Sometimes
I would like to live with you
In a wood cabin on a lake.
Lying awake at night
By an open fire
With your hand on my cheek,
In my hair,
On the back of my neck.
A Star of David
Hangs in the window.
A pine wreath on the front door.
The pop and crackle.
Your breath in my ear.
The wind at the chimney.
It wouldn’t be so bad.
And then quite unlike the
Way in which she left,
The muse returned.
I knew I was in trouble first
When I woke to the
Thought of her
In green and navy pajamas,
Hair a golden mess,
Carrying a tray of tea and toast slices.
The dress that I saw,
A shimmering grey
A pale mint
That was no longer
Behind the shop glass but
Twirling around flower beds
Above a pair of bare feet,
Was a bad sign to be sure.
And it is now that I find myself
Lying awake deep into the night, Biting into my pillow
And cursing myself,
That I know the real battle
Has only just begun.
You lower your gaze
To your feet.
A hand emerges
From deep within a woollen sleeve
And pushes a few strands of
Yellowish-brown hair
Back over a yellowish-brown ear.
Your lips part minutely,
And yet so generously.
Standing under a flickering streetlight
We have been sent back.
Back to a time when
Colour was an idea
That you read about in books
When you should have been working hard
In the fields.
Toiling in flannel and corduroy.
But now I notice your brow is furrowed,
Eyes cast expectantly upward.
I have been staring but not listening.
I send a prayer out
Into the night sky above,
Silent and profound,
And lean down into you
To hear yours.
You can tell it’s a good song
When you slow down
So you don’t make it home
Before it’s over.
Select weaknesses in me
Set fire to my brain
And spiderweb around my heart.
I hold the glass up to my eye
But I can’t tell whether it’s
Too full or too empty.
For certain, it’s draining fast.
The piano may not be firewood
But it sets a merry blaze.
And the cloth rests over my face,
Over my eyelids,
Like a hood.
If everyone knows it’s going to hurt,
Then why wasn’t I expecting it?
One day I turned around
And realised I was fucked
And there’s nothing I can do about it
Except take the clock off the wall
And set about winding it back again.
Right back to the beginning.
What I should do is
fall completely
for a girl with small hands
who can play piano with some flare
and who knows all the words
to Debussy’s ‘Chansons de Bilitis’.
Or at least a girl
with delicate wrists.
A girl who can hush me to sleep
with sweet susurrations.
I sit up late into the night,
drinking and dreaming
of perfectly manicured fingernails
and softly spoken words.
I imagine her drooping fringe
and the colour of her eyes.
Green, grey, blue, brown
Black.
It matters little.
I yawn and fold my hands behind my head.
Eyes are eyes.
Love will be love.
Something is very wrong.
In my mind thoughts are clear
And lucidly float behind my eyes.
I can feel soft words,
Some of them for you,
Dangling from my fingertips,
Hiding in the drowned spaces
between my glistening teeth.
But up close this mirror
Is muddied and scratched
With fingernail marks and
Something closely resembling
My very own brand
Of unsettling bullshit.
My tongue drips sour,
The saliva frothing and bursting
And steadily becoming
More embittered and lonesome.
Suddenly there are things
That I can no longer impart,
Not nearly so readily at least.
These problems course
Through my arteries and veins,
Through the skin on the
Back of my hands,
Along the bloodlines
That feed my brain,
My arrow-filled mind.
They lead me to believe
That some creatures were designed
To break with natures bonds.
And perhaps we will always blame others
For what we refuse to believe.
Or hate ourselves
For what we know to be true.
Close your lips and discover
The bitterness that sleeps
On the tip of your silent tongue.
In the evening the lights you see
From the shore are far off and pale.
They dance to the waves rhythms
And haunt your dreams.
If you close your eyes too
You can hear faint whisperings,
The succinct susurrations
Of children lost to the winds
And the waves’ roar.
Songs of dead sailors
Echoing and ringing
On the zephyr.
The blind see the world but through a veil.
The deaf hear more than they tell.
At night they come down to the sea
To touch fingertips.
They share our secrets with the wind
And their own with the sky.
Storms make me think of you.
In bed at night
I catch the faint
scent of your hair.
I imagine the slight
flaring of your nostrils
As you sleep and I lie
More awake than ever.
I think it’s the wind
As it whips the rain against
The window. The howling of it.
It obscures the words that I
Cannot seem to even fit into my
Mouth, let alone push them
Out to you through the cold night air.
The air of a new year
seemingly destined to be
As emotionally dense and
Amorously unfrequented as the last.
The air is soupy with electricity and love.
The sky is milky with it and weeps.
Resolutions are mostly selfish
But this is the most selfish of them all;
To share my heavy heart with you
And hope that you shall not break it.
All of these stars above us
Are as distant as your eyes
On the days when you betray,
The days you dream about him.
On those days I am a dreamer too.
I am a dancer in the dark, my mind
Full of deep reds and cigarettes,
Flower boxes and the Suffolk coastline.
Your gaze, for now, drifts back to me.
Your stars shimmer in a haze and vanish.
I relish the hours of neglect
And dream of days and her.
The moon lay on it’s back
Pretending it had decided
To only rest a moment
But it had been asleep
for hours by that stage.
And my mind wandered
In the direction of a pair
Of thinly cardiganed arms
And a lap in which to lay my head
and close some heavy eyes.
My ears lapped up
The collapse of waves
In the distance,
Nostrils sniffing up
The scent of wood fires,
like a hazy gauze,
sweet and wet and smoky.
And as if by accident,
I began to dream.
Agitation of hands. Strength of words. 