For a Man

Women make better friends, they said

Nails bite like incisors into soft, warm flesh

Women are fluid

 

Then I took

A man with big hands and enormous feet

Whose hair tickles parts of me

About which my Mother didn’t tell

Fingers that sing tricky tunes of love

The bee’s sting of desire

 

I know women

But I love a man

 

I am not a traitor to my sisters’ cause

Punching my fist in the face of ideological rejection

I am the projection of

Purity

Love

Truth

Merely human

 

Louise M. Hart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ode to Ruby Rose

Your hair is sunlight

 

Illuminating your face

 

Strands like fingers

 

Supplying

 

Sweet caresses

 

To your skin

 

Of silken lace

 

 

 

Mine is brittle

 

Whose strands betray

 

And belittle

 

The pulp that lies

 

Beneath my eyes

 

Flesh ruddy and hostile

 

 

 

Your breath kisses the wind

 

Mine is stained with the scent

 

Of cigarettes and sin

 

I have lived amongst men

 

But love only women

 

You love none

 

More than yourself

 

And display your body

 

For a living

 

I display my mind

 

And am a dying monument

 

To life upon the shelf

 

 

 

Your eyes shine like cerulean

 

And the diamonds you wear

 

Suggest the wealth of your talent

 

If only I could rest my head

 

Between your breast’s

 

Heaves of submission

 

And be reborn as beauty

 

Love, truth

 

And death in remission

 

 

 

You are an illustrated woman

 

Your flesh frames

 

Each picture you portray

 

So, I read you with a lascivious look

 

Devour your painted form

 

Like an open book

 

And then I look again

 

And imagine

 

That you have stamped

 

My library card of a heart

 

With a kiss of approval

 

 

 

But you are no more real

 

Than the love I feel

 

When I gaze at photographs

 

Of you

 

For you are young

 

And I am too old and ugly

 

To be loved by one

 

As beautiful as you

 

See

By

Louise M. Hart

 

Whilst I was drowning

She waved

“…you’re breaking my heart

You’re shaking my confidence

baby”

 

The birds on the breeze

Didn’t whisper my name

But the birds in the bar

Tweeted, “A pint please,

Louise”

And I answered them

With indiscreet wheezes of

“Yesss, please”

 

(Help me!)

 

I swallowed greedily

Licking windows

And clits

 

 

For whilst I was drowning

She was charming

The baby dyke

Whose fringe

Swept me off my feet

Like gold dust

From her plump eyelashes

 

She was a whole number

To my oddness

 

Whilst I was drowning

She waved

Right out to sea

Until it took her

As I had not-

She who had washed

Her hands of me

Many years before

 

…and me

 

…always remembering

The lingering scent of her fingers

On shifting sands

Of my receding memory strands

And pubic hair

Viewed furtively on demand

 

20 years on

She drowned

Whilst I wobbled

Elephantine

On land

Dry and firm

 

She had drowned

Whilst I was waving

 

Taking the P. H. out of Love

For the only man I really loved and

the alcoholic Scottish afternoons, evenings and nights…

I loved him

Like a comfort blanket

I would wrap around me

Twice a week

But the blanket

Cut

Into my flesh

Like the cheap vodka bottles

Whose contents

We projectile vomited

Against a wall

Cracked with my spidery

Web of deceit

And all to prevent us from falling

More deeply

Into reality’s slow waves

Of unreturnable sleep

Every hug

The blanket bestowed

Represented a drink

Poured down my hoary throat

As dry

As a virgin’s quim

Or a mammary gland

No natural man

Could possibly caress

And hardwired to out queer

My more masterful

Sapphic sisters

And the screaming queens

Who were my soul brother’s

Chicken licking lovers

A comfort blanket

Embroidered

With the discarded nails

He plucked

From his outrageously orange

Tinted fingers tips

As he plucked me

The shallow and demanding female

Who roughly stroked his skin

And sucked his bones

Only to please

And manipulate him

I did not even feel his nails

Prick

Me inside

Rather dismissing the blood

I shed

From my womanly empty head

To the rosy pink tips

Of my inverted toes

And MY tits

With an extravagant

Swish of the hand

Of every unwanted thought

I fought to valiantly dismiss

The kisses I imparted

Were shaped

For the delectation

Of another’s lips

For, though my heart lightened

In his presence

It burned in hers

She did not break it

It was I who reached inside

My own compliant chest

And withdrew

The essential organ

Of all hope and penetrable pleasure

At the height

Of a micro second of time

When I realised

That I could never

Love his kind, again

And thus, never did

To all the Girls I have never Loved before

I dedicate this poem

To the loves

I have not known

The nights I have spent

Alone

Chastising myself

With my belt of desires

On a bed

Of moist memory foam

And sheets

That drip with sweat

And dread of exposure

 

I dedicate this poem

To the hearts

I have not broken

With my roaming eye

And my tongue tingling

Love tokens of longing

For the tasty pink delight

Of womanly wonders

 

Beneath the swooning

Fist of night

My heart thrives

On its passionate cries

But my body celebrates

Celibacy

With cross-legged frigidity

 

Though my mind is insecure

In the grasp

Of its moral duplicity

I secretly acknowledge

The tenuous tightrope

I tread

Of illusory hetero

Homogeneity

 

I am as anonymous

As I was not made to be

And spread my legs

Only for the wondrous words

I create

Never under cover

Of the beds

Adorned by those

To whom I dedicate

This poem

In my head

 

I wish I were the loving kind

I am indifferent to his needs
The way his body hair wounds my skin
And his straining loins that beg
To impregnate my womb
With the seeds of his desire

I am indifferent to the clothes he wears
And the way he cuts his hair
I am indifferent to his needs
And he is indifferent to mine/my mind