Sleeping Alone

I sleep in a desert, empty and expansive,

lying awake I cannot help but relive

those times when on a regular basis

you would transform my sands into an oasis.

Lush green forests would grow

and I would bask in your golden glow

unaware that as quick as the flick of a butterfly wing

your love would become a short, sharp sting.

I tear my heart as I sleep alone

in a bed as cold as stone

tightly bound in an icy cover

while you feel the primal heat of a lover.

But your warmth never stayed with me long

and you failed to make me strong

so I seek out flames in other places,

in more deserving embraces.

Awards Season!

Three wonderful bloggers have recently nominated me for awards so I would like to extend my boundless gratitude them and pass the awards on. As someone who tries to evade rules where possible 😉 I’m doing it in bulk!

The awards are ‘The 7×7 Link Award’ from the talented and generous Querida at intotheindigo, the ‘Liebster Blog Award’ from Moonshine, and the ‘Versatile Blogger Award’ from Steph at lostupabove.

The rules for the 7×7 link award: 

Rule 1: Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you. – I was given the nickname Lone Wolf by an ex.

Rule 2: Link to one of your posts that you personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, and Most Pride-Worthy Piece.

Rule 3: Pass this award on to seven other bloggers. Kate Quinn, Barefoot Baroness, Moonshine,  The Writer Nubbin, Shaun Milne, Calm Carl and  I Have a Voice

The rules for the Liebster Blog Award:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top five picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog. Lost up above, A Writing Writer, Caddo, Eve Redwater and Clown Ponders
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Hope that the people you’ve sent the award to forward it to their five favourite bloggers and keep it going!

The rules for the Versatile Blogger Award: 

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers. -I’ll go with 5 after this marathon! Cloud Borne, Into the Indigo, Cat Forsely, Kathryn Martins and Marco Freschi at Original Poetry
2. Inform the bloggers of their nomination.
3. Share 7 random things about yourself.- I have a bordering-on-unhealthy addiction to yoghurt; I meditate; I am attempting to learn Spanish; Putting my first poem on the Internet was scary; I am enchanted by maps; I am the youngest of my siblings; I kill every plant I attempt to nurture.
4. Thank the blogger who nominated you.
5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award pic on your blog.- I seem unable to do this! Apologies for my technical incapabilities!

Thanks again for the nominations, may the positive vibrations carry forward!

Lone Wolf

Hunger

I hunger for a sweet glimpse of you,

a primitive desire to consume you.

To take you, selfishly, ravenously.

I crave your touch, gentle fingertips

on my arched back, hands tangled

in my hair, lips seeking out every

crevice. Every hidden secret nook.

I yearn to hear your breathless words,

oozing honey into my ears, clogging

up my brain so I hear nothing but

your sugary hum.

I hunger for you but I know I will never,

not ever be sated.

A Thing of Beauty

I first saw you bound up like a miniature mummy

basking under the gaze of your mother, your eyes

screwed shut, lips slightly pursed.

Your ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes

softly kneading the air, dreaming.

I was an outsider here, not part of the holy trinity,

a family formed from nine nurturing months.

It shocked me, that burning look from parent to child,

a look of tender love and fierce, savage protection.

Is this how my mother looked at me? Still looks at me?

As a thing of beauty even with the scars of mistakes,

the flaws and blemishes of a life truly lived.

Anchor

You called me your anchor once.

Stable, secure, unchanging.

I kept you grounded, kept your

head out of those wicked clouds.

But I sensed a tug, saw the

thick rope between us fraying,

actions defying your words.

You see, you Ulysses, not

all ships can be so anchored,

moored up in a tranquil port.

Harboured desires, unwhispered

dreams don’t vanish, they fester.

They rot, rot, rot foundations.

Reluctant, I smashed Champagne

on your hull and nudged you out

to your unknown horizon.

Alone on the water’s edge,

gazing at a frayed rope’s end.

Tess

A Pure Woman, cheated and left. Faithful

to her core. Her chaste promise corrupted.

Rosy of cheek, pure of skin, lips blossomed,

Wessex Eve sent like a lamb to her fate

by kin who professed tender love for her.

Gentle Tess, soft cheeks, rough labouring hands,

her Angel was but a flawed guardian

and failed to protect his loyal lone flock.

Only in Sorrow did Tess find her truth,

a doomed boy in a marmalade coffin.

A rural girl, dairy maid abandoned,

discarded at that lonely Flintcomb-Ash.

A pure woman sullied, cream turned crimson,

forsaken, innocence was her downfall.

Sweet Tess, alone on a cool stone altar.

Exile

This exile of my own devising

keeps me submerged.

If I do not say what I know to be true

then maybe it need not be true.

I have become wickedly talented at deceiving myself.

The fear of change, of transforming

into a monstrosity in the eyes of others

silences me.

But this tight web I have knitted around me

is unravelling. I can feel those sinister spiders

creeping away. Seeking more reliable darkness.

My approaching nudity terrifies me.

But not nearly so much as suffocating myself

in that exile of my own devising. So,

I shall shake these cobwebs away.

Closure

Say it. Say it so it’s imprinted on the air

between us and isn’t just a question

deep in my entrails.

Tell me you don’t love me

so my heart can be released,

free to fly.

This absence of words between us

ties me to you.

Just in case.

Just in case this isn’t all in my head.

Skies

I often think of that time between May and June,

that time between me and you.

When you made me my very best

and I made myself my very worst.

You clouded my judgment, drew torpid storms

over my once sound logic.

I made a soggy blanket out of your hurricanes

and let you fuck me up.

But I chose the blue skies, after a while.

They are empty but expansive

and I can stretch.

And I do not forget. I cannot forget.

Case Studies

I search for love in this crooked world,

but find it wanting.

Those movies are no help to me with their

profanities of love, those false sentiments.

Cheekbones clashing falsely on cheekbones.

I try the radio but saccharine words are an

insult to the storm in my belly.

Sweet nothings are at least not misleading,

racking my feelings to a precise zero.

Love takes offense at schoolgirl proclamations,

the girl who cried Juliet one too many times.

Love takes offence when you deny its

almighty surge, its electro-shocking forcefield.

Love dares you to notice, to confront

the colossal beast looming at your door.

Love dares you to be the hero of your tale,

to script your own mythical destiny.

The perfumed roses and ribboned chocolates

I find when I search for love are wanting.

Their lessons are case studies in lies,

case studies in false promises and deception.

But when I look inside, when I look at you,

I know when the word ‘love’ is true.