aftermathtoo

I am too old to be heartbroken

I should be a young sylph in white drapery, crumpled

One should think of pale mournful eroticism

With splintered heart evident in my fractured swan wings, unnaturally bent

Being old and heartbroken is snot and the tears under the chin

The crying is too self indulgent , I took pictures of myself this time

I should delete them, my puffy face with it’s before surgery look

They don’t remind me of you. Not that I want that, of course. Damn, tripped myself up.  Insert today’s preferred invective here.

I can’t summon up that energetic state of sobbing now

Blinking, biting lip, repeating to myself what I read in your words, the words themselves are dulled now, by repetition, by a shell, above all by not wanting to feel.

You didn’t actually say it made you sick to think of me, not in those exact words, you described how you were not sleeping, and when you did sleep, how you woke sweating and sick with guilt at the thought of meeting me again.

You did not mean that I made you sick but that was all I could see in your words.

We have stopped speaking before, I forget how many times

Actually,  I never counted, I could guess at four, it might be three or five

But, you never told me I made you sick before.  I always thought, the ups and downs are part of us

Always we knew it was not really final, the wire was never snipped, it remained inert between us until something or other made me pick it up again, set off a thrumming and hope that you would feel the reverberation

You never said I made you sick before

Last night I heard a miaou, and I opened the door to nothing

Sometimes, still, the former playmate of my departed cat still sits on the garden bench, but I suspect it is more for the peace and the sunlight and the absence of wind rather than the companionship of Seville's ghost

I wanted to make this time not final, I even pulled my punches when telling you that we would not talk again

I said you were selfish but it was human to prioritise one’s own peace of mind over another’s happiness

I did not comment on the size of your dick

You never said I made you sick before

ragged feral creature that I am, I keep on going back to that vomit pile of grief.

I know

sadly neglected here... been busy with other stuff... but...

sadly neglected my self
(story of my life)
gladly watched others
living a normal life
and wondering
why I don't want it
I have no answer yet
other than being greedy
I want more, of everything
I want you to notice me
I don't want you to think
that you can pick me up again
later
when your life isn't so hectic
but I hate to think
that you will never pick
me up again
and sometimes, like now,
it seems a distinct
possibility.
I know, I should find
a shred of self respect
tell myself, you're not worth it,
you only share the tiniest sliver
of yourself with me
when no-one else is looking
I know.
I watched some people
in that normal life and
because of you
I wondered if their life
was a lie, just like yours.
Like mine, I know.

today

I only spill myself when things are shit
When things were good
I wanted to hug them to me,
smile a secret smile
that wasn't so secret
that told everyone
today
I believe in love
and what's more
I believe in myself.
Today I do not

always after...

After my haircut, I have soft fur at the back of my neck.  I can feel his fingers rustling through it, his thumb caressing the fuzzy hollow at the base of my skull.  I see him tilting my face upwards to his, see my face pale and oval, see the dark fringe point to my underwater green eyes.  I see myself from outside and inside and I look pretty.

It isn't real, he isn't here, but he is talking as if that might happen next week, or maybe the week after, although I know my hair will grow and grow straggly before that is real.  I will look in the mirror and the sheeny chocolate colour from the hairdressers will grow dull, and my eyes will not fade but lose the light of belief in my attractiveness.

He tells me he has to go now, his dinner is burning in his kitchen, their kitchen, and though his mind was only just full of me I fade out to a ghost for him then. He does compartmentalise so, although he is drinking vodka at the family table. 

He will catch me later, he says.  I know not to trust too literally in that, I have fallen here before and he stepped away. With my pretty haircut I will not notice the grazed knees, not until after.

In between days

He wants 

one thing from me

In between times

I hibernate

for all he knows.

He whispers

wicked words

to wake me.

I want the same thing

from him too, but...

I will always lose

as I want more

than one thing.

I want words

I want whispers

I want wickedness

but most of all

I want not to hibernate.

dark chaos

features one of my poems today



click "you/i"  go check it & the site out... 

navel gazing

It's been a weird week... my cyber partner had a crisis of conscience and withdrew leaving me not exactly bereft but with a certain amount of thumb twiddling going on. I think humans (or maybe just female ones) are programmed to seek a narrative, a story, even when picking a fantasy partner, and this particular story has come to a natural and unresentful end.
I was sat down at lunch today and "Next Married Man" sat with me, and got a phone call, he explained to his wife how to move the car seat forward so that she and his daughter could fit the cupboard they bought from IKEA into his company car.
It is now 73 days since I heard from the ex. I try to look forward and not back. 73 days from now will be in a new year and I will still be stuck in the last but one wondering...
I hate that I get like this. Of course it is "natural" to want to find someone to share day to day shit with, although I don't really know what this is like in practice. I sometimes hate that I want excitement, variety so much. I hate that I ditched my solitary principles for the ex and felt I wanted nothing more than to come home to him each night and then after getting his wife pregnant on an overspill of our lust he decided I was irrelevant.
I hate that there is nothing else to do but be me.

