, she does not answer for several songs but I can feel in the movements of her familiar body her struggle to formulate a response.

In time I feel her relax, and squeezing me tighter in the dance she whispers back, "I cannot do this anymore. I cannot keep writing stories with you. It is too much. It just takes too much from me." 

In the light and the dark of the club, we sway silently together, touching, caressing, as the music changes over and over. 

"I want to write my own stories," she says, tilting her head up to kiss me as the night comes to a close.

Mean me no love

I know you mean me no love. Yet this is how I must pay.  

I dance with you. It has been forever and ever. My arms around you, I tell you that you look like a dream in your gorgeous burgundy dress. You know full well what effect the twirl of your dress has on me. The mirrors on the walls around us call on all our dances past. If I could tear my eyes away from your face, your neck, the swell of your breasts, and look around me I would know their fate.  Reminiscences swirling about us, I nuzzle your neck gently, holding you close as we sway to the distant music. Your heartbeat melds with mine like intertwined fingers. I kiss your hands, lingering on the feel and taste of your skin. 

Desire, shorn of urgency and yet unfailingly potent, wraps around us like the night.

I will not dream tonight. I may not ever.

Outside my mind, reason knocks on the door. I know its warning well. I know what a dance with you portends. But you my love, my everlasting love, are all what my dreams are because of.

Woman Unbound

A woman unbound, she tells me of loves past and future, of great distances and of warmth greater still, and she kisses the tip of my nose. I hold her close.

Love stands near the door. But how is anyone to know? 

I ask her if what was old is new again. She laughs, and I ask her to dance with me. She does not hesitate to take the hand I offer. We navigate the dance floor to find an open spot. She is like the wind, dancing with me, touching me, moving with me. We dance holding hands, we dance embracing each other, we dance not knowing who is around us. We dance. 

I caress her bare arms, she rests her face on my chest, I kiss her hair ever so briefly. Her hands, her hands I kiss, I hold, I squeeze gently and she squeezes back. Her body's scent around me, she tells me things. I ask her things. I tell her that I so want to kiss her neck, but that I will fight the urge. That I so want to touch her secrets, but that I will fight the urge. That I so want to make her mine.

She laughs. God, she laughs at my little jokes. And nothing makes me feel more alive.

I look in her eyes and wonder how I can tell her what I am feeling, how I can tell her the joy that she is. 

Only right

"Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom
Well, who am I to keep you down?
It's only right that you should play the way you feel it"

                                                   -------- From Dreams by Fleetwood Mac 

When I stepped out onto the deck of your house that overlooks the beach, you are already in the shower inside the newly installed glass-walled sauna that occupies the back of the deck. You are proud of the sauna and had invited me to come see it. I pause to watch you. You can see me watching you. The water plays with your glistening skin as it envelops your familiar curves. You play with my mind, washing your breasts with caresses, your hands moving smoothly down your stomach to reach between your legs, and then raising your legs you wash them one by one. Smiling, I move towards the glass door watching the intimate play between water and hands and body.

Grinning playfully, you approach him as he sits naked on a towel on the middle raised bench of the sauna. He grins back, saying "this is a wonderful place for us to play babe." You kneel on the lower bottom bench and use your hands to open his legs to make room for yourself. Trailing kisses on the sweat and steam on his thighs you move your mouth towards the source of his heat, enveloping it with your throat. He plays with your hair while you pleasure him. 

I sit on the floor and lean back against the glass wall. The sauna has exhausted its moist swollen heat. Tired, you sit down on the floor with me, your back towards me. I embrace you from behind, holding you gently as you lean back into me. Kissing the side of your face, I whisper "my love." You tilt your head back to look up at me and reach for my lips with yours.

You sit on his lap on a deck chair just outside the sauna. He has put his clothes back on but you are still naked. You enjoy the effect your body has on him. The fire burning in the urn next to the chair keeps you warm despite the cool summer nightime breeze off the ocean. You drain the Rioja from your glass before putting it down on the side table and turn playfully towards him, saying "come to bed, baby."

The early morning light on what seems to be a clear summer day floods your bedroom and I can sleep no more. You lie asleep next to me. I reach with my hand ever so gently to brush the hair off your face so that I can see you clearly.

