Once More Missed

Goodbye is a wispy old thing

dissipating on the wind

like the dust of a demolition

or the fading of a memory.

Words don't come as they once did,

spinning threads to the future;

don't arrive with glossy sheen

or reassure, or fortify.

And when the dust settles

the wreckage remains

lying heavy, like an oil spill

over every shoot and leaf.

Perhaps my gift is silence

after the crash.

A Different Tune

I want to be that song.
The one that pops into your head
when you ought to be humming a different tune.
I want to be your skin and cover you up entirely.
I want to be exquisite energy in your body,
make you tick. Light up your eyes.
I want to be the sea around your swimmer
soak into all of you, draw you deep
I want to be the hand at your back
the hook of your smile,
a medicine for sadness,
put uncertainty to sleep.
I want to be the cat slipping softly 'round your legs
so let me purr and get my claws in.

Dear Sir,

Hey. I haven't been writing much lately and have been wanting to put something up here for a while. I recently had an unfortunate encounter in a dreadful mens' social club and wrote the below letter of complaint. Well, it's sort of creative writing, no?





Dear Sir,

I visited your establishment for the first time on the evening of 23rd September 2014. I had been assured by my associate of your good standing and favourable reputation.

On entering your premises and while ascertaining my surroundings, I must admit that I was not entirely prompt in removing my hat. I was remiss. Imagine my shock and consternation, however, when a fellow tapped me on the arm and told me to remove my headwear. Being an unfamiliar patron, you can surely imagine the humiliation I felt as a result of this. I estimate that I had not been across the threshold sixty seconds.

I can only assume that said fellow must have thought me vulgar or ungentlemanly but I cannot impose upon you enough the error of this conceit. I am incensed and aggrieved at the assumption that I should require educating in such etiquette, and as a result I cannot imagine ever gracing you with my custom again.

I note with some bemusement that your website promises 'a welcoming and friendly atmosphere'. May I respectfully suggest that this claim is removed as it is evidently not the case.

Yours sincerely,





I doubt I'll receive a reply but if I do, I'll post it. :)

Loser

You know that feeling of something you love
coming to the end you wished for
yet hoped would never come.
Today I felt that and thought of loss;
How it feels as though forgotten
is my writing and reading.
I hear nothing anymore but
the silence of the night,
hushed black and empty space,
my loss is forever grasping at a dream
and wishing I'd not woken.
Wishing for sleep and forgetfulness.
Looking for ladders and lying with snakes.
Resigned to an end but for that one
good, pure thing, holding me here,
saying what if? what if
there was a will or a way
and what if there was peace
peace from this waiting for the end.
You know that feeling when you're just so sick
but there are things to do.

It's not me; it's me.

Tonight I'm fighting with a mood.
Well, fighting's not the right word.
It might be a best to say I'm lying,
perhaps in a worn-out hammock
that is, difficult to get out of gracefully.
Or maybe I'm a boa constrictor
and so is my bastard temperament
and we are locked in a morbid embrace.
I really don't know who'll break free first.
Sometimes I get smothered
in a deep and desperate resignation
like a lover outstaying their welcome
and who can fight it
and what is the point
and where is my darling
But it's not her fault
and she can't help me anyway
I will put down my head and wait til morning
when a new universe might gloriously emerge
or someone will look at me just right
or the postman might come.

the presents

a shoulder
a hand
an offered elbow
an eye for beauty
an ear for bullshit
perennial poems
admiration always
undying affection
invincible hope
all the songs I ever sing
and every one of our stars
These are my gifts
since I can't send flowers
in return for all the love letters
from admirers of others.

Headbreak

Heartache's like a pain in the head,
Sharp, persistent and sends you to bed.

