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.

The Way of the Day.

Shall we dance,
friend of my heart?
Tracing trails of silver moonlight
with the toes of our feet
and the fingers of our beating hearts.

Tempting and heavy
is the gaze
and so full of eagerness
and badly hidden innocence.
Our awkwardness is
earnest at least.

On an island in the pacific
a young girl is laid down
for the first time
and listens to the stories of the old gods
and the stars.
And a dark skinned, blue eyed boy
sets his little paper boat
afloat on the swelling tide
and watches it burn
slowly.

In the light of that
smallest star of the sea
how can we smile indifferently
and throw ourselves at the world
with hats and scarves and envelopes full of truths?

But how can we not?

At 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning, when you finally lost your grip.

Leaping back
from the edge
in a gentle, enviable way.
As you had in the beginning,
leaping forward
into life
with a smile and a wink.
But now
that I look more closely
it seems more that you
lean, not leap.

Yes.
Leaning.
Resting on the laurels of your years.
Settling back into
the space between space
with a sigh
and a slight gasp.
But not falling.
No,
not falling.

Tired of writing.

Why do you persist
in this
line of questioning and attention.
There’s nothing for you here.

Small talk is not a skill,
neither is undressing
yet you do it so well.

I am here for my own self worth
not for you
or to move with you in circles.

Nor am I pushing your hair back
so as to land the smallest of indignities upon myself,
to kiss your lips.
Instead to see your face,
bland and pasty as it is,
and to lose it in the furrows and creases
of my mind.

Burn Love Words

Eerily I scratch away
at my A4 pad
with my large black gritty marker.
Its full, pricking, seizing odour:
vomit and nail-varnish remover.

Words.
Phrases.
Each one down solid and straight
despite my haste.
This at least must be done
right.

Love.
Adore.
‘To have and to hold’.
Pictures of hands held,
of lips met,
Of valentines cards
and roses and
a sense of reassurance.

Finally finished,
A 176 page scrapbook of love,
I tear off each sheet
gently and with care
and feed it lovingly,
scratch that….precisely,
into the flames and watch as they
turn and crumple
and blacken and fly off.

I have needed to set my love free
for so long now.
And so it is:
Free to the sky and the birds
and to the fields and the waves
and to each one of you.

Old Lady with her Lottery Ticket

Hunched over your
little piece of godsent,
scritch-scratching away
like your life depended on it.
Like a hungry rodent
peering around with those
desperate, suspicious eyes
for what?
Who might snatch this
thin sliver of hope,
that you might wash away all you know
and return it a hundred thousand fold.

But paper is a five folding game.

What if I,
full of my own self righteousness,
were to take it
quick and tear it
into the wind and away
saying
“Go. Live. You are free now.”
?

This is the day.

The smooth expanse of supple black leather that is my desk,
like a stretched and scraped skin left to dry and shine,
the biggest man you ever saw.
And the to-and-fros of bobbing heads from my window.
Tree branches like fingers
groping for that yellowing golden noose
of lamplight.

These are all I have left,
these and my old worn cassette player.
We had good times.

Perhaps I should eat a slice of butterless toast
and go dance new-born in the rain.
This is the day I forget about you.

Flight.

I’ll never smell lemons
the same way again.

I tell you
dying ain’t easy.
And having it take you by suprise
doesn’t make it any better.

Some manage it
with a slow trickling away
of life.
Sliding down the sleeves and out the cuffs.
Or maybe
Feeling its gentle journey down each leg, flooding shoes and boots alike,
scarletting socks.
It’s a slow release.

No such mess here.
No storm
signifying ‘madman’ness, all-over-the-shopness,
no series of screams.

Nothing so dramatic.
I am just cold.

Ugh.

I’m hanging on this chair.
Not just sitting
but actually hanging.
Dangling.

The room’s spinning around like gravity
has been pulled this way and that.
Like someone’s pulling me
this way and that.
My arms and legs.

I’m hanging onto this chair,
onto this table,
onto this floor,
onto this life.
Clinging.

When I finally realised I couldn’t hold on anymore
I realised I didn’t have to.
I fell to the floor so hard.

Tender.

Snippity snap

I was listening open-jawed,
wide
to that soprano
you didn’t like.
I could tell.
Highs and lows. Your cheeks
would burn.

You were playing board games
over your legs.
No ladders,
but I could spy snakes galore.
Biblical proportions.
And they were such that
I had to stare at all the polished shoes
of the cellists in front of me.
But I was stealing
secretly.
Glances of you. To sell off to myself later.
Oh, what an honest thief!

On the bus back,
before we had to get out and walk,
you held my arm in your hand,
Your little grip on my heart,
And slept slept slept.
And I was so warm
and the moment so beat up with hammers
that I tried my best to cry quietly
so I wouldn’t wake you.