Wednesday 9 November 2011

Unallocated

A thin pane of glassy pain
Seems to be separating us right now.
It’s icy to the touch, and fills
Me with a chill that it may never melt.

The heat of what we use to have
Seems quiet; it flowered for a
Week or two, and now is dwindling,
Giving off a warning, un-warming sorrowful smoke.

First-passion’s edge will dull
When the world and distance press on bones
And minds like the greedy weight of gravity
With a constant repression.

Do you miss me too, in the cloud of your unallocated
And mysterious sorrow?

Monday 31 October 2011

Muscles

I can still feel the dull ache of you
In my limbs.
You linger, like a quiet
Ember in the muscles of my stomach
And arms; the ghosts of
Exertion dancing a fiery heat
Under the surface of my bones and flesh.

I can still see you, sprawled
And peaceful on the white sheets,
With your ivory skin a subtle
Dapple in my memory.
The tenseness of your body still hangs
Underneath my fingertips, and I can taste
You in the crook of my elbow.

I can still hear the moment
When we connected and collided
And unravelled upon each other,
With lips and hands and other miscellaneous
Parts of the un-cohesive whole linking
And twisting like a spider web
And tearing in a moment.

Monday 12 September 2011

Prosaically

The wind snatches at the hill-tops
And the insides of my ears,
Clawing inside of my mind
And whispering about what lies
Beyond the sea, and high up
Above the clouds.
It dances along my skin with
A thousand swinging feathers
That hook upon my clothes
And tug me up until I’m dizzy
With resistance, and the hard
Stones seem to relinquish my feet.
It makes me feel the unbearable
Lightness of being Milan Kundera
Wrote a novel of, and when the
Wind realises I’m far too
Prosaically rooted to this world,
It runs off without a backwards glance.
Fickle as desire.

Sunday 4 September 2011

Slender Ship Of A Bridge

I felt out of love with them today, 
For a few minutes on a train, as
A sea of trees and green fields
Rolled and undulated beneath the
Slender ship of a bridge I rolled across.

It felt so strange to not have the
Thought of their thoughts inside me, and I
Pondered this empty, happy void
Within me. It had the silence of a
Quiet, tidy room.

The familiar feelings of longing crept back
In, rushing like greedy air into a vacuum.
But for a brief while, I felt clean
And inconsiderate. I miss
Not missing them.

Saturday 3 September 2011

World

You’ve got the silk-wrapped
Trees in the palm of your hand.
You can just reach out and
Shake the branches of them,
And scatter fruit all over us.

You’ve got the unassuming hills under the
Soles of your shoes. Every footstep you
Take leaves a valley, or cracks
Open a hole, for a stream to
Spring from (or for a spring to stream out).

You have my heart as a secret
You don’t even know of yet. You
Can squeeze it or set it free and not
Even be aware of doing it. You’ve already
Got my world - what’s one more piece of it?

Thursday 1 September 2011

Introspection

There’s a taut steel wire in you. 
I can see it straining against the pressures
Of the world, and the lack of stress
You show scares me.
No one can take that kind of
Weight and not be warped.
Sometimes I fool myself
Into thinking it’s snapped,
And it’s flailed and smashed the walls
Inside of you. Let down that
Inner drawbridge and allowed
The world to storm your fortress.
But you’d never do that. It would mean
Letting go of your sardonic smile
And your quick cold comments
And not being held to the ice and
The floor by twined steel braids.

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Caroline

She’s a shadow that hides behind the sun.
A trickster, joker, a muse
(But not a nun).
To speak to her is to peruse
A library in disarray,
In an elegant chaos that spreads
Like wildflowers and promiscuity in May.
She’s the sound of brass horns, and the whirring in heads.
Everything about her is a whimsy,
She moves like happiness.
Her friendship is as flimsy
As platinum (which is worth far less).
Her eyes are the grey-blue of the welcome storm
And she is beautiful in the same way.
She’s shifting and changing, with no true form.
She’s reckless, and fey.

Emma

She’s like a dancer with the way she speaks,
Weaving nets that shine like diamonds.
And are as complex as the look in her eyes.
Eloquent twists and snaps of smile
Escape from her lips, and light up the room
Like fragments of a youthful mirror.
Her mind blossoms like a hothouse flower
In the tundra; a colourful miracle no-one
Quite comprehends. She’s a splash of music
In the snow.
When she walks she’s like the cool breeze on
The bright day, like nothing you’d ever want
More. Rarely has someone been so truly
Wondrous.
Her laughter rolls like firelight over glass,
And her whispers are flutes.
She is a friend like iron or stone or sunlight.
Strong and present, there and true.
All of her is a magic I will miss.
Spatter-lit, like diamonds that spilled out from
A miser’s purse, all the reflected light
Plays upon the grey seat, harsh and gently.
Strange how it’s the unconventional that
Hangs beautiful, like smoke that twists and curves
In the breezes from west and east within
Our memories (oh, things were wondrous once).
There was a time, when-back-then-long-ago
(it’s a time now thick with honey and
Hate in my head) that you were fragrant smoke,
Balsam-cigarette, bitter-hacking smoke
In my mind; a taste so delicately
Disgusting, like a refrain that rings wrong.
This love was untrue - it made me cough tears.
I stood, suspended on gossamer words.
Trapped in the sound and light they span out
With gently placed phrasings they could not but call.
And in these words and motions, spinning truth;
A gentler rhythm. A kinder rhyme breathes
Out, and in the audience, all air
Stills, and charges, and is frozen in glory,
As upon a platform below our feet
But above our minds, in incandescence
Figures move, with grace and poise directed
Framing a motion truly daring in heart
And soulful intent. “We are all acting”
They seem to say, declaring it to us all.
What beauty in this act, there is, trailing.
Cloying heat wraps around,
Burying me like clay in a too-warm
Grave.

Liquid streams and chafes and never even
Cools
Anymore. And the air is

Aflame. This is a summer of
Discontented breezes and riotous light.
Not even the leaves can

Wave in the air, but hang limp;
Verdant on the corner of vision.
I dream of snowflakes

Broken Trust

He fires words, and I shoot them
Back, with added invectives, and
A sarcastic tone. He replies,
With a raised voice, to raise the stakes.
Then he suddenly lunges, and his
Hands are on my throat.
I hurl him back, and shout and yell.
“Who are you to touch me like that!
What the hell! How dare you treat me like that!
I’m your son."

Heat Flows Like Waves

There’s a world out there,
Beyond the window.
I’ve been assured of this fact by numerous reliable sources.
People say out there, there are
Mountains that touch the atmosphere,
Scrape open rents in the clouds.
They say that on top of these mountains, in Africa,
Where the heat flows like waves in the sea,
There’s snow.
There are miracles beyond these four walls
And my computer screen.
One day I’ll see them, and I’ll be cold in Africa.

Monday 29 August 2011

The firelight is a crackling presence in my heart.
It lies sat at my feet, curled like a slumbering wolf.
I can see the snoring, hissing sparks of its breath
Drifting upwards in the smoke of its dreams.
I am scared of it and drawn towards it;
Do you think it will bite me if I touch it?
The radiance it leaks so casually is staining everything
Golden, and it leaves its value everywhere.
There is no discrimination, no choice in what it warms;
It leaves itself everywhere, diminishing with every
Stick, twig and log it devours.