Dare I unfurl the banner of my desires

Across stubble fields and barren moor

Or drag it through dew heavy meadows

To hide beneath a willow's curtain, weeping?

Should I barefoot and pregnant of expectation

Induce grass spears to caress my skin

Or dip them in the sparkling flow

For minnows to feast upon my need? 

Might I unravel the beeswax square

That burnished key reveal

Sacred and sanctified with acid tears

Yowled in anguished pride?

Can I, with trembling want

Scrape away the rust of centuries

Absolve myself of all my sins

And crawl, the perfectionist penitent?

Would marble Aphrodite embrace

My undeserving flesh, so fallible

And to her cold-hearted bosom press

To succour and thaw flinted I?

Dare I? 

Skittering and sloshing, souwesters and wellingtons. 

Windswept and deluged amongst eddying leaves. 

Freed to fling ourselves into the soggy morass, to flutter 

Apple cheeked; childlike revelling in each step's splatters. 

You and I. 

Dare I? 

Dare You? 

Toasted teacakes and une tasse de thé

Glacial buttery pat oozing its invitation. 

Throw another log on the fire; crackles and spits

As we snuggle into the singular armchair and

Raising porcelain to lips, raise our queries. 

Dare I? 

Dare you? 

Fleshy fornicators frolicking into want

Diving desperate into the depths of desire 

Glistening and gluttonous, 

My humid swamp your succour 

Your feast, my everything. 

Smearing you about my cheeks

Rosy now with a fresh bloom

As your sickly tang coats my lips 

Lipgloss for the undernourished. 

Dare I? 

Dare you? 

And should we dare atop the hearth rug

Flames licking at our fevered skin

Writhing as tormented souls

Cast into the pit of blissful lust

Scissoring and slathering in wild abandonment

As devilled angels murmur. 

Dare you? 

And if you should dare, should I?