Wild bird

 

Her hand fluttered

to her throat

like a wild bird.

He captured it

in the safe cage

of his fingers.

He gazed

into her eyes

and stilled

her fears.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Pascal Chove

 

Skipped

 

When I first saw you

my heart skipped

beat after beat

like a stone

skimming

exultant

across a lake.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Not brand new but true

Photograph found on the internet without provenance. If this is yours please advise and I will credit or remove.

 

 

You think I am romantic

 

You think I am romantic.

You read my words and you read ‘love’ into them.

But I hardly ever use the word.

It is too big and too small. Too specific and too universal.

It has been idolised, eulogised, exalted, celebrated, hymned and acclaimed.

It has been hijacked, railroaded, politicised, kidnapped, blackmailed, broken, ruined and whored.

It has been given and taken, lost and found, borrowed and stolen.

It has been used as a reason for everything, an answer for everything, an excuse for everything.

It has been devalued by so many wanting it, by so many selling it.

So I hardly ever use the word ‘love’.

I write of lust, desire, longing, and yearning. Of sensuality, sex and eroticism. Of arousal and excitement. Of seduction and initiation. Of pleasure and pain. Of Domination and submission. Of attraction and infatuation. Of caring. Of nurture. Of adoration. And yes, of romance too.

Because I know exactly what those words mean.

And if I ever write of love – and I sometimes do

I make sure I know exactly

what

and who

I mean.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by William Oxer

 

 

 

Something for her

She wishes he would write something for her.

A fantasy of endless, velvet, star-filled skies.

Of a wild, round, luminous moon hanging like a silver lantern. Of a warm, perfumed breeze stroking her hair and tugging gently at her dress.

Of the distant strains of a yearning, lone violin fading and rising through the whispering trees.

Of his hands releasing the pale silk gown from her eloquent shoulders, and it running off her naked body like a caress and falling with a sigh at her feet.

Of her perfect, dangerous, wondrous curves laid out by him on a cool, crisp white linen sheet. Of her arms and legs stretched wide. Of his tongue, his lips, his fingers over every inch of her tingling skin, upon her sensual mouth, her exquisite breasts, and her urgent, swollen, fragrant sex.

Of him filling her with pleasure, with joy, and with himself.

In every way.

.

She wishes he would write something for her.

He just has.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Fabian Perez

I wrote and posted this six years ago, and a few times since. Definitely the Romantic side of RD. I am rather fond of it. I hope regular readers do not mind the repeat

 

In my youth

A girl like you.

In my youth I would have fought other boys for the right to walk you home. Wearing the scars like a badge. Or I would have wandered backwards and forwards past your house, hoping to catch a glimpse of you at a window. Or long for you to see me, a shadowy figure beneath the street light, and think me romantic.

In my youth I would have carved presumptuous initials into innocent trees, into battered park benches, into tables, and desks, and the backs of chairs – not caring if I was caught. Or that you would disapprove if you knew.

In my youth I would have sought you out at dances, making a mess of my over-rehearsed lines. I would have asked a friend to give you messages – which you would probably receive with a frown.

In my youth I would have made up a hundred heroic stories in my head where I come to your rescue. Saving you from the clutches of the mob, the grip of an assailant, the jaws of death. Or perhaps just finding your lost dog.

In my youth I would have written you tortured poems, toiled over for hours, scrawled on stolen paper, that would never leave the pocket of my faded denim jeans.

In my youth I would have wished for the internet, if I could have seen into the future.

Yet here I am. Connection at my fingertips. Posting pointless poetry.

That you will probably never read

A girl like you.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Written four years ago, and I am still posting pointless poetry.

Art by Annick Bouvattier

 

Odds

 

Sometimes

this feels like

sending a message

in a bottle

hoping it will find

your sea

your shore

your hands

your eyes

your heart

your soul

yet knowing

the odds against

it reaching you

are infinite.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Not new. Sighs. The improbability of messages in bottles.

Art by Sarah Fecteau

 

Thursday’s Child

 

Thursday’s Child

.

Well, I hear that you have been travelling

with a friend in an open-topped car,

and you revealed to him all your secrets

and you showed him your operation scar.

You painted his name on your mirror

with a lipstick glossy and red,

and you posed for imaginary photos

in the warm nest of your unmade bed..

.

He sent you a handful of spidery poems

that you captured with pins on your wall,

I read them when you were sleeping

and they seemed to make no sense at all.

Yet you recite them when you are bathing,

trailing your sharp nails over your thighs,

and you emerge mysterious and glowing

with a wild, vacant look in your eyes.

.

There is more to this than just attraction

or some strange late night trick of the light,

and you shouldn’t be reading his memoirs

in a dress that is so transparent and white.

And I fear that you’ve sensed a religion

in the casual, brave cut of his coat,

as you kneel so sublime at his alter

clasping tight all the letters he wrote.

.

Now I hear you’ve constructed a bonfire

from the things your sweet mother knew best,

and that you comfort his wide-eyed supporters

who sleep with their hands on your breasts.

