POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

Jolted, drenched, from recurring nightmare
I found you still there, your quiescent
slumbering form against my back.

Guilt-plagued by all I'd said and done
since your close call with death,
I turned and embraced you,

trembling, reliving the hell I'd just left:
the open grave, your coffinless corpse sliced open
with gaping hole where your heart should be

and me, naked, trying in vain to staunch the bleeding,
stuffing flowers into the wound, tons of them
that just kept vanishing into the bottomless red cavern.

Oh please enlighten me - is that horror reality
and this a dream? I am no longer sure, either,
where you and I fit into the mockery

of happy ever after...in sickness and in health
and unconditional love. I've loved you as best I can
through all these long years, through all the traumas

of infant mortality, then threat of widowhood,
to finally emerge in one piece...but only to find myself
now hounded by the sheer terror of terror itself.

WIND CHILL

In the fearsome gallery
of Emily's tortured imaginings
the exhibits reach out
and grind our entrails
between millstones of stark sadism.

Cathy's insane obsession,
Heathcliff's brutal vengeance:
so shocking - and yet,
something in us rebounds like an echo:
are those not just printed words,
but we the winds that drive the sails?

A VALENTINE'S APPEAL

Life is dull and empty now
and pointless are future years,
for I'm drowning in the self-made rapids
of bitter flowing tears.

It seems so long since you left, my love,
yet it's been no more than a week.
I'm all cried out, my heart is crippled
without the love I seek.

You were my Sun, my Moon, my Stars.
My Air, Fire and Stone -
but most of all, the shining Grail
I sought was you alone.

Yet I failed to see it at the time,
so was easily led astray
by a silver painted china cup
with whom I played away.

So please believe me when I say
I'm consumed by bitter regret
for being driven by hollow lust.
It's you I cannot forget.

I'm begging you, forgive me do -
I know it's a huge request,
but if I could win your heart again
I'd fulfill the most treacherous quest.

Oh if this agony were yours
of such longing day-by-day
just to feel my touch again,
you'd never stay away. ;))

MASOCHIST

You pour me another glass. The
champagne bubbles dance like fireflies
in the circle of candlelight that surrounds us.

The wind is howling outside, driving rain into the windows
as if anxious to be admitted into our private space.
This place, this moment, our intimacy, is all I can trust.

My mind is riding the bubbles: probing, analysing
who you really are. Trying to relax, I hold on to you,
sensing all your fantasies of the past twenty years.

A fusion of bodies - not just our two, but all
the ghosts between us: a cacophony of masochistic tauntings.
Afterwards, I drain my glass. You are still sleeping

when I leave by the back door
feeling betrayed.