A Fiction

This evening I silently drift
In the pleasant fiction of peace

Here upon the very field
On which no end of battles
Have been waged
In the war of my heart

In the colourful company
Of snapping dragons
Of little sleeping apples
And a hundred winking Williams

And these perfect, circling
Outbursts of outrageous colour
Of which I do not know the name
But love.

They're shooting for the sky
So joyous. Dauntless.
Each one a tranquil firework
Pleasing no-one but themselves

And me. Drinking in the sky
And a blackbird's merry melody
Like iced tea and lemons
I might imagine I'm anywhere

Swimming somewhere cool
After a hard day's work

Day Twenty

Allow the pieces
to fall into place
a good shake
to tame and take
it all in its turn
as patterns appear
from under the dome
you're off, dip toes
in multiple meanings
lashed into form
from adjoining turmoil
to the left, right
up or down
forget the score
be boggled by
these ordered, woven words

Day Seventeen

Ever in the long dark,

Cloud blanket filtered,

Refined through separation,

Silver light on knowing repose.

Day Sixteen

Hello,

I am writing to satisfy a need in me to hold on to something of you. Furthermore, I'm obliged to declare that despite all attempts to return our exchanges, they endure. They remain.

Your letters are stubbornly fireproof. The paper is permanent. The ink is resistant to nails and saltwater. Every day is an exercise in disregarding some peerless idiom.

This is nigh on harassment. To be beset by these mountains of envelopes, blackening the sky, churning out language like fumes that make the head swim - it's obscene. It's perfect.

I can sit for hours watching the words fall out. One day might bring an avalanche. The next, one single word might just roll up, soft and earnest, and cause the sky to wreck itself.

I refer you, for no reason, to the day you said you loved me. It was a correspondence I'd been dumb enough to hope for. My fingers on each letter, a flurry of tumbling heartbeats. I thought it sincere, and I was ever yours.

Day Fifteen

The meaningful

is not just the enjoyable

It's wilderness swimming. It's harder

to breathe with the pressure

on your lungs and a current

resistant to labouring limbs

Keep watch for whirlpools

as they're watching you

Eyes armed and dangerous

Ever they collude to bring you low

Be mindful of the dispirited

essence of life beneath a parasol

Where the umbra drips, drips

to the sound of others being merry

Life's a beach

Did you expect plain sailing?

Day Fourteen

Edward the Confessor

Neglected to name a successor

With Saxons promptly torn asunder

He must surely confess to a royal blunder

Day Twelve

I have always liked listening

to the languid and the level.

I have always perceived the precision

to be perfectly pleasing.

But I've got to grin

at attaining goals by gasping.

Day Eleven

Various times in life I have perceived

distance as crucial and inconsequential.

I have loved fiercely in hinterlands

And taken umbrage into a bear hug

But the purlieu of myself, I think,

Was lost to a great many some time ago.

I never had the tools to make us a home.

I cannot be content in a moment;

It's not an airlock, corked from time and distance.

I cannot pitch a wheel and eject myself

From my element. I could founder in deep water

Or be happily cast away. Then either could follow

And either follow that. I once fancied myself safe and sound.

I had time. I was a good distance from the storm

But it had, in truth, been forecast

And I never had the tools to make us a home.

I lost the plot. A great many, in fact.

Now I whittle away the days making tools

Let the houses take care of themselves

And I dare not attend to how high they're built

Or just how long they'll stand. 

I just gotta keep working away

Or I'll never have the tools to make us a home.

Day Ten

The look of my love is mythology.
Her eye is low and fierce
and often in shadow.
Her hands around herself,
knees drawn up acutely
For the safety of all involved.
My touch seems to slide
from the slope of her shoulder.
Her elbows are always danger.

When the flowers come out

Her fingers are the frost

laying bare their frailty.

Her lips are entirely absent

And the turn of her cheek

is missing the roll of my thumb.

Day Nine

You are a beautiful woman with a mind full of wonderful things.

Long ago, something bad happened and now you always look back.

