Layer on these scars
Let them tease
marinate the place
Where
Desires thirst,
pretentiously peeved pertaining to protests of past prices paid
Eternity will ask,
Presently, present tenses provide proverbs laden with resignation
Arousal – cum –denial
Validation – cum- condemned
His own, its truth
Strokes, three

He was first to show her
Last to leave
Learning alternatives
Fantasies formed from faded foliage of
yearnings for innocence never granted
Uncorked, un-forgiven and unsure
Return to place, find nothing at all
Still nothing.
Strokes, six

Cradle me this, cradle her in
Childhood snatched like a door unhinged
Porous houses
Leaky philosophies
Drooling halfness upon wholeness hoping for
Anything
Uncertain, aged
Knowing only to return.
And again
Strokes, nine

Faulty faucets echoing notes of lonely
Shadows that never left
Dreams that never should
Cradle her smile, her uncertain eyes
Cradle him in – bent over
Broken
Never fixed, never known
Uninspired, unexplored
Unformed,
Frozen. Steady. Self
This pain that wills not to go away
This willing participant
Strokes, twelve

She smiles
Transferred pain becomes her –
face
Known of this and given to that
Touching
nerve endings lodged between silent places
Smiling, needing that
Not minding this
Flagellation bearing gifts unknown of family
Rippling over ridges rising and falling with memory
Aware of self, she gives self, selfishly breathing in…
Strokes, fifteen

One short of her birth years
Seven short of when it first began
Confessions made do not retain this
Breathe it in, for
Still hearts lend nothing to truth
Arise, cleanse,
Pleasure, repent
Return, kneel
Strokes, fifteen.

He will return on
the morn of another calling
Cradle him in, cradle me here…
He will come…
And again.
Strokes, fifteen
Sated.

They will pay,
All of them,
In purgatory
presently presented in parcels of painful pasts
For broken, for breaking, for lost
All of them
Strokes, fifteen.
Strokes, fifteen.
Strokes, fifteen.
Sated.

__

Written 8th May, 2015. First lines that came: “cradle me this, cradle her him”…changed later to what’s in the poem. Still exploring this. Written in 30 minutes…do I need more time on this?