X is for … XXXX
THERE’S nothing like a kiss to get the juices flowing.
Ah, that second when lips lock and tongues tour.
How you long for it.
That meeting of mouths … the breath of another melting into yours, what bliss it is.
Your hearts beat as one, tralala. They pound into each other, your breasts squash flat against her chest.
It’s the start of surrender, this kiss, it shows mutual attraction, it’s the kick-off to a climax.
It confirms a fascination.
Of course, it is also the beginning of the end, for all relationships, love affairs, liaisons, they all end in grief – if there is some emotion in the mix.
It’s either a break-up or death. Either way, it’s going to end.
This means a kiss usually heralds heartache — usually but not always.
That thought though is not on your mind, not when you latch onto her lips, as if they were the juiciest plum on the planet.
Nibble nosh suck tease.
Your tongue thinks it’s on a Contiki Expedition it explores so much, so quickly.
Oh, the smell of her, that pulse throbbing in her neck.
Her sighs, the sounds you love, your ears are full of them. You hear nothing else.
Is there a world out there?
Your mouth is on her neck. She throws back her head, murmuring.
Murmuring!
You glance at her face. Thank God, her eyes are closed.
You get serious and fumble with the buttons on her blouse.
Buttons breast, buttons breast.
She leans forward and takes your head in her hands.
Kiss me again, she says. Kiss me.
Oh, how you dive into the quiet words a river on her lips.
A breath of butterflies it floats between you.
Your bodies slam together, the dance of desire
The murmurs, her murmurs, turn into quickstep panting.
Your bodies swim in sweat.
You’ve ripped off each other’s clothes, your nakedness has met.
And yet your lips linger, lust. They work together, music in concert with hers.
This moment, this joyous jive, it is forever. There’s no day outside no night no anything.
At last, the nipple, your hands on a mission to the mound.
Hers, oh where are hers?
They’re in a circle round your neck, your back your everything.
They touch you.
Her hair splayed behind her, her face so tender, it’s so close to yours so touchable so reachable.
Stroke tickle hug.
She can’t let you go. She won’t, she smiles eyes big beads brown you drown in them.
And still you kiss, and kiss again.
It’s moist and warm and intimate.
It’s moist and warm and very intimate.
But you’re not ready. No, not yet.
(ends)
Category: Love
The Traveller by Afrodykie
W is for … WTF
SWEET words sour in the glare of truth. They shrivel and shrink blink and say goodbye.
You’ve learnt some things on your life’s journey, and boundaries are one of them.
You take responsibility for your well-being, and excise the rot, the putrid fetid stink that rattles nearly ruins your temperate world. You wring its pock-marked neck and dump it.
You don’t look back.
For three months you are the efficient and diligent architect of a personal hell, you construct your misery with fortitude.
Yes, you build this house of pain carefully, brick by brick. It’s an edifice a monument to lost emotion.
Sooner or later she will trust me. Sooner or later we’ll fuck. Sooner or later she won’t say nasty things to me. Sooner or later she’ll sink into my arms. Sooner or later, please, sooner or later she’ll be sweet.
You step deeper and deeper into the mire, needy, scared, longing gnaws you.
She throws out morsels, measly scraps to a pandering dog.
You gobble them, hungry for her, you’re starving for affection.
Your heart gapes, gasping. See me, please. Love me.
WTF?
You crumple at the feet of chaos, pathetic you lie prostrate, simpering at the altar of cruel manipulation (it was crass, unflinching). Worse, you speak in a trembling baby voice, and beg!
Don’t go. Wait. I’ll cook. Etc.
Oh, the torment. Oh, the victim, forever pleading, forever waiting, wondering, wanting.
She accuses you of vile behaviour, and trumpets it in town.
Sies! You screw up your face like a concertina. You’re ready to burst into a litany of squeaky sorrow.
My God, is this you.
You parry the shouting, the insults, the lies, the threats.
You grab the straws of dear docile moments.
And then whoosh, she explodes. Again. And again.
WTF?
You draw the coat of denial tightly around you.
Person upon person tells you, beware. Get out of there.
Friends shake their heads. They look at you with puzzlement pity in their eyes.
Your guts it sprawls rancid in a bloody pool of sick.
You nearly drown, flailing desperate to please, to be loved, to belong.
