Friday 28 November 2014

Frost

timeless for half an hour
you dream of springtime
but outside this fall is giving in
its reins to colder days
and you of all people 
you know what it is like to hibernate alone.



Moonshine

Should we be strangers still
By moonlight
I will learn to peel your words
Before I feel them seep
Inside my veins,
Before I let your eyes coerce me,
Before I trust your ears to catch me,
Before I know your arms too dearly.
You, too, are a wonder
To me some nights
When with my little hands
I break this moon into a thousand sighs.
I want to know this light.
Whether it crumbles like roses,
Whether it hangs from the silence,
Whether it lives in a cavern of doubts.
And when it flakes, whether it coats us both in stardust
Till in the dark, we've no more moon
For empty sighs to rustle in our bones.

Gratitude

Although these arms did hold you once,
Fed you night-time from a spoon,
Wrapped your head in hopeful wonder -
There will come a day when all your sometime thanks
Will be disdainful greed
Or you might push away
These arms when they still try
Smothering your fears
With love you can never repay.

The Devoted One

You hope someone else has walked in your shadows,
Has picked up crumbles of your many lives
With lovely, trembling hands
Only to fold them, small as secrets,
Into the pockets of a rusting heart.
That same someone has written down the song
Of your soft grieving
And named it for your calmly storming eyes.
That someone may not wait for you forever
While you defy yourself by searching farther still
Into the depths of hope and great despair
(Your shadows feel familiar there)

The Victor

You always win at checkers
Always first in cards
Always the king of scrabble
You deftly unscramble
The muddle inside my heart

While I pull the wrong suit
And gratefully root myself
Into your arms and ask you
Without ever asking you aloud
To just keep buzzing your voice
Against my skin.

You’ve always been the first to finish puzzles,
The last to let the towers fall.
You are a prodigy at bingo
And you’ve always handled victory well.

But when I ask you to convince me
That this is not a flaw,
It’s just a square that takes me two steps back,
It’s just a snake,
It’s just a jail card,
You don’t know what to tell me.
You only ever land on ladders and

You only ever skip through “GO”.

Friday 11 July 2014

Smoke and Mirrors

If I am beautiful, then it is smoke and mirrors.
On level footing I may disappear
And you will never find me,
Never in ten thousand years.
Not here, not where the light
Of morning softness breaks
The cover of my long-drawn face,
Not where the sleepy and still silent
Art of rising peels the blanket off my studied grace.
I do not know what dreams my eyes might show
When I have not yet cleansed them of their candour.
The woman who awakes beside you is too much of me
That you might break upon her insolent affection.
If I am beautiful, then it is of the study
I have so carefully embraced
And bled into my smile, my footing,
And the way I breathe your name.
If I am beautiful then it is my chef d’oeuvre,
My great illusive act.
You cannot know its secret.
You cannot ever know how deep I’ve gone
Into this hapless helpless
Desolate defenseless
Ugly
Love for you.
My mirrors have begun to shatter
And if you call for me your care will cut
Itself upon my broken voice.
I cannot carry kindness.
It is hard enough
Trying to hold back the smoke.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Aiming for the callouses of the earth

Some nights the air turns brutal
And all you can see are planes
Butter-winged in between the sheathes of wind
Aiming for the callouses of the earth
And you never really thought you’d be the kind
To make a death threat, but right now you’re dying
To kill something or other as though life
Were just the little light atop a birthday candle
Or some medal you can take away.