Flicker

In my words you must stay.

You flicker in and out of existence on the chair across the round wooden table from me. The lone table and two chairs barely fit on the narrow deck at the back of the cafe, but I enjoy the relative privacy from the crowd inside.

The rain falls all around us, the overhang of the roof keeping us dry. The lush green undergrowth of the thick forest comes all the way up to the deck so that I could touch the rain washed leaves by just extending my arm. The canopy of tall pine trees diffuse what little of the late afternoon light makes it through the rain.

When you come into focus, I hand you the cappuccino I had gotten for you earlier. You tell me about your day. I listen, my mind drifting, distracted by the sound of the rain, by the movement of your unadorned neck as you speak, by the way your dark hair falls atop your bare shoulders, by the movement of your curves as you cross and uncross your legs to find a comfortable way to sit on the wood-slatted chair, by the light in your eyes as you talk to me.

I listen to your day but what I really want to do is to ask your night, 

    "How did you become the woman in my dream?, and 

    How did you make me the man that I seem? and, 

    Who wrote the stories that gave us our past?"

You flicker in and out of existence as the rain deepens in the fading light.

The night stretches

You came dressed in black, with a smile bearing my name. 

You came drenched in memories, bereft of all pain. 

You came bathed in darkness, washed in warm rain. 

I hold out my hand and say, "Come, dance with me." You slow down in my arms, your body in sync with mine as we sway to the music. I touch your face, fingers caressing your familiar lips. I could tell you that I love you, that I have always loved you, but you already know all that. We talk, and in time you laugh with me. Your words fill my world and still my restless heart. Maybe tonight I can keep you near me.

The night stretches, wrapping us in make believe. In the embrace of the warm rain, we walk hand in hand, as the stars beneath us scatter to make way for your steps. The faint lights in the distance retreat further into the horizon. I bring your hand up to my mouth to kiss it and look for your eyes but I cannot see clearly anymore. 

Our love will hold if we can keep the truth at bay.

Silhouettes

Neon on my naked skin

Passing silhouettes

Of strange illuminated mannequins

                                     ------------------- From "Big in Japan" by Alphaville (Ane Brun's cover)

(Inspired by a Steampunk sim... a first steampunk vignette from me)

The periodic whoosh of the massive propellers levitating my airborne home to the top of the cliff had the comfort of a steady heartbeat. The pressure guages in the boiler room that fed the steam to the engine that powered the propellers were doing their job well and I could rest easy for the night. A few feet from where I sat in my chair behind the desk, a wall of checkered windows looked down on the channel that separated the jagged cliff of the island city-state from mainland. Tonight, a dense white fog blanketed the water reducing visibility so severely that no one, not even you, would be able to slip into the city for an attack.

I could sense you, perhaps through  a whiff of your body's scent, before I heard the soft rustle of silk. When I looked up from the maritime reports I had been studying, you were sitting on the chair across the desk from me. Your right leg pulled up on the seat, your left leg swinging free, your ornate purple-hued oriental silk robe open as you leaned back with a glass of red wine in your hand. I traced your curves with my eyes, smiling, wanting to tell you that one day you will be mine. 

The only reason I did not reach for the revolver in the top left drawer of my desk is because I knew that you were not really there, that my mind was playing tricks with me. 

A little bit yours

You're not mine anymore
But I'm still a little bit yours

                                                ---  from "A little bit yours" by JP Saxe

I wake up to the feeling of you laying on my back, your hair caressing my face, and your kisses on the back of my neck. I must have fallen asleep on my stomach while stretched out on the picnic blanket under the shade of a big umbrella in the lazy Sunday afternoon sun. 

Giggling, you press into me and wiggle your chest and hips on my back. Smiling, I roll over using my hands to keep your body on mine. Grasping your hair from the back of your head, I gently guide your face up to mine and kiss your lips. 

"There is no better way to wake up than with you in my arms."

You stretch out on me and reach for my shirt buttons. Midday stretches into late afternoon while we explore each others bodies and minds again. It has been years together. It has been years apart.

