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.