Zodiac

I've been raking around this mind of mine
to pinpoint precisely, exactly, specifically
what handful of words should be said.
I know the lingo. The jargon.
The key- and buzzwords. Every cliche.
The question, really, is of order and form.
Designing a detailed structure, concisely,
to make up the key that unlocks a heart.
What curious combination turns
the world upside down and shakes you out
into the star-studded sky of my arms.
I'll make constellations of the language
draw a link between love and patience
imagine a line from heartache to heaven
and marry resignation to devotion,
hoping one day you'll see the future
written in the bright night sky.

self

Every day I become less a thing of substance
My body is decommissioning, winding down
No synapses are firing; the mind is shot
Batteries are dead, the reasons run out
Self is the back of a bitter stranger
If I walked out this grey, barren night
and lay down in the road like a madman
there's no way I would count the stars
More likely I'd lifelessly eyeball the tar
or close my eyes and barely feel a final rain
No matter, just non-corporeal dead-weight
In the morning I'd barely be remembered
Just recalled sketchily as something...
...something? Was there something here
that used to be a person? I could swear...
But there would be nothing, no memory
just a patch in the road a shade lighter than the rest.

Wretched Orpheus

I must be the cruellest of men, Eurydice, my beloved. To promise the earth only to allow you to perish; not once but twice. First in my absence and then through negligence. My blind, willful thoughtlessness.

I took you for my wife and my love for you was unequalled. Unequalled and utterly unbridled. But you were beset by reservations that bit and coiled like vipers around your conscience and they took you from me.

This is death, your prison. The dusted redoubts and crumbling crenellations; the undesired traps of guilt I lay all around like macabre wires. But the love I bore for you compelled me to deliver you from your solitude.

Like a fool I thought to deal with the gods. And to think they humoured me. Made me believe my childish verse and hopeful song, even as they foresaw my folly. But my charms were flawed and finite.

I have passed the gates of hell and traversed the underworld for you. To bring you home, my love. But my journey is naught when compared to your long, bleak existence, once I recalled to you the sky and the sun and our warm hearth.

For what have I done but reminded you of what you can no longer love? Tempted you with riches, however humble, when you inevitably must remain in the desolate realm of Hades. Live as a ghost and eternally die.

They told me not to look back and so I endeavour. I must not look back. But all the time I feel my head turning, eyes frantic, rolling in their sockets. Are you still at my elbow? My gaze is ever-bound to fall on you and freshly condemn you to oblivion.

Something Missing

I miss you.
I miss the structure of your words
and your diction, just so.
I miss your calm and the sound of your smile.
I long for fingers never felt
and your unseen teeth and tongue.
I miss the man I was
when I used to wake so early
just to get back to loving you.
The hope, the anticipation,
the racing of my heart
with every thought of you.
Our shared aversion, exasperation.
I miss being the buoy with all the answers
and it seems so very distant
though my heart holds you ever closer.
I miss you my love.

The one with the maelstrom

Let's recap
because I forget where we are.
Right now, are we drowning in despair
or simply resigned to sadness?
Are we pissed-off at the past
or looking to the future?

The fog between us is thickening
like ice on a window; I can't see clearly.
Maybe it's not the window.
Maybe you and I are shifting in the air
as dandelion heads blow this way and that.
The way déjà vu feels just out of reach
or hot air makes a jet engine quiver.

Sometimes I'm still some giddy balloon
because you are mine and I yours
and I wonder if love's the same when you're old.
Like, wrinkly and grey. Do you still walk taller?
Laugh more easily? Forget about death?

Other times I see you as incense dispersing
without even your scent to remember.
I'll imagine a hint on occasion
and have love flood back to me,
making any surrounding seem dull
and anyone present a dullard.

I have original thoughts all the time
of your perfume and orgasms.
Or of how I might fold and stitch
the fabric of space-time, knit us together
into a blissful woolly jumper of delight
with shoulder detail of stars and kisses.

I need to hear your voice to remember
what it was that made me better.
But I could not bear to disappoint you.
And I forget just where we are.
I forget where we are.

Giants

You would've loved it today.
I took a walk among giants
looking upward all the way.
The light shone through their faces
and they spoke to me of things
I thought I understood.

They smiled when I talked of love
and shook their great heads when I told them
how long I would wait for you.
Time's no urgent thing for them
do you see?

Some were gnarled and armoured
as if dressed for battle.
Another'd a gaping wound in his breast
his heart torn open for all to see.
One had his limbs all hacked off;
some sort of surgical sanction
for what I do not know.

