Enter the hot dream - any

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

(Heavy-breasted. Pink-earthen.)

He misses his girls.

(Rotty skin. Bone bags.)

They were lovely, really, weren’t they? 
He dreams about them, sometimes. (Isn’t that sweet?)

***

Sometimes, he lines them up, shoulder-to-shoulder, in order of worth (each a little less dear than the previous – he has always played favourites). They stand for him, pretty and wide-eyed. Waiting. Abeyant. Wanting. Or not – it’s all the same. 
Some of them, in mewling, dumb moans, say his name: ‘Pollock. Pollock. Pollock.’ Over and over, because here that is their language. Their hymnals and their storytelling.

Some of them mouth it silently, their lips swollen with the effort. He always liked the way some of them said his name;
Others are denied that pleasure here.

Here, where he is king. And like a king he appraises these things – His things.
Here, anyway.

***

He has not slept. 
Agitated, he paces with slow, hobbled steps through the cold, austere morning. It is grey and green-grey, the autumn has begun to turn the gravid woodland frigid, nude and bloodless. Draining her skin of the colour he so loves – the fruity wildness of her – turning her sterile and homely.

It is softened, if only slightly, by the impeding fecundity. The short, erotic display of fleshy flowers. Long ago (eons, really – a whole lifetime ago) this had disgusted him. He watched with bitter, young rage as those petals dripped with pollen and skin was exchanged freely, or with a tenderness that hardened him to the core.
He had learned to take. That was the key. He had learned that control could be occupied in those exchanges; was shown that some would give it to him willingly – filling his cup as well as their own, where others would fight. 

He found the joy in both.

the gift-giver

^{i genuinely couldn't figure out how to end this elegantly and i've been nursing it for way too long. pollock is NOT easy to come back into writing, but when he clicks he clicks -shrug-}