I show you new tricks I have learned to add to our pleasure. You laugh in delight. There isn't anything that I miss more than your delight. 

It is evening by the time you recall that you are not mine anymore.

Olive Bread Afternoon

By the time we finish the apple pie on our little table outside the cafe, I have given the newspaper to you and picked up my book. But my mind isn't on the book, it is on you. The sun is now high enough to be clear of the buildings across the canal. It is one of those lazy bright weekend mornings when sunlight suffuses everything with a brilliance without being blinding.

I study you as you read the newspaper. Your bright eyes, the unruly wisps of hair on your forehead, the curve of your mouth opening in time for the coffee cup you raise to your lips every now and then, the pale skin of your neck and throat moving as you swallow the coffee, the visible collarbone at the base of your neck and the beginning of your shoulder that I have kissed a thousand times, the unbuttoned top half of your soft white silk shirt moving with your body as you lean forward for the coffee revealing the curve of your right breast, your left elbow resting on the table, your hands holding the newspaper aloft at reading distance. All so familiar and yet it stirs an inevitable desire in me that I fight to subdue.

When the sun is at its peak in the sky and we are tired of reading, we head back to the airbnb stopping first to buy provisions for lunch at a bakery near the cafe.

As you put down the bag with the olive bread, the fresh wine-red grapes, and the triangle of brie cheese on the kitchen table, I envelop you in my arms from behind you, kissing the back of your neck, my hands reaching under your shirt for your breasts. You squeal in surprise and then in pleasure as I cup and squeeze your breasts and pull gently on your nipples. I burrow my face against the side of your neck, kissing urgently, biting downwards towards your shoulders. 

Voice hoarse with desire, I whisper "I want you. I have always wanted you". 

You reach back with your hands and pull up your skirt. "I know, baby. I could feel your eyes on me".

Lust took its course as I tear into you with my need, pinning you down onto the kitchen table, in time savagely emptying into you from behind. 

The urgency now tempered, I pick you up in my arms and take you to the couch to take care of your needs more slowly and gently in the striated light of the afternoon sun coming in through the window blinds.

Afterwards, as you rest I go back to the kitchen table to pull the olive bread apart into chunks and grind some fresh black pepper and sea salt onto extravirgin olive oil in a shallow dish. I think about the grapes but instead pour two glasses of the unfinished Malbec from last night. Pulling up a chair to sit next to you, I feed you lunch as you lie propped up on the couch cushions.

The farmer's daughter

In this strange world where we want to be misled and we want to misunderstand, I tell you a story.

I take your hands in mine and raising them to my lips, kiss them softly. As the music plays, its Latin rhythm coaxing us into dancing, I pull you towards me. Your black dress twirls as you give in to my gentle touches directing your body with the music. 

We dance in the courtyard of an ornate high-ceilinged marble building with multiple tall arched windowed doors on all sides. The sun is low on the horizon and its rays light up the clumps of tall grasses that grow in the marsh surrounding the building. In the easterly warm wind, a sprinkling of brightly coloured flowers wave on stems tall enough to peek above the grasses. At one end of the courtyard are the now rusted metal statues of a man and woman frozen in a dance, her body arched backwards as his body leans onto hers to kiss her neck, their arms enveloping each other.

"Did I tell you?" I ask, as I pull you into an embrace within the dance.

"Tell me what?" you respond, looking up at me, the warmth of the dying sun reflecting in your eyes.

I lead you in and out of my embrace as we dance in the bright white light spilling out of the building onto the brick courtyard.

"That we are in the middle of nowhere, Argentina. That on a moonless rainy night long long ago on the road that runs parallel to the overhead electric transmission lines in the distance, the road that you can barely see from here, a general's car broke down. He walked towards the only light he could see and when he knocked on the ramshackle house, the farmer's daughter opened the door. It was love at first sight. The general married her and took her away to the city. But in time he had this beautiful building built for them to dance in when they came back here."

"Is this true or are you just making it up?" you ask, smiling as we grind gently against each other in the recurring transient moments of closeness within the dance.

I smile back at you, hands reaching to caress your lips ever so briefly just as you twirl out of my reach in the dance. 