Performance & Cocktails

...part 1

Everything was set up perfectly for tonight to be our first night, he'd even been on my wavelength earlier, when a flower seller had come hawking roses by the table, seen my glance at them and correctly interpreted it, laughing that we would have another carafe of the juicy wine instead.

He had put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back through the cobbled pedestrian zone, and I didn't shrug it off although I didn't like the possessive tone it imparted.

Walking back he'd paused us under a streetlight, by the pond and the stone walls of the old city boundary and he'd bent his head across to kiss me and I acquiesced.

I'd thought of the cover of that Stereophonics CD and the bored eyes of the woman being kissed there, and I'd wondered if my eyes were just as bored, and I'd noticed that his eyes were closed, and wondered if he too had needed that to believe that this would go somewhere, or perhaps he knew his eyes would be just as ennui filled.

We'd gone to my flat, not so much caught up in the moment, but moving along inevitably with the slow seep of honey running down a knife blade.

We'd tried not to allow the sense of loss to enter our conscious thoughts but, the chase was over, it would never be the same again



...part 2

My hair still smelt of the burnt meat from the restaurant he'd taken me to; stank not from the innocuous looking grey salted stones, heated to flesh searing temperatures, but from the scents emanating after we had dumped our raw steaks, prawns, chicken breasts upon them. 

Carafe after carafe of house red, pinkly echoing the blooded centres when I'd cut through the meat again.

I guessed that to others in the place, to observers, we looked warm and cozy in the snug by the bar, happily hazed by the smoky fat in the atmosphere as much as the wine.

A pretty, convivial picture and I wished I could feel that we were a pretty convivial couple but if the truth be told, I didn't really like him all that much when I started to contemplate what would happen after the meal.

I was waiting, not because I wanted to be sure it was right, I was pretty sure it wasn't right, or I'd have jumped him at the end of the first date, but he kept paying me attention despite my ambiguous goodbyes.

He kept on casting his attention my way, shovelling it into the aching hole that he didn't even know was there, and I know I am coming to depend on his attendance, his willingness to be with me.



...part 3

In my flat, I guess I did just go along with him coming back here, his willpower for that must have been stronger than my sulky resistance. 

It wasn't that I didn't want to be possessed, but with him it is not the all consuming need to be possessed that I feel; more the sullen recognition that he is the only chance, the only option I have right now. 

I wonder if he too somehow senses the mismatch, and if he does is he just going along with me because it half fits what he wants too?

From the pressure of his hand behind my head when we break mouths apart from some robust to rough kissing, what he wants seems to be my face in his lap, and I don't really want to suck him, to feel a new penis against my lips, have a jet of his semen into my mouth, like white silly string, wormily writhing on my tongue. 

I think I will spit if he makes me do it, but although I don't conciously go through the options, somehow I guess that a gracious enough attempt at sucking him off now will keep me from having to go to final base tonight, I can keep something back in reserve so he will spend time with me again. 

I will gag, and then spit, he will like that, it will make him feel the big man and I will rinse my mouth and my mind out with the next slug of wine.

I'm afraid that I will die spending time with someone I don't like

Yes, I am talking to you.  Look at you, you sprawl there on the sofa.  Sprawl doesn't begin to cover it, you slump, you spill, you slouch.  You are a sibilant sloven.  Your feet up on the furniture, resting on the rubbish, remains of letters, magazines, chocolate wrappers. 

You sag.  You age.

It's not langour, it's way beyond that, it's a life draining laziness beyond comprehension.  Why would anyone choose to live like that?  Why do you choose to live like that?  Oh, you don't choose it?  You just can't be bothered to change it.

Billowing flesh, pale and pasty pink.  Hide it under the throw, pretend it isn't there as you reach for the next packet of crisps, the next gulp of alcohol.

The German word for lazy is "faul" and you know you are.

Sluggish?  That doesn't sound too bad, a slow pulse but basically everything under control.  Slug-like is more like it.  Fat, seeping, sliding through life at the pace of a snail without even the excuse of your house on your shoulders.

No wonder no-one comes around.  No wonder there is no-one who wants to probe your fleshy crevices, touch your pallid swollen skin.  And you know being so fat makes those folds fleshier and deeper, the journey into your cunt a longer route to pleasure, but no-one else wants to know that now.  Hell, most of the time even you don't fucking bother.

