Sojourn

I sit hopeful in your reluctant sun where the gulls cry mournfully. Where the sky is a palette board of innocent whites, sulky greys and brave blues.Where the wind carries the salty signature of the sea.

I watch quiet as the innocent morning stretches itself expectant between pale dawn and soft noon, drawing in muted, luminous colours from the air and from the slow turning of the earth.

I rise willing, allowing the afternoon to find me on one of your wild and blustery paths atop a rugged, gorse-claimed cliff high above the green and marine crash and swell. Far from the restless ocean-white horses racing blindly for the shore. In distant sight of a tiny purposeful fishing boat, checking pots and nets with the faintest throaty gurgle of a bronchial engine

I wear thankful another thin layer as your wood-fire scented evening with its Atlantic chill wraps itself around my shoulders. I sip wine as red as blood in this secure and solid cottage hewn from Welsh stone and slate. I hear the certain stroke of past centuries in the peaceful ticking of a clock.

I lie unchained without map or compass in the waiting arms of your inky black night. I roam solemn and untroubled among the indistinct and unaware shapes of lovers, friends and strangers. I sleep safe without fear or regret, sharing the shelter of a familiar roof with a fair and constant woman and our graceful, youngest child

Tomorrow I will wake with a silent hymn on my lips to your unchanging, poetic Celtic nature and ancient soul. And I will whisper an age-old god-less prayer in thanks for the perfect peace of this quiet and gentle holiday.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Photograph by David Wilson

I wrote this a few days ago while staying in my beloved West Wales but was unable to post it because of a lack of connectivity. 

 

I will adore you

 

I will adore you.

I will admire you and respect you.

I will support you when the whole world is against you, or even just a small part of it. I will take your side irrespective of whose side you are on. I will comfort you when you are hurt, lift you when you are down, make your spirits soar when you least expect it.

I will instruct you, mentor you, guide you. I will, as far as in my power, keep you safe. I will encourage you, enthuse you, motivate you. I will paint your body with words in ways that make you glow. I will be proud of you. I will study every inch of you and pour my attention over you like honey.

I will thrill you, tease you, and arouse you. I will help you fulfill your wildest fantasies, your darkest desires, your deepest needs. I will touch you in ways beyond your imagination. I will take you to climaxes that leave you utterly sated and complete.

I will amplify your joy, soften your sorrow, fill your days with light, and touch your nights with romance.

I will make you laugh. I will kiss away your tears.

I will give you confidence, give you strength, give you self-belief. I will worship your beauty, your sensuality, your body. I will hymn your breasts, your buttocks your belly, your shoulders, your throat, your back, your thighs. I will make your body sing with pleasure and pain.

You will be my submissive, my lover, my muse, my friend. You will belong. I will make you feel valued, worthy, special, unique, perfect.

I will adore you.

But I will not love you.

Regardless of how close, how entwined, how enraptured we become.

For I love another. I have loved her forever.

I will always love her.

She is the love of my life.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Jack Vettriano

 I wrote this exactly a year ago. It proved to be a popular if controversial post. It is time to give it another airing. Now with added audio.

 

I will adore you

 

I will adore you.

I will admire you and respect you.

I will support you when the whole world is against you, or even just a small part of it. I will take your side irrespective of whose side you are on. I will comfort you when you are hurt, lift you when you are down, make your spirits soar when you least expect it.

I will instruct you, mentor you, guide you. I will, as far as in my power, keep you safe. I will encourage you, enthuse you, motivate you. I will paint your body with words in ways that make you glow. I will be proud of you. I will study every inch of you and pour my attention over you like honey.

I will thrill you, tease you, and arouse you. I will help you fulfill your wildest fantasies, your darkest desires, your deepest needs. I will touch you in ways beyond your imagination. I will take you to climaxes that leave you utterly sated and complete.

I will amplify your joy, soften your sorrow, fill your days with light, and touch your nights with romance.

I will make you laugh. I will kiss away your tears.

I will give you confidence, give you strength, give you self-belief. I will worship your beauty, your sensuality, your body. I will hymn your breasts, your buttocks your belly, your shoulders, your throat, your back, your thighs. I will make your body sing with pleasure and pain.

You will be my submissive, my lover, my muse, my friend. You will belong. I will make you feel valued, worthy, special, unique, perfect.

