Mostly I feel
That I don’t know
What I am.
Continually in the
Wrong place
saying the wrong thing
(And rather loudly at that)
But when you
Rested your head on my chest
As we stood before an open window
And gazed out across the skyline
Burning in the dwindling sunlight
I forgot about that
For a while.
At first he thought,
Somewhat presumptuously,
That the box contained
All of his words.
He had been silent
So many months
That he assumed that
His thoughts had been dragged
From his lips
And placed into the box.
For what end, nefarious or otherwise,
Well in truth he hadn’t considered.
He longed for the box to be opened
And had tried all the keys he could find.
He had opened hidden boxes before.
Many mysteries had been uncovered.
But this one was stronger,
More resolute.
Finally she came.
The key bearer.
She who would open the box
With it’s intricate carvings and inlay
And release his words
For him to use.
She was so beautiful.
She brandished a small, bronze,
Heart-shaped key.
It had to be her.
It had to be…
The key slipped in the lock.
It turned noiselessly.
She lifted the lid.
He peered in.
The box contained nothing.
But not just nothing;
Less than nothing.
A void-less, soulless, sleepless nothing.
And too late he realised
That the box was not a box of words,
His or anyone else’s.
It was a box of silence.
Complete silence.
The lid closed
With the slightest of clicks.
Footsteps faded away
On roughly hewn cobblestones.
The ages gathered.
The box remained silent.
The wind tells me when to leave.
It howls obliquely
And I close my eyes.
It’s a strange fact
but it is the hands that I fear yet again;
The pleading golden ones
Waving in the gale
Or your gently distorted hooks
Twisted around my own.
My eyes are black with thought.
Your skin, the feathers of swans.
Seven of them,
Necks all curled like thumbs,
Beaks like swollen yellowed fingernails.
I pull at the skin around my mouth
And it comes away in my hand
Like sheafs of paper.
Leaflets about fear,
About melanoma,
schizophrenia and depression.
I offer you a cup of my love
And you sip at it politely,
Making jokes about Parkinson’s
And the the shivering of my fingers
All about your face.
If I had offered my hand,
The tenderest of tendrils,
Would you have taken it in yours
On a wet Tuesday afternoon
With all the rusting red church bells
Ringing out their long and golden song
For the pure joy of it?
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.
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.”
?
Nine children in the bed
when I woke,
in various stages of rest and unrest,
growth and hormonal experimentation.
(You’d think nature would have
perfected it by now. But she’s only a mother
afterall.)
Each of these nine children,
soon to be young men,
some too soon,
faces dulled and blurred,
ambiguous and angry.
Despite that I knew
that everyone of them
was me. I alighted
with a quiet gasp and slipped away
leaving myself behind
nine of mine,
they slept
and slept
and slept.
Note: This is an exercise I found on this guy’s blog. It’s called Three Word Wednesday. He chooses 3 words and you write something containing them.
These three were Ambiguous, Nine and Slept. It’s meant to be on Wednesdays I know but I’m a do-your-own-thing, rebelious kinda guy :]
Agitation of hands. Strength of words. 