Poetry: Selections from Edward Lee

Shadows Remain

Sometimes we didn't

have time to shower

before we had to return

to our spouses, our hours

limited by the depths of the lies

told to buy that time.

 

Those times, our skins unclean

and yet purer

than they’d ever been,

I felt less guilty, the

smell of you

on my body

easing my conscience

when my wife asked me

how my day had been

and I lied as easily as though

my tongue had been born

to tell anything but truth.

 

What cruel people

we were in our love

for each other. What

cruel people we had to be

to save our love

for each other.

 

We wish our others well

now that we are gone

from their lives, our cruel selves

no more, now that

no false words are needed

to disguise our truth, though

their shadows remain

as such shadows always do,

like dirt on the skin

that an ocean of showers

can never remove.

Our

I lip-read our future

across your nipples,

my tongue moistening

those words that catch

in your shuddering mouth

as you guide me lower,

deeper.

Hours

Your fingers find home

as they meet

across the back

of my freshly shaved head,

guiding my tongue deeper,

stretching your soft voice louder,

capturing my name

in the nonsensical speech patterns

of passion, the star-skyed night

still young, the serious morning

still hours away.

Mood

The quickest way to a man's heart

is through his chest, breaking bone

and scattering veins and flesh,

causing a pain I have never felt

but can imagine in breath-catching detail,

especially when I am in the mood

I am in now.

 

Everything else – pretty words

danced across air and pages -

is just strained metaphor

boiled dry in cliched similes,

and I have no stomach

for such things, the mood

I am in.

Once We Both Know Pleasure 

Your cunt spreading

around my dick,

coming home

to come, one

after the other,

or together,

it doesn't matter.

 

All that does

is having these moments

when we can be

the base beings

we are – purity under

another name – reveling

in the wanting

of each other,

 

words, panted or otherwise,

no longer needed, both of us

coming, one after the other,

or together, it doesn’t matter,

 

it doesn’t matter

once both our bodies know

the pleasure.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, A Thin Slice Of Anxiety, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales.  His play ‘Wall’ was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection and also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.