She’s not worth it, a friend says. She doesn’t deserve you, says another.
Do you know what she says about you?
Hope smiles one evening when you talk intimately, sincerely.
We’re fascinated by each other, we say. Warmth dances in our eyes.
And then wack, she gives you the silent treatment.
WTF?
It is the coup de grace.
Overnight, your heart steels.
It purges the pull to be with her, this brittle shell, this duplicitous and dangerous wretch.
No more!
Your scattered bits meld. You see you feel the shape of you.
At last, you are the captain of the ship, the SS Who I Am.
You hoist the sails of succour. You quickly dislodge the anchor the mainstay of woe.
You must, you must sail the sea of tranquillity, the bow speeding to the sunrise.
You must, you must leave the dark of cultish platitudes, their fire fanned by broken wings.
WTF?
Who cares if her hurting hides a gentle thoughtful beauty?
There’s no room for soul pirates not on this boat!
(ends)
The Traveller by Afrodykie
U is for … Unusual
EVERYTHING you are not used to is unusual.
It may be usual for someone else though, so technically, nothing is unusual.
It’s only your experience that makes something usual or unusual; your seeing, and being.
But this isn’t a philosophy lesson.
And you don’t want to think too much on a Wednesday morning in Eressos, Greece.
You prefer to imagine the summer’s silver growth on the olive trees, sleek leaves on thin branches, they bend and bob whip the sky. They bow to kiss – and miss — the stony earth.
The olives cling to them, they hold on to get fatter.
The figs too, they are swelling, bubbles of green fruit burgeoning; and your pear tree, the pears are robust in their ripening. They’re starting to blush so keen are they for a ravenous devouring; their curves voluptuous.
Oh that pear tree. That’s where you should’ve met her lips with yours.
The air bristled with potential and your heart raced.
But you had lead in your shoes, and courage sank into your soles.
She looked the other way, and drew her dogs about her.
Oh, how the crows cawed, raucous in their mocking, the doves dipped dangerous from the blue.
They laughed — what a fool are you hoo hoo.
The gravel’s stones crunched and footsteps kicked up dust, cloudy grit spiralled.
It stuck to your thick ankles, to your socks smothering your sweaty feet.
She sighed.
The sheep looked at you sideways.
They carried on chewing.
What did they know about desire, the future’s pyre burning bright, scalding.
What could they say about Attraction, that unruly tyke, the teasing scamp who makes a rogue of lust?
The rascal taunts you terrible. The night, the day – ardour coats your skin, your everything.
You’ve learnt a lot in these three months, a lot about yourself.
It’s not been easy, this learning, alone on a Greek island.
These lessons, a brutal and unyielding teacher, they’ve forced you.
They’ve called you to respond, no blanket of excuses could shield their chilling rout.
They’ve left you bare in the startling glare of clarity.
A focus so intense it lights a path. It dazzles you draws you.
It holds you close.
Your heart skips, joyous.
Pure essence illuminates your nakedness as you dance to the song of a dream.
(ends)
The Traveller by Afrodykie
R is for … Rock
SKALA Eressos, besos – calientes!
Hot kisses, yes, if you know where to find them.
No, silly, not under a rock … that’s not what this R is about.
Ok, this R is for … did you say, um … Rock?
More specifically, the Skala Women’s Rock Group at Little Buddha, as it’s named on Facebook.
It’s fun swimming with the wimmin at the harbour end of the beach, a Blue Flag beach, mind you.
Miss F and Miss T are there every single morning of the glorious summer, and part of spring and autumn too.
They get their little ducks ready steady go all in a row, and it’s splish splash to The Rock, a tiny island 314 metres off shore.
If it’s 10am, it must be swim time.
The daily dip is as much part of Skala’s lesbian culture as the appropriation of Sappho’s sexuality, and the tourism industry that has grown around it.
Yes, Sappho, the lyric poet — Plato named her the Tenth Muse, bless him —she was born in Eressos.
She died here too, but of course nobody knows if she swam to the rock.
Could she swim, with that stylus poised in front of her lip, and a writing tablet glued to her left hand?
She’d have been hamstrung, that’s for sure.
You can’t imagine her emulating the strapping lass who sliced through the sea in 4mins 10 and, on reaching The Rock, turned round to see hapless heads and arms bobbing in her wake.
