Sunset And The Hawk

She was like a heart attack the minute I saw her again after all these years. Immediate in striking beauty, gentle in tongue. That rare piece of beauty that possessed none of the acid words usually borne of pretty things. The camera, without the modern trickery, is a good judge of style because it never lies and will mirror you as you really are the moment the lens snaps shut. And it never took a bad photograph of her that I could see. In pictures, whether she was expecting them or not, this woman was always posed perfectly and as glamourous as any Hollywood dame you could care to mention. She oozed style in the clicks and I fell for her as any man with a beating heart would.
Her name? Sunset. And there is no second name, cheaply tacked on like jewelery on goldfish. Sunset is all. And she is all too. Her face like a glorious beam of light, with a look of confidence but not quite. A shade of doubt plays around those high cheek bones but it all adds to the allure of Sunset.
I have known her almost all of my life because she lives in my hometown, a little fishing village in West Wales. We were never big friends when I lived there, though we knew who each other was of course. One cannot fail not to know everyone in Croes Y Ceiliog because streets are as packed as tins in supermarkets and there is always one or two spare earholes like radars, waiting to catch any juicy nugget of gossip for the lips to flap and air in the line for fresh cod at the chippy.
A few years younger than me, Sunset in her teenage years was nothing remarkable. I remember her as a fuzzy haired, skinny kid who always seemed to be with her best friend, either on the swings in the park or strolling along the shop fronts on the main street of Croes Y Ceiliog. Her friend possessed the looks in those days. Long dark hair, with an ashy complexion and a smile that revealed big, glossy white teeth. But for all the teenage hormones and the naive, hippy heart songs those bring, I never got her name. In the big picture, immediate pleasures and happinesses are forgotten to make way for the inevitable waves of years, countless months and memories, that will reveal their intended and final truth near times end. She was not the One. Her friend Sunset was. Or is. If religion preaches Love, then I have religion. I am filled to the soul with it. Those perfect eyes, my altar where I kneel and let myself drift to planes of romantic ecstacy laced with dirt and unforgiving pleasures.. Conjuring up scenes where we, no WE in bold letters, are king and queen on an island where nothing but each other roams in an abundance of erotica.
How is it that I ever forgot about Sunset in the first place? So curious it is that I never once thought of her in the years we missed together. She floated down the route of her elders, while I took on a flight of madness and soared with angels (and devils). One of us banging the nails, the other trying to prise them and let free a new, undiscovered chapter no eyes had previously read. A Sunset behaving like sunset, gently making babies and sending them to sleep each night. And what was I? A shadow collecting bat skulls and inebriated bones for stories of the illicit and macarbe, abondoning the sun for grim petals that fell off the dead like clipped fingernails. But I want Sunset now. Even if its only in fleeting kiss catches over the internet, and stubbing my fingertips on her electric photographs. I want Sunset to be all over me. Every day.

Sunset Behind Glass...

So now that the introduction is out of the way (however clinical that may sound), and in hope I haven't sugar crushed you dear reader with hints at blossoms and bosoms, and shady spewy kisses down dark alleys, I shall continue on the road to Sunset. There might be a few twitches along the way but ignore them, they are merely pangs of temptation (and a little frustration) being for the most part ignored by the devil on my shoulder. Temptation does so hate to be ignored. I will never look upon Sunsets honey skin whilst in honest company, nor shall my spirit be swallowed by her Californian blue eyes but we can still have our intimate moments via the crystal horns of technology. Or to be accurate, I can because this is a solo flight of carnal pleasures where brief specks of madness turn the computer screen into a picture frame that holds my distant beloved safe until I, the Hawk crashes home onto her glittery cleavage or those plum smashed lips where for five or six minutes I dissolve into an endorphin glossed wilderness and am plagued by disfigured love and naked lust for Sunset.
A quilted debauchery, a bird of prey making Sunset his own to caress and kiss. But it never gets obscene because swans, those dead poets returned to earth, save the Hawk with their grace, like angels rescuing innocence from the gallows. I will not allow dirt to be tipped upon the fresh polish of the casket for that would sully the by and large sweet love. A love through eyes and great imagination.
She is online now, talking the dailies with her graffiti speaking friends. Its a language I barely recognise these days, the internet and mobile telephones having ripped it to shreds and laziness turned perfect words mutant .
BratNews™ is where I go to see the Sunset. The digital meadows where bouquets of pictures grow in number every day and gossip abounds with specks of news and whereabouts. She was in Tref Y Ceiliog yesterday, sunning herself in a rare bout of good weather and it was good to see because a natural tan suits her. She positively glows from the screen and I have to catch my breath at times. Especially when I imagine her poolside, bronze legs stretched and flexing her toes, inviting my tongue to roll on up, put the drinks down and taste her warm skin. Just us two, no cars or queues, kids or responsibilites. Sunset and the Hawk, and nothing else to prise us from our golden cocoon. Occasionally a misplaced word would cause me to wince like a thorn in my finger pad but its always excused and swiftly forgotten. On paper as in life, we are a million times apart but she usually has a way of turning the show around and I might jump and jolt at ill used words and sentences (even misplaced judgements), but she usually brings me back into her earthly arms. She has that kind of strength, the down to earth muscles, the kind that never lets a husband (or lover) let go and is able to spin vulgarities from giblet to petal.
These unbounded, sugary paragraphs will no doubt put the dogs to sleep but stay the shift for all will out and I will keep repeating my thirst, my insatiable want for the darling Sunset until the drums beat their heart velvet steeds into the corner of my merry libido. I shouldn't really be in here, rummaging through the folds of Sunset's cotton toweled towels but here I am, mesmerised by a chipped beauty that I find uncouth when the 'text speak' is trotted out and yet still find the author incredibly hard to resist.

To be Continued.

© Steven Francis 2012

Every Time I See Black Holes I Think Of Heart Attacks

Those mighty blossoms of feral space
the black hole seizes my fungus fused liver with dread,
paralyzing every tenor of my mortal lungs.
Oh deepest pit where nightmares roost!
Like the very depths of hell suspended in a solar garden
sucking life out of light
as you offer horizons to end all sight and sound.
Galactic supermonster,
hero to a neverending thirst,
wake the dead, stir the galant muse.
Starry cove to swallow wing and fortune...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

Exit Size O

Stood upon the morbid stage
footless dance, no more age.
Hempen rope driving sin from bones
to send them down to Davy Jones...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading: