So This Is Life

Long black waves
beat at the rocks
With their grey white cusps
Foaming and angry.

Behind the thick glass
Of the train window,
Stung with rain,
And inside my dark hood
I sit safe in the
Eye of the storm.

So
While the wind moans
And trys vehemently to
Blow out all the candles
We lit last night in the
Garden and our inebriated state,
I dream desperately
Of freckles and fingertips.

Simples

So there’s this girl,
right,
as there often is.
And she puts a certain
spring into my step

like when you know
that if things keep going
the way they’ve been going
you might end up
doing something
you most definitely
will regret.

But what the hell,
life is short right?
And if not, then at least
I have some time to make
amends. So I’ll make my
mistakes now and
learn from them.

Besides,
when she smiles
all I can think of
is her.

Just Another Hopeless Romantic

The small amount of skin
That hangs from the
underside of your arm
Is cold

And smooth as silk.
As I run my fingers along it
You wake and tell me
Not to be such a romantic fool;
That I wear love so
Heavy in my heart
And it really is rather
Unflattering,

Before rolling over and
drifting off again
With the most silent of sighs,
And the smallest of smiles
Still hanging from you lips.

Orion’s Belt

You had three dark spots
in a line
down your back,
more or less in line
with your gently curving spine.

Your very own Orion’s belt
you used to call it.
Each one of us,
you would say,
has our own constellation,
we have but to find it.

I didn’t care for it much,
I have to say,
but I liked the way
the corners of your mouth
turned up when you frowned,
so I stayed quiet.

But now,
when I look up to the night sky,
I find myself tracing you out,
amongst the stars.

Bretagne in the raw.

We lie
hand in hand,
your head in my lap,
under the shade of a low tree
beside a Normandy coastline,
in a field full of
white stone crosses.

And as the wind blows
huge, silent, grey-white clouds
across an otherwise clear sky,
and the hair across your still face,
I think about how many lives were lost
how much blood and tears were spilled,
so that we two could lie here,
so that I could watch you sleep in my arms
and dream of the future
and your silent charms.

Clutching at Straws

On a bench
at
Lansdowne Road Station,
waiting for the train with my
whiter-than-white
shoes on and my
whiter-than-right
view of it all.
I was sitting beside a girl,
as the story generally goes.
She looked a lot like
you.

I hope it wasn’t.
We missed an excellent opportunity
to hold hands
in the cool evening air,
to make faces at
the people speeding by,
to pretend to fall in love.

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

Samson

I could see clearly the
smooth pink of your lips
as they met and parted.
It reminded me of days
and of my love’s gentle sighs.
Your fingers also continued to fall
and rise and each time seemed
opaque and free.

And suddenly it was as if
love and fear and all the other
green prejudices of our minds,
that pour out on wet and windy nights,
were just droplets of rain
on a train window
and could be as easily wiped away.
Leaving only the creases
at the edges of your
subtle
brown
eyes.

Catering for Despair

Your eyes are roses.
All that red blossoms and grows.
The long green stems stretch back far,
curling through the gaps in your skull
and out your nasal passages.
The thorns that stick in my hands
are long and sharp and matted
with the blood of those
that have come before.

Your teeth flash
black and green.
Your smile sickens.
I reflect on how I am
somewhat a gardener,
as I prune back the bitterness.
Your hair is a tangle of weeds
which I delicately remove,
my hands growing red and
itchy with their juices.

Your roots are thick and strong.
They stretch deep. The problem is
you’ve implanted yourself
in the shadow of a great
weeping willow on the
darker side of the garden.
Beside a wall that limits and abuses.

You need to be brought out
into the sun of summer days,
I intend to relocate you to a
nice spot, beside the chrysanthemums
and my well kept lawn,
in the warmer part of the
garden and my heart.