But you never once give them the shelter

they crave when the light has grown dim,

and while you suffer the press of their bodies

you save all your mystery for him.

.

I miss you when the round moon is sailing,

I feel your caress in the turn of the tide.

it is as constant as the ache in my shoulders,

It is the sharp stabbing pain of your knife.

And oh, how I hunger for you to be near me,

your peeled clothes like a sea at your feet,

your pale skin tasting of salt and seaweed.

I’m a slave to your scent and your heat.

.

But if I plead with him to release you,

with just a snap of his finger and thumb

will you forget his smooth benediction,

or the velvet magic of his silver tongue?

.

.

I apologise to regular readers who have read this often – but it has been a year since the last posting. This is one of favourite my ‘performance’ poems. In fact it might even be one of the poems I am most proud of having written. And it was written many years ago. It started out as a song but I struggled to develop a chorus.  As I said, It has appeared in many places. I have posted it a number of times here before when this blog was even less popular than it is now.  It tells a story that was inspired by (my) real life events.  Because it is penned in the first person, the reader/listener tends to think that the narrator is writing about himself. Actually I was the writer of the ‘handful of spidery poems’.  

Do listen to the audio – it was a poem that is meant to be read aloud.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Photography by Ines Rehberg.   Model is Megan Szczypka. I chose this photo because she is not unlike the female subject of the poem

 

Candle burning

 

A match flares.

A hiss. A spark.

A candle flickers

The darkness is softened

I cup the light in my hands. The flame is like a tiny dancer. She bends and quivers in the cold wind. She twists and shivers and stoops low. She recoils from the snow. She flinches from the storm. She almost dies as the demons of the night blow hard and cruel. Without mercy.

Yet I protect her, defend her, nurture her, shield her.

I guard her, shelter her, screen her, secure her.

I hold her close to my chest, near to my heart. I whisper my own private prayers to her. I carry her home. I find her a safe haven away from harm.

I place her in the window so you can see her dancing.

A candle is burning.

She is burning for you.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

From five years ago. But there is sometimes a candle burning.

Art originally © Ameyama

 

Next Best Thing

 

It was perpetual summer, richly fragrant with potent mary jane and pungent patchouli.

I was sixteen.

She was two years older – so far out of my league that she should never have even noticed me.  And yet somehow I was there, amazed at my good fortune, hopelessly in love with her, and in complete awe of her friends. They were ultra-hip, achingly cool and comfortably rich.

Whereas I owned the Levi’s I stood up in, a couple of faded shirts, a borrowed guitar, and my notebook of spidery poems.

There was a gentle candle-lit dinner party in one of daddy’s spare houses.  The room was beamed and flagged and full of style and music. I was a pretty boy – an amusing novelty to wear like a trinket on her arm.  Although I never realised that at the time.

The conversation turned to views of what a perfect partner might be.  She waxed lyrical about what would excite her.  Intelligence, a sense of humour, a slim, slender physique, a writer, a revolutionary, a mass of golden curls, eyes that could both command and romance.  I swear she was looking at me. I thought she was talking about me.  I was young, proud and special.  I had smoked perhaps a little too much dope.

‘Thank you.’ I said, when she had finished.

There was a moment of stunned silence before the table erupted with mocking laughter.  She reached across and patted my hand.

‘Oh, darling boy.  Did you think I meant you?’

I lowered my eyes, blushing fiercely, almost tearful at my own stupidity.

‘Don’t worry,’ she consoled me. ‘you are the next best thing.’  There was more laughter.

It was an instructive and humbling moment that I promised myself I would never forget.

It still lives on, all these years later, in my e-mail address:

nextthing@_________

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

I first posted this in 2012 writing about a memory of my teens that never faded. I suspect we have all had moments like these in our formative years

Photograph by Matt Eaton

 

… even the wolf

 

In this season of fairytale and legend, he paints himself as almost a hero.

He imagines himself snatching the poisoned apple from the rose-red lips of the raven-haired princess with the snow-white skin and replacing it with an urgent kiss from his own hungry mouth.

He dreams of braving the vicious thorns of imprisoning briar to lift the unmoving but gorgeous living body of the sleeping beauty from out of her silent coffin.  To carry her to some safe and secret place and wake her with the heat of his breath upon her barely-pulsing, newly-naked throat.

He sees himself placing the glass shoe on the delicate foot of the young. innocent, badly treated servant girl and claiming her wide-eyed perfection, pulchritude, purity and submission for always.

Yet the girl he really wants – the angel in the red hooded cloak –  knows him as the dangerous creature of which her mother has warned.  He is the restless stranger with poetry in his notebook, desire in his heart, and a world of darkness in his soul.

It is true that his teeth and claws can be sharp and he has such a decadent yet eloquent hunger.

But now, in these fading days and threadbare nights, even the wolf yearns only to be loved.

.

.

© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Ryan Pancoast

It has now become a tradition for me to re-post this on Halloween. It does not fit with either the pagan origins or the current commercial frenzy for this ancient festival, but it is probably about as fairytale as I get. Although I do have a fondness for Sleeping Beauty, which I posted yesterday.