The Poetry of Sex (9 page)

Thinking we were safe – insanity!

We went in to make love. All the same

Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom

Then in the gloom …

… And who does not know that pair of shutters

With the awkward hook on them

All screeching whispers? Very well then, in the gloom

We set about acquiring one another

Urgently! But on a temporary basis

Only as guests – just guests of one another’s senses.

may i feel said he

(i’ll squeal said she

just once said he)

it’s fun said she

(may i touch said he

how much said she

a lot said he)

why not said she

(let’s go said he

not too far said she

what’s too far said he

where you are said she)

may i stay said he

(which way said she

like this said he

if you kiss said she

may i move said he

is it love said she)

if you’re willing said he

(but you’re killing said she

but it’s life said he

but your wife said she

now said he)

ow said she

(tiptop said he

don’t stop said she

oh no said he)

go slow said she

Wear dark glasses in the rain.

Regard what was unhurt

as though through a bruise.

Guilt. A sick, green tint.

New gloves, money tucked in the palms,

the handshake crackles. Hands

can do many things. Phone.

Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now

you are naked under your clothes all day,

slim with deceit. Only the once

brings you alone to your knees,

miming, more, more, older and sadder,

creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it

on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night

up against a wall, faster. Language

unpeels a lost cry. You’re a bastard.

Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness

in the afternoon; a voice in your ear

telling you how you are wanted,

which way, now. A telltale clock

wiping the hours from its face, your face

on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.

Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back

to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.

Paranoia for lunch; too much

to drink, as a hand on your thigh

tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,

don’t you. Turn on your beautiful eyes

for a stranger who’s dynamite in bed, again

and again; a slow replay in the kitchen

where the slicing of innocent onions

scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep

in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body

stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.

You’re an expert, darling; your flowers

dumb and explicit on nobody’s birthday.

So write the script – illness and debt,

a ring thrown away in a garden

no moon can heal, your own words

commuting to bile in your mouth, terror –

‘My husband’s an odd fish,’ she said.

    A casual remark

And yet it lingered in my head

And later, when we went to bed,

    It woke me in the dark.

My husband’s an odd fish.
I lay

    Uneasy. On the ceiling

Raw lorry lights strobe-lit the grey

Glimmer of dawn. Sleepless dismay

    Revolved upon the feeling

Of something wrong in what I’d heard,

    Some deep, unhappy thing,

Some
odder
fact her statement blurred.

And then a prickling horror stirred

    Within me as the wing

Of madness brushed. I recognized

    The real thing strange to be

Not dorsal structure (fins disguised)

Nor travel habits (route revised:

    A Day Return to sea)

But that he was a fish at all!

    Trembling, I left the bed

Dressed quickly, tiptoed through the hall,

Edged past him, gaping from his stall

    Of oval water, fled

Beautiful lover, still beautiful

because unseen, as far apart

as two incalculable griefs

on either side of a war, cast

the broken parts of yourself

over the bridge that separates us –

no less incomprehensible

than history back into the void

where a limp, or squint, halitosis,

puckered rolls of flesh, a voice

abrupt as a bedspring, can be shed

for this dazzling dive naked

into a fast-as-light vernacular,

cunnilingus of the internet,

fellatio of different parts

of speech – delete, delete, amend –

while the caches of the fluttering ghosts

of our other halves, asleep in bed,

Now they are no longer

any trouble to each other

he can turn things over, get down to that list

of things that never happened, all of the lost

unfinishable business.

For instance … for instance,

how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush

through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

at the fall of her name in close company.

How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,

or made the most of some heavy weather –

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,

or did the gears while the other was driving.

How he never raised his fingertips

to stop the segments of her lips

from breaking the news,

or tasted the fruit

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,

or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird

in her grip. Where it hurt.

Or said the right thing,

or put it in writing.

And never fled the black mile back to his house

before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

then another,

or knew her

favourite colour,

her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,

or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive

of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb

where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,

where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart

in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,

and never once described

an attack of the heart,

or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,

her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,

where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,

or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,

or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,

or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,

or said ‘Don’t ask me how it is

I like you.

I just might do.’

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,

or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball

of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,

and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them –

sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

Must I give up another night

To hear you whinge and whine

About how terribly grim you feel

And what a dreadful swine

You are? You say you’ll never leave

Your wife and children. Fine;

When have I ever asked you to?

I’d settle for a kiss.

Couldn’t you, for an hour or so,

Just leave them out of
this
?

A rare ten minutes off from guilty

Diatribes – what bliss.

Yes, I’m aware you’re sensitive:

A tortured, wounded soul.

I’m after passion, thrills, and fun.

You say fun takes its toll,

So what are we doing here? I fear

We’ve lost our common goal.