Generally though, The Swim to The Rock is a social swim.
Miss F told you last year, as she paddled along next to a gasping and unfit you, that she and Miss T started The Swim to add to the spectrum of activities for the women in Skala.
Her swimming cap was turned up at the ears.
It is a chance to exercise, she said, have fun and to do something that doesn’t result in a hangover, a babalas as we say in RSA.
When you’re a first timer, and you’ve finished your swim, Miss T will line you up with the other swim virgins, and someone – everyone, goddamit, it’s the digital age – everyone will take a photograph.
You’re standing there dripping and Miss T lowers a medal over your wet head.
You bow to accept the Sappho Siren Award for Excellent Swimming, a laminated square of paper hanging on a piece of cotton.
There’s that picture of Sappho on it.
You got yours during the Sappho International Women’s Festival in September last year, and you don’t know if every new Rock Star gets one.
But you do recall the words of Miss F during your first swim.
When’s it going to end, you panted, treading water and catching your breath.
She smiled, and uttered words as sweet as a kiss: “As we say, this swim isn’t a race … it’s all about the journey we take, together.”
(ends)
The Traveller by Afrodykie
The Traveller by Afrodykie
N is for … Nice
IT’S for nipples too, those twin towers of titillation, the edifices of the erotic.
They give a point to a breast and remind you of a story from the 80s.
There you were having an affair with a married woman who’d recently given birth.
She had a nice bed, one of those four poster things, and lived in a house with big sash windows and creaking wooden floors.
The passage was a long one, thank God.
And the front door at the one end of it was a monster, huge.
In its swathes of wood there was a lock.
It needed a six-inch key to be jiggled around in it, before it would open.
For this you are eternally grateful.
She made sure it was securely shut, and unbuttoned her blouse.
She winked at you, and giggled.
Her husband was at work. The baby was gurgling dreams in his cot.
We looked at each other, but not for too long.
Clothes flew, like popcorn jumping from a pot.
It was a great opportunity for some rumpy-pumpy, yes it was, on the ample marital mattress.
The baby didn’t budge but boy, did we sweat the fuck fandango.
Her breasts were sensitive, all that feeding.
No chance to tweak them, or to roll them between your fingers.
Nipping and nibbling? NO!
Suck them, she gasped, and stroked you hair.
Her hands anchored your head and your lips, your murmuring mouth, it clasped her teats, again and again.
It was sublime, that mother’s milk. Tasty, sweet.
You nearly said mama but a key rattled in the door.
Hubby!
You jumped out of bed and grabbed your clothes. The milk ran down your chin.
Your underwear hung from your hand.
You reached for the window and it went whoosh — just as the door banged open onto the wall.
You tiptoed, a love thief, down the side of the house, outside.
Your heart raced as you clambered over the garden fence and scoured the pavements for a witness.
Drat.
You hadn’t said goodbye.
So what?
Hubby liked to work a lot!
(ends)
The Traveller by Afrodykie
M is for … mmmmmm
THERE is a lot that makes you go mmmmmm.
You can’t help it.
Blue night moon rise, stars shadow brown eyes.
Pink slinks across the sky. Ah.
There’s oily water, with people in it, splashing or floating about.
The round ripples grow, bob, fade.
The life of ripples is short. Even in the Kalloni Gulf.
They sink without a sound, embrace deep eternity; they melt into the warm depths then disappear.
Forever.
You’d never know they’d lived, if you hadn’t seen them.
She orders for you, in Greek.
What’s going on?
It’s those things you like, she says.
Come.
You limp across the wet tiles to choose your fish.
Your toe hurts, the big one on the left foot.
A brick smashed into it – a huge brick — from a dizzy height. It split the skin, and bruised or broke the bone.
You don’t know.
The music is loud. Some men are swirling around broken plates, bending forward.
Their arms wave in their air behind them.
Octopus arms it seems, floating in a sea of culture.
Some lovers, in the distance, they face each other.
Their big stomachs touch as they stand, feet secured in the sand.
You can hear their hearts aflutter, you feel their lips burst with promise.
Gosh, there’s the arrow of desire aiming for a kiss.
The meal is tasty and plentiful, shared.
The fresh oysters (that’s what you like, she knows) they wince when you squirt lemon juice on them.