"Their children put in the statues here as a memorial to them when they died. Rumour has it that when the sun is low on the horizon and the easterly winds are just right, the statues come alive and you can see them dancing here in the courtyard in the light that spills out of the windowed doors. She wears a black dress and anyone who has ever seen them says she looks lovely in his arms."

You rest your face against mine as we sway together. 

"That on dark and rainy nights you can see the farmer's daughter using the telescope on the upper floor balcony to look for the headlights of the general's car."

"How beautiful and sad" you say. 

In the light of the low sun, I lean into you arching your body backwards to kiss your neck, our arms enveloping one another.

Handwriting

As I drift slowly back from sleep to wakefulness, I become aware of my head resting against the sloping surface of a wooden drafting table. I can see the strange light outside of the open french doors from a kind of diffuse grayish-blue twilight sky infused with rain. The sound of the rain and its smell coming in with the light breeze slowly seeps into my consciousnes. I let it soak in for a few moments. Looking around with my eyes, head still resting on the table, I see that I am in a small sparely furnished room. There is a mostly empty bookshelf in the corner. A few feet from the desk is a couch facing the open french door. I can see the wet wooden railing on a balcony outside. I try to recall what is outside the room, to remember the view from the balcony, but my mind draws a blank.

Pushing back against the table with my hands, I find that I am sitting in a leather swivel office chair with rollers. I must have fallen asleep against the drafting table. I lean back against the chair to study the table. On the bottom left, there is an upright purple fountain pen in a quaint gold pen-holder with an engraved black base. A bottle of indigo ink stands beside the pen. On the top left are a sheaf of loosely bound papers and a brown leather journal. To the right of where my head was resting moments ago, there is a single sheet of thick off-white paper folded in half under an ornate jade paper weight. Hanging on the wall opposite the french doors there are a few detailed topgraphic maps mounted in solid brown frames. I stare at the maps for a while. Most of them are of beach-front properties. They look vaguely familiar.

I close my eyes and lean back further against the chair, trying to recall where I am and what I am doing here. Nothing comes to mind.

Eventually I give up and reach for the folded sheet of paper...

"I have long been gone, my love. It has long been over."

I stare at the page for a while. I cannot tell if it is my handwriting or yours.

Embrace

When I wake up next to you, it is still raining hard and loud.

The sky is now dark though, and in the thin light seeping in from the wrap around windows of the little one room house you had built for us I can see the heavy raindrops beating down all around us. I turn my head to look at you, your face a few inches from mine, as you lay on your side facing me. A flash of lightning illumimates your face and the room around us and you stir briefly at the sound of the accompanying thunder. I move closer to you, whispering softly so as to not wake you, "Did I tell you that you never leave my mind, my love." Reaching with my hand, I caress your face ever so lightly, brushing your dark hair back from your face, and then down your neck.

Lightning flashes again and in the pulsing light I see your face in my hands as you kneel in front of me and I make love to your throat. In the ensuing thunder, I lean forward to kiss your throat softly atoning for how rough I had been to it earlier. I slip the cover back down your naked body, eyes lingering on the curve of your collar bones and down the curve of your visible left breast. Lightning flashes again and in the flickering light I see you straddling my hip, your body moving up and down as you moan loudly and I reach with my mouth for your nipples. "Baby," I whisper softly as the thunder claps down around the house. I lean in to you and kiss your lips, pulling your body gently into mine, waking you up for my need.

When I wake up next to you, it is still raining hard and loud.

The sky is brighter now though, and through the wrap around windows I can see the heavy rain all around us. I turn my head to look at you, your face a few inches from mine. You are awake and looking at me. I smile into your eyes and move closer. You reach for my body and pull me closer to hold me against yours. I go back to a kind of warm slumber in your embrace.

I barely hear you when you ask in a low voice, "Am I more than an addiction?"