I walked in dappled sunshine
with the silence for company.
I forgot where I was.
Then I came upon a young one
in a clearing, greener than the others
and although he was yet to grow strong
he had a noble air about him.
Here is a future king of giants, I thought.
He had set himself apart and I was afraid
but a squirrel darted up his leg
and I saw he was a kindly fellow
with silver skin and golden hair.

We talked a while as the afternoon idled.
He thought our story a sad and beautiful one;
sympathised with our short lives
and said you'd be welcome to visit.
He told me his people were the guardians of eternity
that they could gift it to a lucky few -
the people made of stars.
He said we would understand
when we laid our eyes upon each other.

I left them there, searching the towering sky.
Over my shoulder, I saw how they spread their hands
to protect the dead and the grieving.

A poem about a garden or whatever

In the garden are all my wishes
Owls awake with bright eyes
frogs leaping, bees working
a hare stretching upward
Life pushes away all the emptiness
colour spills out with confidence
Everything here has everything it needs
I have nothing to give to the garden
The garden has everything I want

Oi!

What's with all the pessimism
when you know full well
we're awesome together?
You're nuts if you think you're not the greatest
The bees knees, top banana!
Together we could do BIG STUFF...
e.g. start a famous rumour,
an organic food company,
or campaign for better bread.

We could leave murals in funny places
like office ceilings
in the night, like paint-ninjas.
Run the streets like children
Water fight psychology
Arts & Crafts and bongo drums
and finding out where Lucan went - OH!
WE COULD CURE ALL THE STUPID!
Yeah, big job.

But we'd be King and Queen
You'd teach me how to read again,
I'd learn you how to talk proper.
And we would think that every day
was a bit better than the last
until we ran out of teabags.

Colourful Language

Good Morning.


Hello sexy spectrum,        
I will paint you ecstatic,   
and leave you rosy.          

Tickle your green,           
slow orange massage.
Run tongue 'round raspberries,
and kiss your curve of purple.

I lavish lashings of juicy yellow,
spank and squeeze cerise,
run my fingers down the turquoise,
and hold tight to your teal.

Let my lips linger on pale nuptials,
and make a scarlet flush.

Pressing blue on blue,
I slip between the violet,
then finally admire
your smouldering gold.

Walking All Around

Late night. Tired poem.



These days I roam a restless landscape
with views full of feeling. I lose my way
in a sulky wood where the trees mope
and the forest floor is tangled always in gloom.

I see signs you passed through;
broken branches, damaged bedrock.
You have disturbed all the land
and burned the sorry ground.

I cross plains of apathy
climb peaks of jagged anger
and slip down a despondent gully.
The horizon is unclear.

That river is enraged at your indifference.
This spring gushes to your attention.
your silence leaves a gorge deeply wounded
and the sea dashes hopelessly on an unmoved cliff.

Canyons are aghast because you throw yourself
on thorns. Ruin yourself with rocks
when the country only showed some kindness.
A lake reflects beauty but you see something ugly.

There is a shaken volcano on a fault line
and every day it stops itself erupting.
Just sears and seethes. Grumbles at intervals,
wondering when is the moment to explode.

I wander this sensational territory
and always return to a hillside muddled
with discarded care and cast-out love.
Now where to go?

Sunshine

If you think I am like the sun
perhaps you have a point.
Impotent and unable
to change trajectory - and
it's like I've always been here.
Since long before anyone
felt the heat of my fire.

If you say I'm like the sun
you're right. I burn for you.
Even as I age and die.
Even as the earth turns away her face
and when night falls I just burn elsewhere
but no less fierce.
I sometimes wonder; was I ever alight
if no-one felt my warmth at their back.

If I am like the sun I do not choose
to blaze, here, alone in vast emptiness.
It just is. Has always been and will be
and I ask nothing. And I want nothing
but to smile, cast my light your way
and know your feet will be warm
and your shadow chased away.

