Through the bitterness of winter 
life crawls, so lingering and lonely
and hauling your battered heart into 
the shelter of some place holy
Your mind swims with the terrible things 
those hands have groped toward
The grit of guilt and shame conspire 
to serve as your reward

Such troubled thoughts reverberate
as they echo up into the arches
Gathering their mass and falling back 
they’ve now swollen to a chorus
It's to the ivory king atop his wooden cross 
your hope will momentarily cling
but in the deafening silence he lets ring 
you’ll sigh your stuttered hymn…

“O, hold me
hold me
like someone who knows me
for there must be
one..."

Caught between the ribbons and the frills 
of a hired friend in a rented room
Her garments kiss the mottled carpet 
as she beckons you from the dimming gloom
You’ve lassoed all your longing
gathered up your greed
but all is tarnished by the arrogance 
of succumbing to this need

To feel her fingers, small and slender 
as they rouse your self belief
A patron of the pornographic sweatshops
with nothing beyond this fleeting relief
Your hands suddenly feel so cold 
There's much your body is aching to confess
and your tears of lumpen coal merely exist
as you whimper at her breast…

“O, hold me
hold me
like someone who knows me
for there must be
one..."

The dance of waves like hungry knives 
metallic in the floodlight moon
This freezing clifftop is haunted 
by the remnants of a family ruin
And strobing images of numbered girls
divorced from name and age
You torched everything that mattered 
for a compulsion you could not assuage

The trouble swells, you’ve lost control 
it's from yourself you now must flee
Still your wings, they have no feather 
it's a long way down but then you're free
Soon you'll slip between the stars 
a fragment of that timeless beauty
as the sea rises up to carve your body 
you exhale that broken plea…

“O, hold me
hold me
like someone who knows me"

Yet there 
were 
none...
 

[2022]