Inescapable

I turn to look at you. It is late evening and you are laying next to me in an adjacent beach chair. You are on your side facing me, and I hold your gaze, searching your eyes. When you look away with a barely audible sigh, I reach with my hand to caress your dark hair back gently from your face. In the diffuse evening light, your skin is luminescent. My eyes trace down your neck, lingering on your collarbones and then down to your breasts barely covered by the open translucent white silk shirt you are wearing. I feel the moist gentle pull as you turn your face slightly to take my index finger into your mouth. I watch the curve of your lips as you suck on my finger, your eyes locking onto mine with a desire at once familiar and inescapable. I reach out with my other hand and pull you on top of me.

The waves are now loud enough that I can no longer keep them out of mind. The moonlit churn of the waves washes up to just a few feet away from my feet. In the very far horizon out on the sea, I can make out the shape of what must be a large ship. The breeze has picked up a bit, though it is still very warm and comforting. I can hear some faint voices and laughter every so often but their owners must be quite distant. There are no clouds in the sky and in the half-moon the stars are bright and feel close. It is a beautiful night, but I cannot remember how I came to be there on that beach.

Would you?

I try and steady the row boat as you step into it and then taking your hand guide you to sit across from me on the passenger side. We had found the boat nestled in among the lotus leaves and tall gangly yellow flowers by the grassy edge of the small island with the temple. The turquoise water is brilliantly lit by the dying sun, and you are delighted by the koi fish that swim in the clear water around the boat. I can see the clumps of tall bamboo on the little island behind you swaying gently in the breeze. The butterflies we had disturbed in walking down to the boat flit about us. I smile into your eyes and pick up the oars to set us off into the water.

Our surroundings are so beautiful that we forget to talk for a while. I see a pink flowering cherry blossom tree growing out of a rocky arch abutting a waterfall and steer the boat towards it.

"If you could change the way I feel about our past, would you?," you ask.

I look at your face silently letting the boat glide past the waterfall. You look so beautiful, sitting there across from me, your dress gathered under your legs. I resist the primal urge to hold you in my arms.

"Did I tell you?," I think silently to myself, "That I have always loved you."

"Would you?," you ask again.

Song

I realize what you are to me. You are my song, my poem.

Now most of us don't live our song, but everyone has one. And you are the spirit of my song, its heart, its mind, its music, its words.

And you know the best part? You don't even have to live in this song with me, for all of this to be true.

In the gentle breeze, the sound of the waves from across our beach barely reaches us as we lay propped up against the great big tree at the corner of the meadow in the back of our house. My back against the tree, your back against my chest, I hold you in my arms as you sleep. The impossibly tall-stemmed flowers that have overrun our meadow surround us like so many sentries warding off reality. It is twilight and the sky is suffused with brilliant colors from the setting sun.  I reach to caress your raven hair back from your face, and whisper "Happy Birthday, my love."

Shards

See me dancing in the rain
Shards of glass in my back
Trails of blood, my love

See me drinking whiskey on the porch   
Dreams of diamonds and rust
Don't fall for me, my love.

See me laying in our hammock
Arms holding you in the wrong way
It's all far too late, my love

Words on a page (2)

In the space
between my words
you live, and
we love, you and I

I leap ahead
from words to words
lover mine
you fall behind

Sometimes, I go back
to words from long ago
and find you there,
dreaming

Words on a page

In the rain, there is a whisper
of a moon rising high
and miles and miles of love
washed away with the tide

In my dreams, there is a quickening
of the blood in my veins
a thousand cuts from sharp desires
bleeding words on a page

I didn't hear you leave

You were right, of course

It is 3 in the morning and the world is empty but for the stars above. After a long night of caressing each other's bodies and minds with our words, we just lay there, spent and entwined on our hammock.

"Do you remember the time when...?" I say, reaching out to caress your hair off your face.

You stir on my body and tilt your face up to look into my eyes. "What time?"

I play with your hair, holding your gaze, willing the hammock to continue rocking us gently in the warm breeze off the water.

"The time, all those years ago, when I asked you to marry me and move in to my house?"

You embrace me tightly and whisper, "I loved that house with the crescent moon bay."

Your head back on my chest, we listen to the periodic murmur of the gentle waves.

"Do you remember your response?", I insist gently.

You don't answer.

"You said that if you moved in with me, it would be the beginning of the end of our relationship."

You look up at me but don't say anything.

"You were right, of course."