I will never know the you before the thing.

We mourn those who've been gone for so long or were never even here.
I picture you and I composing a love; it is painted pretty but not too bright.
Pastels, perhaps, evoking a sense of sad resignation.

We long for the incomparable.
I wonder if you'd have me change everything.
I make-believe I could.

Day Eight

Half-closed eyes shake in their sockets,
Two by two, on this beleaguered train
To the noise of too much information.

The sound of the sun, too bright and sticky
The sound of too-hot metal on metal
The sound of life all rattling past, just
flashes of cars and crackling pylons
Carrying too much information.

These too-tired servers,
These fraught heaps of neurons,
Are over-loaded/under-informed.
Updating for breakfast, bytes for lunch
And sleep is simply buffering.

It's all too much, this information
Misdirection. Scant reflection.
Feeling like a wink of peace is
cause for self-reproach, and always
More, devour more information.

The sound of everything being important
The sound of the tracks, like industrial code
A mother threatens abandonment
Should a sweet boy dare to fall asleep.

Day Seven

Day Six

Today I gave away myself

Freely, like it was unimportant

I gave away as much of my life

As I could, because I'll make a new one

I gave away nothing I would miss

Although I gave it breath

I gave away what I have cursed,

Cried over, cherished and bled

I gave away something that will not persist

That which is me but which

Will not be mine.

 

Day Five

Where the valley cracks apart

Like two long legs
seductively and languid-like
Right here, right now
Is a kind of sweet abandon

The skin of the earth among these folds
Is prickled and precipitates
Your feet are like fingers
Tracing their way
Across a body, glowing and surrendered

The land sighs.
There's nothing in this moment
But a gust in your throat
And the tether of emboldened limbs
And it's hard. And it's good.

Everything here is a torrent
And it swells. And it saturates.

Day Four

                             The playful threads

                                                                                              of tapestries

                                   Ever recall

                                                                                    that out of mind;

                                        A solemn oath

                                                                                    sworn to one

                                             On sacred relics,

                                                                                   promising

                                                 That which will,

                                                                           with certainty

                                                      Bring to ruin

                                                               my only kingdom

Day Three

Look; an entirely appropriate sun,

As we gather ourselves to gleefully mourn

The Bad Should Ought Must.

A controlling parent, an ego state,

Habitual hangdog habitat,

The Finger-pointing Frowning Angry.

She cared for us destructively, nurtured

Us with blows about the amygdala

Shoulders up, hands on hips.

In six short weeks we've murdered her,

Redeemed the child that can't wish/hope,

No way! Begone the Please Don't Know Won't.

Be something else. Curious. Changeable.

Become the Yeah! I Want Wow Fun,

And bury her everyday in I Love Yous.

Day Two

Clench your fists around this thing,

This wild conceit (complacency-free)

Here throw it, with yourself, into

An unknown, unused vessel.

Mind your toes here, firming in the coarse earth

Yes it may chafe but see; your skin is raw

And clean and it can feel again.

There's the liberal juice of tears here.

Don't waste it. Don't let it sour.

You've been torn in strips and all chewed up

But still you sit, mouth watering, so

No
Longer
Drink
of that bitter soup.

Day One

Tucking away
each wretched
retrospection
a cache of beautiful
lies gone bad

These articles have
tangibly roused
the heart to
bitterness, so
shoo them away

Here they'll fold
in on themselves,
the teeth with care
wrapped up to hide
identifying marks

And I'll fiercely wish
them forgotten
oh, let this hole be
fathomless. The
sickly gleaming

never to reach my eye
'til it's long closed
and ever restful.

Red & Blue

By degrees a heart's revealed,
drawing winter about itself.

I can be cold, it beats,
Decelerate. Turn blue, contract
'til such a time as science
guarantees this bruise made better.

'Til then I'm polar.
Glacial in my spartan chamber,
mere echoes of my cadence
to evidence what was.

But come, little heart,
turn into the sun.
The eye adjusts and Spring
awaits on the wide horizon.