If you think me like the sun, then I endure
exquisite agony as I incinerate.
No reprieve, were I even wanting.
My light is everywhere. My fire, infinite
and I ask nothing, want nothing
but to consume every cinder
until galaxies collide,
the stars turn to black
and all is asleep,
forever dreaming of my love for you.

Duh...

Are you stupid or something?
How can you not comprehend?
Do I speak a foreign tongue?
You must be proper thick, you know
if you don't see the truth is that
you are my stars and moon and sun
my air and light and everything
You utter god damn imbecile!
Why don't you understand you are
the universe, its shiny glory!
blood that keeps my brain supplied
the cosmic force that turns the world
you make a melon tasty-sweet
and sing me off to sleep each night.
Won't you get it through your skull?
I'd eat a thousand hats for you
build a palace in my heart
and bang my head against the wall
Hold on, who's the eejit here?
The moron, or the moron who loves her?

Hot, Hot, Hot! (The Bed's Too Big)

Evening has idled into night
with a hot, heavy stillness.
Oxygen loiters on the floor,
all acoustics are hung,
the view shimmers in a heat haze.
Our wishful moon is all ablaze,
clouds smouldering, stars alight
My eyes sting and my body swelters.
If my mind is a swamp in the summer
then thoughts of you are swarming,
making me sweat and itch
and I am sinking, simmering.
Imagine someone burning in bed.
There is a you-shaped space beside me
and it is cool to the touch.

Love Poem No.4,573

Honey you're like a potato

in that you make me full

your love, it pads me out somewhat

a bit like cotton wool

My little jalapeño

you don't half hit the spot

you give my life some flavour

and you're really smoking hot

Like corrugated cardboard

most durable are you

environmentally friendly

and you're rather groovy, too

You're just like Jack the Ripper

I wish you were my wife

you write such lovely letters

and you're handy with a knife

You're like a pair of slippers

you sooth me when I'm sore

and when I'm in your company

my feet don't touch the floor

Oh darling you're my uplift

the thermal on my wing

if I were a hang glider

I'd be such a high-up thing

You are my bit of tofu

so healthy for my heart

oh Honeybunch I miss you

so you're like the board in darts

My Heart Is In No Trouble (or, I Still Love You)

My heart is in no trouble
It will beat, beat strongly and steadily
and slowly beat on

Steady like a blacksmith's hammer
shaping a thing forged in fire
that will solidify and be forever durable

Strong like a heart of oak that casts a long shadow
which I might carve a name into
A sentinel to endure many seasons
with the resolve to preserve a promise
and envelop a vow with deep roots and secret rings

My heart is in no trouble
there is no murmur of indecision
no lonely strain or panicked palpitation

It beats strongly and steadily and is not broken
it will not be broken or bruised
it will beat, beat on
beat on

A Tale

Once upon a time they said a phoney goodbye. An undercover kiss as an adieu. Really just a close-knit au revoir.

He said it with bemusement, disbelieving; she with wishful thinking and good intent. They were all at once fond and grateful and desperately disheartened, and the weather was awfully changeable that spring.

Afterwards he would write every day. He wrote sleeve notes for vinyl records and she would buy them on her way home from the factory and play them as she fingered the overwrought words.

Sometimes she fancied he thought of her as he wrote and that the praise of a melody was somehow his way of longing for her. His way of sending her notes as he had once sent her letters.

And, of course, it was entirely true. His bitten nails attested to his restlessness. He would think about smoking cigarettes during late nights beside the gramophone. Mostly he did not even hear the music; he wrote about his lost love and pictured scenarios of bumping into her at the train station, sometimes becoming aware of a particularly pleasing tune just as he imagined a tentative kiss or tender embrace.

There was a change of government and the workers went on strike. A well-to-do lady caused somewhat of a scandal and ran away with an American. It was a singularly cold and damp autumn.

One day, on arriving for work a little late and very wet, she was handed an envelope by the supervisor and eyed suspiciously. His moustache was unkempt. She blushed and hurried to the water closet. Somehow, before she even opened it, she knew who it was from.