Little oysters in scallop shells, the shells you collect.
You want to put them on the wooden window frames you two found at the stinky rubbish bins, beautiful in the sunset of a Sunday.
She encourages you to be creative.
And you like that.
Today your toe is sore, and you feel tired.
You want to lie down.
The cleaner must come so you can rest on your pillow and know.
Love can last forever in a memory.
(ends)
The Traveller by Afrodykie
L is for … Love
THE songs make you feel as if you could fall at her feet, hug her legs and put your face in her … her knees.
Why you thought of knees, heaven knows…
Maybe because its hands knees then the boompsie daisy!
Never mind.
Here is a compendium of some of your work about love.
POEMS, HAIKUS and LETTER by RMD
Look up at the tree
Its branches full of leaves
Do you think it worries
It’s bending in the breeze
It’s succoured in the centre
Where truth will rest its head
It’s best, it says, to blow about
Than to live sore, half dead
It doesn’t strive for reason
It has no dread to trounce
The tree breathes its mysteries
Subtle and sure, its glories mount
Its heart it does not flounder
In the eye of wicked storm
It’s succoured in the centre
Where true true love is born
(ends)
I THINK I LOVE YOU
Wretched heart
Replays moments
Magic
Tender torn
Splintered
Tears flood wounds
Gaping wounds
Monstrosities
Puke pain
Miserable
Sickly sorrows
Claw me cry
My heart
A desert
Bleak and baleful
Stinging sands
Lash
Bury
Please Bury
My doleful, my dreadful aching desire
(ends)
LOVE GONE
Maelstrom madness
Sadness
Sinks sweet heart
Love shaken
Mistaken
Depth for Chains
Wings clipped frightened bird
Soars sinks
Broken dreams
Nightmare
Nothing where you once were
(ends)
A LOVE LETTER
I’m thinking that love is not about absolutes eg: we are made for each other.
It’s about nuance.
And if it were about absolutes marriage would be a thing that lasts forever.
And that’s where I think a lot of marriages go wrong: absolutely.
Nuance allows for growth, reaching out, drawing back.
It’s elegant, and sound.
It’s confident. Warm. Loving.
It’s mature. It ripens. Love ripens, darling, slowly.
Yes, I submit without guarantees, to the sound in my heart.
I believe in love, for love’s sake, a beautiful burgeoning.
I hold it close to me, treasure it; this little thing.
It draws my gentless, weeping, terrified as it manifests, a glorious brave love; all-encompassing.
A deep deep love stirs within.
You don’t want to lose your heart in vain. You don’t want to lose your heart to pain.
And nor do I, my darling. We do it to gain.
(ends)
HAIKU 2
Jet black eyebrows burn
Streams of sunlight on your neck
Your red lips smoulder
(ends)
HAIKU 4
It runs away, fast
Love on its wobbly last legs
It musn’t look back
(ends)
BEACH POEM, SKALA ERESSOS, 2014
Sea sore
Silk soft soft
Touch me
Touch tender touch
Me
Your lips hint
of jasmine stars
and mint
fresh mint
dances on your tongue
(ends)
LITTLE SPOT FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE STAR, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
UNREQUITED love… Before you all start sobbing into your handkerchiefs, and dabbing your tear-puffed eyes with the pointed edge of your sodden hanky, let me tell you this:
Some people estimate that 98 percent of living human beings have had the devilish door of unrequited love slammed in their sunshine faces.
This means you too are likely to have experienced the frustration of an unreciprocated passion.
You know what it’s like to live with those pesky feelings, those relentless upstarts Churn and Yearn. The little tykes, they bounce like popcorn in a hot pot, ready to blast off your lid of resolve; shatter your rational will to forget, to get over it.
No matter what you do, Churn and Yearn, they smirk their rude grins.
They elicit grief, the tyrants!
But Mother Time’s not taking any nonsense from those brats.
She’s there, the great healer, ready to slap them down.
Try telling that to Heathcliff and Catherine though, in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
This magnificent novel of unrequited love joins many other books, songs, poems and operas in its eloquent elucidation of the pain and torment of a clamped heart.
Of course, unrequited love is also something to be lampooned, because it’s so maddeningly universal and ubiquitous, the cruel joker in this pack called Life.
Happily, I am not alone.
(ends)
afrodykie 