Get up off the sofa and go look in the mirror.  Not via the fridge again!  Go see yourself.  Really see yourself, not glance and see the memory of the girl you once were.  She was 20 years ago and is lost to you now.  Look at yourself, see what you really look like.  Nice eyes, yeah, but how many chins?  Your tiny mouth looks even smaller against the expanse of your cheeks, unhealthily flushed. 

Will you do something about it this time?  Will you?  Or will you just wonder absently where the gym card is, or whether your swimming costume would still fit?  And make a half hearted resolution to go into town and buy some newer bigger clothes?

My face in the mirror, I wonder vaguely what it would be like to finish it, to put an end to it, to kill this person that I don't like, even if it means I die with her.  But I know I won't do it, too much effort...





Thanks to SSF for the great writing prompt, click here to see story at SSF

coping...

You have knocked the life out of me,

I shovel dead things into my mouth

but I only taste the fermented stuff.

Honesty looks good on me, but on you?

I didn't need to know how easily

you put me out of your mind.

You made me feel alive and I hate

to think how long ago that was now,

I want to quicken myself but it does not come,

I can not come, it is an exercise in friction and

though the flesh is willing the mind is freaked.

Reject, side dish, bit of fun, reject,

slut, tease, reject; words bicycle in my head.

Dead mould, mushrooms for tea.

Yes, on the side, by the pallid fish flesh.  I will

shrivel up in the non-weight of your disregard.

This time, can I make the silence stick?

Can I pour in enough alcohol to make

me tongue tied and not voluble? 

Bitter exudations, oozing failure, and

in the morning, sweet rancid sweat. 

Success and failure both are counted

by apathy, not talking to you. 

Your life goes on, maybe to her you will

seem a little distracted, maybe? 

Maybe not even that, after all, she didn't

even notice when you went to her,

rubbed raw from our exertions. 

I try another tentative rub, but no,

rejected by my own flesh.  To drink

to sleep; to sleep perchance to weep.

You have knocked the life out of me,

and now half digested dead things

come back out of my mouth.





Also published at The Camel Saloon

next poem-->

spaghetti man

you streak of pasta piss,

virtually useless fucker

without heat, wetness, you are brittle

easily snapped into fragments.

when you are done you cling,

wanting to stick, to stay

inside my convulsing walls.

you are bland, you taste

of nothing.

You fill me up but

it is me that adds flavour.

Today, arrabiata,

tomorrow, you go back 

to your ground up dusty future.

next poem-->

Get off the fence...

You say "The thought of being with you again is fantastic but as you said it wouldn't change how things are in real life. I know that basically states that it would be great to have a one night stand but that isn't what I mean."



You say "In an ideal world I would like to see and be with you in the knowledge that neither of us are pressured afterwards."

 

You say "But I love my wife, and my family."

 

I wait.  You say all this moral crap but you don't believe it, and if I would absolve you upfront of the consequences of any feelings I might have as a result you would risk it like a shot, like a rabbit down a hole, your cock rising as if it feeds on air. 

 

But still, I do wait.

Quiet Loud

Outside there are groans.  They sound weird in a foreign language.  German groans.  Guttural with porn star moustaches.  The upstairs neighbour always wears high heels to clack across their floor and they have no curtains or nets at all and the block is right in the town centre.  I pulled my curtains off by accident  when I was fucking him on the sofa and had to live in the gloom of closed shutters for days until I got my head back together enough to think about nailing them back up.  I'd like to be groaning.  I wonder why when I'm alone I come so quietly and yet with someone I'm loud like I'm putting on a performance.  I assume it's the lady of the house upstairs that wears the heels, not tranny size 10's and hairy calves teetering about.  Even the cats miaou differently here. I'm going to go and be quiet.





oh, by the way, loudQUIETloud trailer here

wtf?

yeah thanks for chatting with me today for a whole nineteen minutes really appreciate the effort; thanks for telling me that you were pissed off with the choices you'd made because now you had to live with your in-laws or in a poky small flat with her and your baby and not even thinking for one fucking microsecond that i might want to hear that some small tiny part of your pissed-offness might be because you missed me in your life in your dreams in your thoughts; thank you for talking about football as if it fucking mattered and thank you for continuing to talk about football as if it fucking mattered even after i told you i couldn't care less; thanks for being so interested when i told you i was pissed off that you didn't even ask why not of course that there was much opportunity to in the nineteen minutes really, not when i was there to provide a witty and pointed and stimulating counterpoint to your fucking everyday life and thanks for appreciating so much that your life would suck without me so much you still want to dump on me even though you would hate to admit that your life would suck without me i have fucking songs in my brain again but it's probably better than my thoughts; thank you Sinead for giving me the lines; thank you for breaking my heart thank you for tearing me apart now I've a strong, strong heart thank you for breaking my heart... thank you for showing me again what a fucking idiot i am to think of better times, to think of you, to think...