I will adore you.

But I will not love you.

Regardless of how close, how entwined, how enraptured we become.

For I love another. I have loved her forever.

I will always love her.

She is the love of my life.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Jack Vettriano

 

 

Never, ever.

They have escaped.

Their bolt-hole, far beyond the cities, out of reach of the railway, along narrow roads of high wind-swept hedges. Where the sea is always cold and clean and the air is fresh; mewing with gulls and tangy with salt on the rugged coast.

Where their walls are stone and two feet thick, the floors wood and slate, the same reassuring grey as the roofs and the sky when it is brooding. Where there is no telephone, no broadband, almost no connectivity in the ether. Where work has been left far behind and any lover is out of reach.

They are easy together. They have grown as close as blood family over the many years of knowing. They are silent often, contentedly sharing each others’ thoughts. They read, listen to music, walk for miles across the wild countryside, laugh at the same things. They eat and drink well. Expensively and healthily. He writes. She designs.

She is tall, elegant, slim, intelligent, shy and blonde. He is taller, long-limbed, distinctive, creative, with friendly but sometimes piercing eyes.  They are a well matched couple.

But they never, ever fuck.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Art by Anne Magill

 

Communion

 

In the garden the light was already beginning to fade.

 

She was conscious of the darkness softly filling in the spaces around her, blurring the shapes of the shrubs and bushes, swallowing the hedge, and swarming silently about the trees.  Gently it removed the hard edges of the walls, erased the straight line of the path, and blotted out the wheelbarrow, watering can and spade.

 

The darkness had become thick and slightly damp, and was impregnated with the smells of the dying bonfire, the turned soil, and the decaying leaves.  The evening was swallowing sounds, blurring them as if they too were images and shapes.  The distant echo of footsteps became the steady drip of water, or the ticking of a clock.  The impertinent rustle of birds in the overgrown bank became the frightened whispers of lost children; and the passage of the gathering breeze in the branches above hushed them quiet.

 

A melancholy owl hooted sadly, and from somewhere distant a lone motorcycle coughed twice, and then groaned faintly into the night.

 

She let the darkness gather around her until it brushed, like a friendly kitten, about her calves and ankles.  She allowed it to climb up her thighs, over her back and chest, and onto her shoulders.  She was so totally enveloped that she only knew her feet and hands were still there by the chill air presumptuously nipping at her fingers and toes.

 

Somewhere a dog barked.  Its man called, his voice sounding muffled and woolly as it followed the animal along the road behind the house.  The distant dog barked again, further away and the man’s voice seemed to mimic it, a furry, wild sound.

 

She shivered, and the cold breathed down her neck.  She felt her face becoming coarse to its touch, and her nose was beginning to run.  She sniffed and wrapped her arms about her body.  But she did not move from where she was standing.  Something had happened to her while the day was dying.  It was as if the dark had filled her eyes, nostrils and mouth, making it twilight in her head, so that the solid immoveable outlines of her life became as blurred as the trees, bushes and hedge.  Her worries had slipped away, under cover of the dusk.

 

Her fears had become indistinct.  The chores and tasks that faced her no longer seemed to have any definition.  She had escaped herself, and was hiding like a child in an unlit, but friendly, room; the darkness a safe blanket, under which she could remain undisturbed and unharmed.

 

She swayed a little as the wind began to tug at her clothes, nudging her with careless familiarity.  She felt relaxed and at peace, with no desire to move.  She was becoming part of the garden, her roots probing the rich worm-tunnelled soil, sucking in strength and goodness.  Her skin was hardening into bark, her hair was twisting itself into leaves and twigs, and her eyes had become dark hollows in which the birds could make their nests.

 

She was in a dream, and she imagined time moving extremely slowly, and the darkness, now a living thing, slipped its cool hand into hers.

 

She knew that when the morning came she would be transfixed and hard, with only her sap inside humming with the secrets of the plants, and the earth.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Photo stolen from ElifKarakoc

 

Temptation

He is trying so hard to be good.

It is not that he does not love her.  Without her his life would be without meaning.  Her light is all around him.

It is not that he is unhappy.  Especially during these recent weeks, together in their secluded, leafy home by the river, the days have been almost blissful after the detached, deceitful, untidy, complicated and eventually painfully sad years of being half away.

