Tuesday Morning at Half Past Midnight

Your dress was covered in polka-dots,
the straps hanging loosely from your shoulders,
as I stood in the doorway with the light
from outside splintered across
my solemn face.

Your eyes were deep encased with
black rings from the make up you had
worn. You hadn’t expected the tears,
although we both might have known.

I didn’t know what to say
as I watched you
draped on the bed,
the epitome of sorrow.

And instead of holding you hair back
and kissing your forehead, as I
should; instead of holding your shoulders
and asking what went wrong,

I walked off to the rest of this lonely house
and left your tears with you
and my fears with me.

Forget Sentiment

Sometimes
you pour your heart out
in to a few empty tea cups
to see how it settles and warms.

Sometimes you chew
on the remnants of days
to taste their dull bitterness again.

Clouds pass
and rain falls in the garden.
The wind whispers her name
and you fall asleep
knowing that it isn’t for pity
but for a brighter sense of the world
that you strive everyday.

Spreading out a map of the world,
you colour in all the places
you’ve been in your dreams.
Paris is deep blue
and all the southern states
are gently shaded in pastels.
The coasts have been highlighted
so that they’re slightly heavier.

This poem that you have been writing
is filled with too much of her.
It imprints the ominous outline of her smile
and pulls the strands out of you one by one.

Forget history.
Forget sentiment.
Perhaps some things were meant
for you alone. To hold and harden
like the brightest diamond.

Question

What to do
with a single yellow rose
if you have no one
to give it to?

©BRussell

Beauty

I saw a pretty young thing
on the bus again
today.
Her nose was tilted up
ever so slightly
and her hair was like
the hair of a girl,
I won’t lie,
that I would wish
to run through my
fingers.

Hours later,
I thought of her again,
while standing in the shower.
The water streaming down my face,
my eyes screwed up tight,
I thought of her flaxen fringe and
nearly died.

Beauty is so often met
on your way to work
or on your quiet way home.
Even during walks through the park
to feed the raucous, white and brown ducks with
bread and tasteful bits of yourself.
Just like so many days of the year
and of your life.

And all you can do is smile
and watch it wander by,
fitfully wishing it might glance back.

From the morning

In a dream of the world
to be perfect
and you coming over the brow of a hill
and your hair.

This is the inner of me.
The twinkle of humour
and innocence
in everyday
and the wish
of you in mine.

Mark.

I have a creeping guilt.

So lucid and empty,
I roll my eyes and snort
and scowl effervescent.
Pain deep pitted in my stomach.

I haven’t been there when he’s
needed me
I’ve left him alone
as his eyes grow a deeper and deeper red.

I’ve been blind to sorrow
and love
but not to distaste.

No, not to distaste.

Lola, you have broken my heart

Lola (Lifewords)

has gone!

Removed her blog!

Deleted her account!

This saddens me greatly.
Where are you all going?

Routine

The movie is over.
The dog has been put out
and the cats are curled away together
in some dark nook of the house.

I have put out the lights
deliberately, one by one
in all the rooms.
Becoming a little darker as I go.

The appliances thunder away in the night,
cheaply and cheerfully.
Somewhere a toilet trickles full.
Somewhere a water tank is still awake,
I am sure.

My bedroom is cold and quiet.
I sit awake after the
well ordered evening time
listening to the sure, steady beat
of my own heart,
in my own chest,
without you.

When words have no effect.

This is a view of you in your dark green glasses
from the little photographic plate
inside my head.
Your tight freckles
humming along,
and your short hair
that I stupidly felt the need to explain.

You’re a painter and a poet
and better than me
and I don’t blame you.
I deserve this empty house
I’m sure.

But the more I look at this little globe
and the long, dark, slick expanse
of the wet courtyard in front of me
the more I feel my distance from you.
I’ve never missed someone’s hands more.

If it weren’t raining so hard
in the small green overgrown garden out my window
I’d go outside
and hang my heart out on a rose bush to dry,
because if you looked you’d see
that it’s raining pretty heavily
in here too.

Musings.

Every early blow-filled morning
and every late steaming night
all the love I have ever
lost
comes back to me

like
a swift kick in the head.