The note read:

Dear Elsie,

I hope you still work at the factory and receive this in good health. I lost my job at the record company and am doing shifts in the yard instead. I think of you always, especially that day in the park with the summer fête. You looked so pretty that day in your new dress. I don't know why we said goodbye; I miss you terribly. Please write back. My only wish is to know that you're happy. I didn't know love until I met you. I wonder if you would have a cup of tea with me?

Yours always,
Bert

She screwed up the letter without realising what she was doing. Her heart was in her mouth and there were tears on her cheeks but she didn't know why.

That morning he fixed a loose floorboard and thought about the tea shop. It was expensive but he didn't care. He was picturing her face when he hit his thumb with the hammer and it hardly hurt at all.

And now, The News

Today the world insistently
demands the latest news of me
not only must the news be free
it should be good as well, you see.
I wrack my brain for tales of glee.

The whole wide world wants lovely news
Well here's a bit; I got new shoes
Alright, the brogues aren't really new
I stuck my old ones with some glue
and luckily I still had two.

I heard of such a lucky guy
who out detecting metal spied
A million dollars buried, aye!
but seven paces to his side
and guess what? It was his first try.

But still, I wouldn't swap to be
a million dollars richer, see,
of all the good news there could be
I have the best, and yes it's free;
The girl I dearly love, loves me
and that's the news I choose to read.

Hello Morning Moon

I woke up really early the other day. It's pretty quiet when the world is asleep and there's no-one but you and the moon.


The morning moon pays me a visit
at first light, in a sea of silent blues.
My old friend, my love.
Brightest of bright things.

She is pushing back a blanket of black.
She is shooing at the stars, as if
wiping away fresh tears for the day
The brilliant, beautiful introvert.

She admonishes me for looking,
for dreaming in her radiance.
But I am the bound, empty earth
and I will only ever have one moon.

I used to gaze upward and hesitate,
lost in a forest or at sea in a storm.
But she taught me an end to uncertainty
and proves it in her gravity.

Ah! We two satellites, forever dancing
the slow, mournful dance of grief.
And I don't understand if she longs
for a collision or a break of orbit.

But I can't erase her from the sky
anymore than she can go to ground
or either of us journey to Jupiter,
however much a relief it might be.

Her pale, thin silver speaks of pain.
Of nihilistic lament and fire and ash.
But I think she knows I await the mornings.
I think she knows I await.

Marks

I swear the prints on the ends of my fingers
are not mine but another's indelible marks.
I feel them like bruises or scars from a burn
or warm kisses on cold, pimpled skin.

These fingerprints make a canvas of me.
My body is smothered in their tiny ruin
tired eyes gently etched, carved in lines.
Callouses where love has worked at me.

There are marks all over the house at night
climbing the walls and the paper trees.
On the book by my bedside I can't bear to read.
The window where moonlit clouds are framed.

The songs in my head and my playlists
were left by a thief who got clean away.
They go off like bombs and shatter my insides
and when the dust settles, her prints will remain.

I'm sorry

I'm sorry I've not written
like I used to when you loved me.
It's not that I've not written, rather -
I cant quite make a line so perfect
as your hair and that woolly jumper.
I can't write a song that does justice
to your funny photos on the beach.
I made a cake but I don't think
it's good enough for breakfast.
I made a bird house from tin cans
but the rust will not be red
as a cardinal or the beak of a puffin.
And they will not visit, just like you.
When I hammered it together
I couldn't tell if I was sending arrows to your heart
or putting nails in a coffin.

Crying Out

I don't want to look at photos of you zipping down powerlines with crazy ideas.
I don't want to look at outlines of us kissing in space it's just 2-D and greyscale.
I want to look into your real eyes and count the shades of blue measure the depth of black.
Watch them roll when you say Oh! and see them smile when you realise - yes - I love you.
She sings of a long and slender body and I think of you. Always you.
Why don't you visit in my dreams I only dream of the past and wake up sad.

Fruits of Labour

Oh, apple tree!
Today I saw your fruit and blossom
proudly worn like precious pendants

the way stars hang from golden threads.
I should have known you were shaping love

'cause the clouds have been busy
as have the bees, alluring summer

with their detailed ministrations.

