Landscapes of Need and Want

I wanted, I guess,
to be brutalised.

but as I grow I realise
that this was just a surface glaze
I tried to ground in instruments.

the dark inquisitor
that was my self-interrogation
of sex and why I needed it.

he strode in like a crossed
and cassocked torturer,
whose dim religious sense came down
to thumbscrews, dunking stools, and pikes.

machines of fetish, of the night.

now I leave his long shadow behind
and find that lust was always of the heart
as well as mind, the thought as of the flesh.
the body and the word.

it’s little things now that tickle me:

a gentle, cupped, and stroking hand
that snaps and slaps a quivering gluteal mass,
the shared surprise and joy of play...

my laughing, shocked outburst,
his hoarse pleasure at mine,
swooping in to kiss my neck
and whisper in my ear
“you’ll be alright, my man”...

the players laughing each in turn
as landscapes of power are mapped,
reversed, traded,
not even with the physical
but sometimes talk and imagery alone,
sharing our private selves...

I want, I suppose,
to play like grownups might.