For someone

For someone who always said that her own opinion mattered more to her than other people's, she sure spent alot of time seeking affirmation. 

For someone who claimed immunity to charm school chat-up lines she sure ended up on her back with a lot of guys who were all talk.

For someone who could sparkle with life when the mood hit her she made sure she was not in the mood with isolation and alcohol.



She wanted to be for someone.  But nobody knew that.  Not even her.

I lost my voice

I did not speak with anyone yesterday.  I could have picked up the phone and called a friend but I didn't, a delicacy that prevents me intruding on normal people's lives.  People who have lives don't want me bothering them.  I did speak out loud, I said "Miaou, Miaou," and "Get down," to the cat.  He didn't do anything though.  I did e-mail people.  But the ones I wanted to hear from did not e-mail back.  I went onto the social networks but they were as usual full of strangers grasping for your friendship to win points in games.  I got e-mails from them, telling me what they wanted from me, which button to click to give them their virtual rewards.  I got sucked in and asked for non-existent stuff too.  I managed not to talk to any inanimate objects.  I read blogs.  I read books.  I wrote stuff.  Did I talk to my reflection in the mirror?  I don't remember now.  I wrote comments on blogs and people wrote back on a couple of occasions, I could pretend a conversation almost got going.  A conversation did not happen.  Except in my head.  There were several going on there so I lost track of them in the end.

when does the story end?

It was so hard to let go of him I wanted the story to go on I still do I hate to be without a story. 

It was a slow start with him knowing him being acquaintances drinking with him but not sparking until one day the brain and the sense of humour clicked in and that was that then the story started properly, chatting for hours on end and then flying on a plane and racing along the dark motorways to meet up with him for a real date. 

It was real even though we both knew there was only one place it would end up, he wore yellow and oh god I knew it was risky as I was already half in love with him for chatting to me and finding me interesting all that time and I thought the biggest risk was that being with him wouldn't live up to my imagination but it was worse than that as it was so much more and we laughed and his arms cradled me and I felt cherished and spent and cherished again and then of course he went home but that didn't matter so much as we still chatted and chatted and planned the next chapters.

But the expectation monster grew and I wanted more of him and he wanted more of me too but he hadn't left his old life behind he was still living that he was greedy for two stories while I only wanted one but he couldn't always tell which story he was living in and one day he got them confused and took his wife with the passion that was meant for me and then one day after that while we were holed up and hungover in a cheap hotel she called him with the news that wrenched our story off the rails and called him back into her story which she called their story.

I did not want to let him go although I said I only wanted what was best for him but of course I thought that I was the best for him although it turns out that he valued respectability over happiness, over his own happiness for sure but over mine as well but our story continued through more hotels and bedrooms until I finally pestered him as there was nothing new happening in our story pestered him to the point where he had to make a decision and he did make the ending decision but even then our story was not through for all the repeats of the story had to be lived through.

And although I did let him go and there is no new story and you would have to search hard in the multichannel world to see a repeat to spark up that story again it will be dead and quiet while he and his wife bring up their child it will be quiet so quiet and he will have regrets and swallow them down and not turn to me until one day he will turn to me and tell me how bored he is and then I would have to decide how that story goes on as I am a storyteller and I weave many people into my stories.

Anniversary

It's

a

year

today

since

I

last

had

sex

with

the

ex.

Or

at

all.

One

year.

But...

heknowsitwasthistimelastyearbuthehasn'tcontactedmetoday,

IwonderifheremembersasclearlyasIcanhowitfelttobebehindme

myfaceinthepillowashetookmefrombehindifhecanrecallasIdo

howitfeltwhenhethrustnotcarefullythefeelingjustthissideofpain

howIwantedhiminmeovermehowIwanted.

How

I

still

do.

Musing at the Mira spa...

I pay money to have someone touch me.

I live on the periphery and holiday

to the places where other people live.

Their frustrations, mis-matched needs, endless

compromises and irritations grind away

but mostly some human lubricant

keeps things from breaking apart.

Is it that I don't compromise enough? 

Or too much maybe?

Chameleon-like

I can be all things to all people but 

do they just see actress?  

Shutter click on a

devoted and self sacrificing "mistress";

click, lonely career woman;

click, wild temptress;

click, fucking cock hungry woman

from an electronic friend.

Click, click.

Emotional void wanting to be filled. 

No wonder people run.

I lay face down on the bed and

the small Chinese girl moves my legs apart

because I have paid her to.