Your flowers are ever so pretty
and such impressive apples! Gosh -
is this one just for me?

I love it; thirst-quenching goodness

that goes straight to my heart and soul
as sweet on the eye as in the mouth.
Its sustains my constitution

(you know, keeps the doctor away).

You make me so proud when you bloom.

Oh, apple tree...

Certain Tone

You have a certain tone, you know
a particular peal that heralds your thoughts
Bold but soft at the edges
A lilt, falling away like a bright idea
that runs out of gas. Kinda sweet.
Always ringing of gorgeous heartache.
Even now, when it's actually work
or thanks for your purchase!
It will always be the sound of you,
exciting the nervous energy in my molecules
and making me imagine what happiness is like.

iPad

Pads of the eye spy!

And I see them, don't think I don't.

I know you're watching.

The tablets are recorded and reported.

Do you remember when I rolled up drunk

and I loved you enormously

through those forgotten ramblings?

We were talking about beaches.

You burn a hole in my pocket

every single awful day.

Time

Time is not a healer
She's cruel and perverted,
sticking the knife in gleefully.

Time doesn't heal
She withers and wastes us
like dead things decomposing,
gently, imperceptibly imploding,
witless while we diminish

No, Time is not a healer
She's the Queen of Sorrows
in a tower of regret and remorse
heralded by jarring dreams
of old wounds and foolish hopes.

Time will put you under her boot
and press you into filthy misery.
She will promise future reprieve
and then piss the past on you
laughing cruelly with a tick-tock.

I'm telling you, Time is a jailer
jangling all her endless keys
like so many memories.

Bee Populations Are Shrinking

Something terrible will happen when all the bees are dead
so let them die.
Let them wither and and fall from the sky
and crawl terminally across pavements.
Let their velvet turn to dust in the wind.
Let all the flowers search the empty blue in vain
until their disappointed faces crumple
and they bend to the ground in despair.
Let the world hurtle through space,
lose integrity, shatter and fragment.
Let me never see another bee until I die
for they remind me of honey once loved.

Dolphins

Looking at pictures of dolphins, leaping
free of aquatic mundanity. Goodness,
to feel the sun on your streamlined skin
when all you've known is the cold wet
of murky depth. What a fantasy
to make-believe you could fly like the birds
your eye has spied beyond the rippled ceiling.
Perhaps that's why the water is so deep and wide;
so that brief moment in the sun is beyond all bliss.

Hardly a Cloud

The nearest star is filling the sky today
Burning, blazing, sizzling, smiling.
The wildlife is frisky with the heat of it
But you're barely thinking of me at all
You only send a fading, spotted telegraph
So long - you'll be OK - stop
and with that you sail away contentedly
Unless...
Unless your thoughts today are all sunlight
It's nice to think you happy after all.
I strip off my shirt and bathe in you
soak you all up through my pores
I'll have you strengthen my lonely bones.

Watching the Sky

today you're spread far too thin
wispy on the wind and barely tangible
you feel a distance from the surface of the earth
so little substance, you can be looked right through
are you eating enough, my love?

you move imperceptibly like a sadness
one always there and slow to depart
you are pale and hold no weight at all
breaking up without me seeing
come closer my lovely

It must be cold where you are
you can shout and cry if you want -
just gather some mass and fill my eye
be a blanket, a panorama
just be nearer to me.

Blue is a heartsick colour after all.

Mister Dawkins Falls in Love

A man watches water falling on a Sunday
from his spot where the sun once shone.
All his life, he pondered the wonders
of existence. The meaning of a void
that didn't want filling.
The foreigner called Devotion.
So he sits, this Sunday afternoon,
thinking how can I be so damn sure
of a myth so thoroughly debunked?
Perhaps at last he's found faith.

Meeting Asleep

Tonight I know the first part
familiar now the trapezius.
Skin, muscle and tendon
but more, the sensation
of love beside my body
against my tired spirit
curled up by my soul
a fireside cat, content.
Just like coming home
to a first kiss of sorts
returning with my lips
just above the shoulder.

