Aching to be clothed
in warm flesh again,
feeling it tight and smooth
against muscle and bone.
Hating this cold nakedness,
exposed to the core.
Waiting beyond time
for another skin to slide across
this osseous frame,
liquid, soft and trembling,
smelling of sun,
a fitting sensuality
once so tenderly touched
by a lover’s hands.
It is desires such as these
that binds a spirit
to this physical plane
of sweat and body,
this glistening intimacy.
Under the chill September sun
I deadhead the hydrangeas
and geraniums with shining
secateurs.
The withered blossoms fall
into my hand
and soon enough the foliage
will follow, dropping,
brown and wrinkled
onto the palm of earth,
and the garden will become
a murmuration of skeletons
waiting for new growth
to golden on their surfaces.
It is not so easy to face
this bone racked spirit in my night.
Its rattling visage is not pretty
and its pleading cries
come howling through my dreams.
I peer beneath desires
it breathes,
beneath its mask of dying,
into an endless nightmare
of longing,
reaching to be whole again,
refusing to accept
the flaying of time,
the peeling away
of the surfaces of care,
layer by layer
until there is nowhere else to go
except the beauty of the armature
flying free, released.
And you, my haunting,
whipping my heart
with cold filaments of silence.
It hurts, but you are freed now
and covered
by the bleeding veils of love.
mixed media painting and poem by clinock
art rat cafe 