I posted this in September but have rewritten for me book - hope you enjoy

 

- performance piece -

She devised a meeting ‘just as friends'

For evening drinks in her favourite bar.

(Soigné and the food is good)

Her finely plaited ribboned hair

Smelled of woody sandalwood.

 

She said I had to walk her home,

“There are dangers lurking everywhere.”

She chose the cycle track route back -

I strode along beside her.

 

In a shadow space between lamp lights

She stopped and kissed me unexpectedly.

She filled my mouth with a probing tongue

Then drawing back,

Brushing long black hair from her cheek

Bashfully dipped her eyes and simpered,

 

“I love you… “

 

The loveliest woman I had ever seen - 

This stunning creature loved me?

I looked into her eyes.

I drowned in her eyes…

I was hooked.

 

Not mother, not wife,

Nobody outside coital ecstasy

Had ever said that to me,

“I love you.”

Three little words and I was hooked.

Like Joseph from Potiphar's wife

I should have run away

I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!

But I was hooked.

 

We kissed again at path's end.

I to my solitary home alone and

She to her husband (‘estranged’) returned.

 

Feeding the insatiable worm within with 

Our very selves – our souls.

We feasted on each other,

Anywhere feasible and sometimes not.

Coupling in seedy hotels and seedier b'n'bs,

Knee trembling in alleyways,

Against garage walls if necessary.

We made love in a bush on the Cleveland Way

A group of seal spotters rambled past,

Their eyes were directed out to sea

They missed more than bobbing heads that day.

 

I gave my heart willingly. 

She displayed it aloft.

A Burn's Night haggis on a silver charger,

To be lauded, sliced, chewed and excreted.

Or an enemy head staked high on a city wall.

 

She said I was her sunny day

She said her heart was mine too,

But that was “strictly entre nous.”

No one must ever know,

Especially not ‘ the estranged,’

“There was nothing to be gained.”

 

My three best moves soon failed to satisfy

The frisson flattened, and frustrated

She sauntered off hunting another

To fill the worm within.

 

Keeping my heart 

Closeted, festering.

I begged her to return it,

 

“Give it back to me. Let me have it. Please.”

 

“It is not yours now – you gave it freely.”

 

Showing pity like a banqueting nobleman

Carelessly tossing a bone to a hungry hound

She threw a heart piece to the ground

Nudged it to me with her shoe.

“There's enough there…it'll do…for you.”

 

Unlike devoted long married couples,

Conjoined souls who die in swift order

The second before the first is even cold

Life is never complete for the young

With a busted soul and half a heart

Who are denied swift easy passing –

The release that that sweet, gentle, good night brings.

 

The wages of sin ain't death but a torment far worse

 

Long life with unquenchable thirst.