Heart of Science

We're so proud of our science
like beaming parents at a nativity.
We put the hows on a plinth
like Jupiter or Mars
and frame paintings of whys,
give them pride of place.
But the physics of love
don't change a thing.
It only matters that we feel,
not how it came to be.

End of Endings

An ending.
An end to pretending and sweeping certainty under the rug.
It's just recognition that the wheel keeps on turning.
With such grace and poise, even as she scorches the earth
she destroys dreams with charm and a smile that tickles my ear.
I guess I'll find out what forever feels like.

But if Armageddon goes down in the morning,
if fire pours out from heaven and hell, and the Devil himself
seeks me out, howling on the battlefield, I can at least say:
meh, I've seen worse. I already got burned.
And not even he could think that nothing follows an ending.

Say, like the big bang in reverse; all these comets,
and constellations, kindled stars and circling planets,
all flirting in cosmic courtship. All the gas giants, white dwarfs
and the timid, potent black holes. Do you really think
one day they'll all be swallowed, sucked into infinity?
Wherever would they go at the end of days?

What would happen to irresistible, cogent gravity?
Surely you can't cram away all the sprightly atoms
of the cosmos into such a small thing as The End.
Not now the void is bursting at the seams.
Even if it did fit, don't they say it would catapult
right back out, big and bold as ever?

If I were a betting man, I'd take a punt on that.
Because if favourite books stay with you
then do they ever really end? Do you ever
turn the page on a furious, canny character
or his improbable journey home for love -
no, not even that - just a glimpse, a hope for love.
That's why you fall for an idealist while he labours at reality.

I could lasso the moon and drink the sea
and flatten the earth searching for you.
Waiting. And it's okay that the world is ending
It's alright, it's fine. Because it happened before.
The sky fell in and the celestial sphere floundered,
wobbled on it's axis, but orbit was maintained.
And the sun and moon continued their dance at distance.

Funny, when you think, as the planet cracked
they weren't frightened. The population of two

still found time to discuss the merits of film and song
and the local news. The universe wouldn't have heard
lovers torn apart but only the chatter of birdsong
and sunlight filtering through the clouds once more.

I don't even mind the clouds now. In fact they reassure.
They are your thoughts smiling down on me
saying we're not crazy or don't be such a drama queen
and the rain is your tears. I decide that you cry oceans for me
and write your best stuff as you go with the wind.
Away from me. But still circling the planet.

I see your thoughts everyday and send my mind up
to mingle. Oh, you look a little brighter today or
come on, doofus, don't cry. And I never, ever say
the wrong thing. Except one day, you will kick out
at a dark cumulonimbus and send thunder rattling down.
But I won't even mind that. I'll watch the light show
and hold your hand when you're drained of spark.

Your waters nourish this dry, broken land.
Still here when I need you. Looking out for me.
Hard to imagine that summer will ever emerge
from the depths of winter. But the sun and the rains,
the clouds and blue sky, they all inexorably return.
I'm sorry but your long-term weather forecast will never
make the newspaper. It's already gone to print.

Speaking of weather, it's coming down like hell today.
It makes want to write a soundtrack to catastrophe
I mean, there's the music of water and The Weatherman
but perhaps I could score some pleasing heartache.
Overlay some straining string and raindrop beats.
I feel a deep, shivering bass in the pit of my stomach.

I have it on good authority that people should chase happiness,
follow its faint trail and hunt it down like a great, rare beast,
cut off its head and stick it on the wall. Otherwise, one day
grown-ups might ask you Mum, why does that empty space
above the mantelpiece reflect so brightly in your eye?
and what will you advise if they ever catch the scent?
You told me mothers want their children to be happy.

Not that I question the bravery of martyrs. Admirable, no doubt.
People once told me I was brave for going into orbit.
Ooh, I think you're dead brave they said, but nobody knew
I was taking the safer option. I had done the numbers.
I only aimed for the stratosphere while all the aurorae,
shooting stars and solar flares went unexplored, far above me.
And look, they're still up there, regretfully smouldering.

