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.