All About Spike - Poem: Watching TV by Moose

Poem: Watching TV
By Moose

(A.K.A. "The Marti Poem")

Stillness sloughs through him
unwinding the coiled energy of his limbs
He has discovered a bliss, declaimed it,
looped a fancy "no vacancy" in neon
along the long recline of his languid form
She curves, fitted to the length of him
Her tumble of hair teasing his nose with draughts
of coconut, and feathery tickles of vanilla

She wears him like a second skin, a stretched
lioness on her cold stone, daring him to move
from beneath, to shift and incur her predatory growl
But he lies kept, trapped under her fierce possession
his eyes, like hers, flickering feral in the light of the TV

It is in the ticks between commercials, when the room grows
dark, that their covert hands seek out the other:
a thigh, a stomach, a breast, a neck—the stillness converted
to a burgeoning silence, punctuated by desperate air

"Spike?"

His name is a breathy sigh on her lips
He stops, pulls back to see her eyes dance
in the early morning snow of electrons
He waits for her to speak, eager for her words to
thrum along his skin, eager for any invitation
to spill from the threshold of her mouth

"Yes?"

It is a whispered prompt, a hopeful thief of a question
seeking to steal the answer from her eyes
And it does—he sees with a shiver of dread, the coming
words that will pierce his stiff heart to the fletch,
splitting forever the vampire from the man
in a dusty explosion of the unsaid

He presses a thumb to her lips—
some words should remain in the dark

With a look he pleads, and begins to whisper
an aboriginal language in her ear, one she soon joins in, combining
vowels and gasps, moans and syntax
The new words flow like hot silver unstained—
a falling sigh, a slippery tongue, a playful slap given over to
laughter and squeals, and lip-bruised smiles

"I love you, Spike."

It's in the old language, but still he understands,
even as he plunders her mouth, seeking to coax
a new and lasting poetry from her embrace