Lainie Cameron

vixen

pop open the cork
hear it swoon
and whistle
until it hits its head
on a wall

the white spume
of celebration
tickles your throat
and makes you laugh
in melodious tones

gorgeous
insatiable
conversation drips
from every gleaming tooth
telling everyone you're available
for fun

the carpet on your bare feet
a stage
where war is waged
on innocence

the lights are off in favour of candles
whose glow makes your skin
soft
and almost makes you dimple
under the touch
of a hot hand

your little dress
pulled like skin
around your thighs

men are moths
fluttering directionless
around the sin of your afterglow
tapping their hairy
insect legs
clicking their excitement
in a mating call
you answer with a wink
or roll of tongue

you create this fantasy
producing a script
of unlikely characters
they dance
on the end of your string
cry painted tears at a whim
all for you............

night

no-one seems to embrace you
your slick reserve and enigmatic shadows
blanketing love and lovers words, their
lips and hands and flower-stemmed fingers
disappearing in your midnight flesh.

and then there's the others, let's not forget
with slithering vowels, hisses and maladies of
foaming breath brandishing hurt behind the cloak
you unwittingly provide..
their knives pointed, cutting reality like butter
murderous beings using your nightly beauty as
a knapsack to fill with their perversity.

night
your infinite voice of melody strokes the faceless
whispering beneath a flower, falling to the ground
your dusty back arched and pruning yourself
with the fragrance of children who tread the supple
contours of your belly.

you are innocent

it is we
unbearable humans, miscreants feeding off your gifts
abusing your rules with viper frequency that turns
you into fear, your blackness painted in story books
as the headpiece for evil, the diamond for dark secrets
and bogey men.

the seams of your dark skin stretch across the world
your yin and yan temperament always a source of
intellectual curiosity, never knowing you, how you work
how the stars hang in your hair
your body is the endless
universe where we'll never capture you

we can't touch or taste you but we feel the pulse
of your enormous vein - we see the simple complexity of
your machinations in nature's wink

we can't emulate the cogs that move you
yet we hear your voice if we try,
in the tune of a thousand beasts
and we wait for the gentle embrace
of your sticky dark melodies
around our obstinate ears when the sun goes down.

Beveridge, Judith
Bleakley, Kathleen
Boyd, Allan
Brennan, Michael
Burns, Joanne
Cameron, Lainie
Cassidy, Bonnie
Chang, Jessica
Clarke, John
Cooke, Stuart
Crane, Michael
Dechian, Sonja
Doran, Ben
Doupe, Juliana
Drewitt, Andy
Dyson, Mia
Elson, Gerard
Ferney, Liam
Garrard, Phillipa
Gibian, Jane
Greagen, Clint
Hawkins, Brian
Hickey, Kelly-Lee
Hier, Michael
Higgs, Ashley
Jelfs, Bradley
Jenkins, Gareth
Johnson, Heather Taylor
Jones, Jill
Kefala, Antigone
Keily, Tom
Knox, Elena
Locke, Kate
Lowe, Justin
Mackie, Brendan
Mann, Paddy
Messiah, Eytan
Minter, Peter
Mitchell, Paul
Morganics
Narkiewicz, Katrine
Nicholson, Anna Kerdijk
Nixon, Jenni
Oliver, Stephen
Paine, Juliet
Prater, David
Purchess, Andew
Robbins, Rachel
Scott, Ryan
Smart, Steve
Sinclair, Tim
Sometimes, Alicia
Stavanger, David
Stuart, James
Tsaloumas, Dimitris
Walter, Lesley
Webster, Ben
West, John
Westbury, Deb
Wicks, Les
Winch, Ben