Gah! Do I ever wish life was a story I could write
instead of watching a distant disaster unfolding on the telly.
Everyone likes a flawed hero, but a little airbrushing
wouldn't go amiss. Just a touch less prone to crippling weakness
and a princess whose ropes wouldn't beg not to be cut.
I suppose a happy ending would be somewhat less credible.

Some say that fairy tales are mere deceptions
constructs setting an unlikely bar and
fattening hope while starving reality to death.
But my optimism got topped up. An historian
might argue that they're folktales. For sure,
dressed up in silk and steel, but just fact from a distance.

And I am a student of history. I once thought it taught me
what was wrong with everything these days.
But yesterday gave me the most valuable lesson:
that true love exists - that's right - and it's a stubborn thing.
You can be told so in songs or poems and it might seem obvious.
But now I understand those old men in movies that say I just knew...

So love is real and forever, yep. And you can't argue;
It's been irrefutably proven by our historical study.
The results are in and quite conclusive, n'est pas?
Alright, you can doubt Science and God or whatever
or The Universe at work or whatever. But you can't escape
the experience of History; it just happened to us both.

That's definite. A tangible certainty among the hypotheticals.
History repeats; and that's a kind of open ending.

Fight From Seed

There are things I have to do, like
push away the pressure of the earth,
use the cloying, airless dirt and use it
to grow. To strengthen my being.

I must gather in the necessary
and leave behind no-good sediment
I must learn to show my head
above the surface now and then.

Let my shape be straight, like
an arrow to the atmosphere;
durable, full of life and limber.
Let my fibres flex.

I will open my arms and eyes
and heart. Uncurl and let myself be
washed with light and bathed in sky.

The birds will talk. They'll chatter
and ponder my slow progress.
The wind will tease or nudge,
at times perhaps huff and puff.

Seasons will always wax and wane
Frost. Snow. Heat. Drought.
I must endure. Acclimatise. 
But all the time I will wonder:
Why? For what reason?

Well, for love of the earth I come from;
the ground that holds my body.
And for the air, cool and clearing.
For the bees who visit, fussing
and buzzing, always interested.

And for myself.

But always, my eye will turn up
to you, radiant Sun. Out of reach
but shining down your sustenance.
And what's wrong with that?

What's wrong with taking strength,
with aspiring? Your light doesn't fall
for me exclusively but if a little
warms my upturned face,
where's the harm? I will always
have the earth. And the bees.

But if you make me stand
some small bit taller, straighter,
and stretch my roots wider,
maybe I will feel like belonging
to this flowerbed. 

Poem for no-one

If I could pen the content of my heart
pour out the symphony of feeling
or wring out the ache onto manuscript
what music it would make

If I was fluent in the language of my soul
could comprehended my psyche
and articulate the kernel of my essence
what oratory you would hear

If I could paint my love upon canvas
emote as dashes of bursting colour
and let our kisses linger in brushstrokes
I would put masters to shame

Passion as invention, devotion as poetry
If I could create with mind and bone
then you'd know my heart
and all the world's lovers would covet
your gallery of love's art

Onward, then

So I felt like writing something today and decided to set myself a task. Since I had to take a trip, I decided that today's prompt is to write about a journey.

Not to Schedule

I rode a train today, to a newly-old life
of course in the tedious, required rain

I thought of all the old stations we visit
hard-to-get-to and with limited service
exits not marked, no shelter from the elements
tracks leading nowhere or going in circles.

It got me thinking about a journey
I'd been plotting in my mind's map
which I think got cancelled due
to a creeping frost on the lines.

It made me think of you thinking
of a stranger on a train and wondered
if you'd prefer him to remain strange
and perfect. Well, too late I guess.

I never kept any skeletons, I told you
so you can't pretend you didn't know
I might come off the rails or forget
to apply the brake at the bend.

Now we're not running to timetable
and who knows when normal service will resume.

Why can't we ditch this obsolete transport
go to a place no planned route takes you
ride our bikes to a quiet, steep-ish hill,
lift our feet off the pedals and let go...

Well, I know. Get to the station first.
But one day, when the weather's nice.