It is not that he still harbours angry resentment over their long-term sexual incompatibility.  His desperate unrequited desire for her has somehow become dissipated over his wicked affairs, the wanton trysts and the wild, wonderful relationships. She is his best friend. They will never be lovers again. It doesn’t matter.

But every now and then, when the night is velvet and pierced with stars.  When his gaze is caught by a stranger’s perfectly turned ankle or delicious thigh or the sensual curve of a gorgeous breast…

When the faintly lingering scent of perfume hangs in the air.  When an unbidden smile seems somehow coded with submissive design. When he imagines leather against soft skin. When he sees candle flames dancing in the darkness.

When he remembers all he has done, and seen, and owned and mastered…

Then the ache in his body and the longing in his soul are torture…

He is trying so hard to be good.

He is turning his back on temptation.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Photo stolen from AviculaZebaoth

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Eloquent

She listens.

I know she does not believe me.

Her eyes are an ocean of blue-grey sorrow.  She watches me flounder in the waves.   I am lost in her chilly sea. She will not throw me the lifebelt of a word.  Her disbelief is fathomless.

Everything I say now will taste of salt.

Her silence is eloquent

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Photograph stolen from Yunie666

 

This Heart

This heart has weathered bleak winters

When the cold sun refused to break cloud,

When a black dog chewed at my fingers,

When leaving made my cry out aloud.

 

This heart has suffered cruel springtime,

When the green pulse mocked me with life.

When the promise of renewal was broken,

When expectant sparks all failed to ignite.

 

This heart has been wild and romantic,

This heart has borne time and change.

Yet if this heart should ever lose you,

This heart will never beat boldly again.

 

This heart has endured empty summers

When the dull heat tormented my days,

When the thunder drowned out the music,

When my carnival was ruined by rain.

 

This heart has braved the dying autumn

When death danced in the flickering leaves,

When mist obscured all I had longed for,

When lies left me nothing to believe.

 

This heart has been sure and certain.

This heart has always resisted the chill.

Yet if this heart should ever lose you

This beating heart will forever be still.

Copyright the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Photograph by ASilentMelody

 

When I don’t even try

Many years ago a girl with a halo of golden curls smiled shyly as she strummed her guitar.

On a velvet evening when we could still be called young she sang this Joni Mitchell masterpiece for me in a voice that was imperfect, fragile and beautiful.  She had learned the song because she said the man featured in it could have easily been me..

She tells me, after all these years, that I haven’t changed.

 

Woman of Heart & Mind by Joni Mitchell

I am a woman of heart and mind
With time on her hands
No child to raise
You come to me like a little boy
And I give you my scorn and my praise

You think I’m like your mother
Or another lover or your sister
Or the queen of your dreams
Or just another silly girl
When love makes a fool of me

After the rush when you come back down
You’re always disappointed
Nothing seems to keep you high
Drive your bargains
Push your papers
Win your medals
Fuck your strangers
Don’t it leave you on the empty side

I’m looking for affection and respect
A little passion
And you want stimulation-nothing more
That’s what I think
But you know I’ll try to be there for you
When your spirits start to sink

All this talk about holiness now
It must be the start of the latest style
Is it all books and words
Or do you really feel it?
Do you really laugh?
Do you really care?
Do you really smile
When you smile?

You criticize and you flatter
You imitate the best
And the rest you memorize
You know the times you impress me most
Are the times when you don’t try
When you don’t even try

 

To the end of love

I have said goodbye to them all.

To Jenny, to Beauty, to the woman with the moon in her eyes. To every possibility of a lover enchanted by my words. To the walled garden, and to temporary friends. And to the desk within earshot of trains.

It made me think I was in motion when I was not.  Perhaps it is why I stayed so long.  Too long.

I drove home with the sun at its highest, with the top down and my guitar and half a dozen suits on the back seat.  The wind ran its fingers through my hair less tenderly than the girl had done when she’d lain in my arms for the last time that morning.  It had been such a lovely evening, such a perfect night. It has gone forever.

.She did not cry.  She still believes.  Yet it is over.

And now, I cannot decide if this is the beginning of an end, or the end of a beginning.

At the moment it feels like freedom.

I am home.  With the one who knows me best.

She will dance me to the end of love.