First Date

First Date

The waitress comes and serves our drinks;
Earl Grey in an aluminium pot for you,
a cappuccino and a flapjack for me.
You watch me with pantomime caution.
Perhaps this whole thing was a mistake?

We talk for an hour about nothing.
You stare at my lips as I speak.
I fend off questions about my wife and kids.
I have never seen eyes as bright and wise as yours.

Outside, we walk aimlessly past a war memorial
and a busy pizza restaurant.
Your gloved hand slips into mine;
touching without touching.
I want to say the sweetest things to you.

The weight of unspeakable griefs and passion
is something you deal with very lightly.
You begin to tell me a little about a trip;
you are planning to see an old friend.

As we turn into a pretty, well-kept park
I place my hand on the small of your back
and feel you lean into me, hungrily.
I smell your hair for the first time.
Coconut.

We are an almost inconceivable mismatch.
You plant your feet and roots
grow quickly down into the water table.
My head is a child’s balloon floating
half a mile above the treetops.

Within sight of the children’s playground
I pull off one of your gloves
and look at your hand.
It is a thing of absolute mystery and wonder;
the strong nails, the delicate wrinkles on your knuckles,
the flat firmness of your palm.

I lift it to my mouth
and with all the tenderness I have,
I kiss the tip of your index finger.
It is the first time our skins have made contact.....


Every timepiece in the world
skips a beat.
The whole of human history and evolution
stops and immediately restarts.

You look me in the eye steadily,
lean forward slowly
bite off a small piece of my lower lip.
My long fingernails claw the flesh from your collarbone.

I am no longer urbane and witty.
You are no longer elegant and wise.
We are apes, wild howling apes,
whose engorged sexes just woke each other up.

We run back through the town, naked
savage and free
biting each other furiously,
stopping only to copulate on the pavement outside a chemists.
A woman screams and a workman runs to help.
We ignore his kicks and curses.

Back at the war memorial,
we begin to climb,
our feet torn and slippery now with blood.
At the top, we bark and howl,
two incandescent Kongs,
silhouetted against the fire sky,
mutually masturbating,
kissing, grunting, indecent monsters
waiting for the planes to shoot us down.