When we make love
(i)
When we make love
our bodies fly out of themselves
through the open window,
land in the tubs and shrubbery
and, brushing themselves of earth,
hurtle upwards, graze the pale
palings, and pounce like mouths
on the fat strand of liqourice
which passes for road, bounce
in a bundle, up and also over
the dark, sparking chimneys,
land draggled in the vegetable
matter of allotments, hot,
and roll like a tongue of tar
down the old railroad deserted
and stripped of its sleepers,
ricochet through rubble, glass,
the screech of playground swings,
all the dogs unleashed, barking
mad as a midnight beneath a
melony moon, and gather in
bulbous impossible bubbles and suds
to crowd the sky with fire,
burn, they burn, and they never return.
*
(ii)
When we make love
our bodies untether themselves
by folding the half-light
into harlequin diamonds, and leave it
draped in a trellis of shadows
across the soft shift of sheet,
and scald and blanch the shapes
we make of ourself, by heating
the air into steam, shake each other
as if we were dancing scarves
that might turn into swirls
of sparkle, gasping for darkened shoulders
across which to be flung,
ripple the room into gossip, and drop
every pretence, the syllables daft
and crazy, words only sequins
which twinkle on the lingering
twist of our tongues, scandals breaking
by the minute, sighs, fresh, so hot
from the press that their whispers
shimmy, skiff the skin's surface, kisses
uncaulked for the slow moment
when the sky is a wild wish,
weep, they weep, and they circle like sleep.
*
(iii)
When we make love
our bodies throw off their dreaming
and dink like fish into rivers
where wherries nudge each other above them,
far, hearing only the deafened tremors
of stray lights surfing the currents
before dawn, skip arcs of the dark
to play the fugitive, to shoot like spooks
through a closing iris, ruffle the water's
feathers, open the waiting ocean
for its saltbreath, its chorus of brine,
and rustle each other like gauze
when the lisp of shallows is heard
to humour the moon, crescent,
clouds rising shyly beside it, and
spirit their way through the rushes
in the swim, in the swim of its
whimsy, shuddering under the long boom
until lost in the rip, diving always
into the sweet scent of harbours,
search the wedges of cliff, breathe in
the blown white smoke of the spray
while the sky is scattering petals,
wait, they wait, and the sea is in spate.
*
(iv)
When we make love
our bodies are pure convolvulus,
the wax of candles releasing
wreaths of smoke around our throats
until our voices thread themselves
like rosary fingers counting hours,
they relinquish their cries
like dark angels loosening light
from their satin shawls
over a stolen moment, out on the
fringe of existence, their ankles
dusted by quick iridescence,
wind themselves into each other
until they are one whirl only,
a vanishing pattern of spirals
climbing like bines, their limbs
are transparent as distant air
on a cusp of horizon, the hills
locked in a tussle of sleep,
are visible only as the first
and final haze of the day,
as pale as nothing, paler perhaps,
but glazing the sky, changing it,
leave, they leave, and the seas do not grieve.
*
(v)
When we make love
our bodies open like wide, wide eyes
on a landscape of longing, they play
rascal, hopscotch, or a half-remembered
hornpipe, and fetch themselves mirrors
to glimpse a delirium, medleys of song which
quilters have stitched into maps,
startle flights of flirting birds
skywards, until flusters of cloud
swallow their wings with a gasp,
and whoop up horizons, lope and dodge
hills and rivers on whim, and they wheel
over fields of molten glass, green,
in whose rumpled mirrors they watch
their havoc of image, like splash-happy
tears in a scrimmage of laughter,
pausing mid-air, in the catch of a drift,
to blend themselves into the current,
like smoke into sunlight, and they touch,
far above the land, its parallelograms
of passion, a scatter of angles,
hurtle the hedges, the criss of their kisses
from the height of the sky, its breeze
fast, fast, till their shadows are cast.
*
(vi)
When we make love
our bodies do not lie upon the lip
of the light fantastic, but live
in the here and then and there of the real,
where you can sever an echo
with the silverback of a syllable,
and they shiver like cymbals
brushed by the sun, where the smatter
of our mouths on each other's
lids and lashes is a painless tinnitus
in which nothing flickers except
the ticking of our hearts, and rippling
across our skin, unflinching, there comes
the skeeter of pleasure's panic,
they play an uneven polka, and they tease
out the threads of every second
until our faces are resting castanets
almost oblivious of the rioting
orchestra in our thighs, the quiet
hammer of our hands while the
anvils within us are thudding gently,
juddering till their fireflies, embers,
startle the sun from sleep, and
wake, they wake, and their tides roll, and they break.