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.

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.

Untitled

‘Cos dreams are full of
long lost friends
and good days come to
weary ends.
And while I may have danced
and thrown my head back in delight,
it wasn’t me you loved
that night.

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?

Christmas

I strode out
in the night
to cut down a young spruce
and steal its moonlit heart.

The snow glinted
and my axe-edge keen.
Tearing away at bark skin
like a ravenous dog.
I do not know how
to use an axe.

In long folds it came away.
And i lifted the heart of the young man
to the sky
where it hung
and bled.

Each of my careful footsteps back
was stained red with
my betrayal.
Each of my tears frozen
hard and stinging my cheeks.

wild grief

Your wild grief scares me.

It flows from you like
so many liquids
and pours hard and fast.
I intrude on it,
like stepping in milk that isn’t mine and
treading it into your carpet.
Back and forth i trudge.

Like a great beast
in the final throws of death.
That great gold spear that
pierces your lungs and
up it comes.
All that bile and froth that was hidden.
You are no longer who you were.

And I, unable to reach out with my hands
and take your shoulders and calm you
with all that mass of hair
so tangled and forlorn,
slink away to nurse my own.

It is quiet and faint and
will always dwell
deep in my heart.

Where’s the grandmother and the kettle and the almanac and the girl?

Driving at night. Going
somewhere.

We listened to skipping electro beats
and the rain pit-pattering.
I wasn’t driving.
Absent-mindedly fondling cd covers
Arcade Fire, Fionn Regan, Bjork.
Full, longing voices.
I felt so empty.

Gazing out the window
at the headlamps’ light
glittering off the slick, wet street,
the catseyes.
I have no tears left from you.

Then, when the song ended,
we passed under a bridge
and for a second,
maybe two,
there was perfect silence
and I could see far and long into the night,
but all I could see was the night.
This is the worst pain ever. <b

Haiku

Japanese graveyards,
a heron and droplet trees.
Slow. I spilt my heart.

As I see Patrick.

a dull grey picture of a yard
with a broken rusting tractor
and a large old pot-plant
more grey than alive.

And then you strolled in and ruined everything.

As birds erupted and patterned the sky
and trees swayed to meet your gaze
and the streetlights flickered
one by one as you passed by.
Windows were thrown open
and people, young and old
cheered and waved flags of red and gold
and every colour of every rainbow that never before existed.

Everything was filled with light, with colour, with life
And I wept. It was all destroyed.
Nothing would ever be any better.