Saturday, December 26, 2009

The Time We Married

I had this dream that you and I got married. We'd been together for some time, exactly how long wasn't clear, though it didn't seem to matter. We were young. It seemed apparent what love was and it felt as though it reached all the way around us, wrapped us within it. It was an overcast day, we were walking along a road, it was snowing, but the snow was just cherry blossom petals falling. They were soft pink, almost white and cold and they tasted sweet as we opened our mouths and put our tongues out into the crisp air and caught them. We laughed and I ran my fingers carefully through your hair, brushing out the petals caught upon your head. We'd stopped a second and you were looking at me and I realised so as my hand reached the bottom of the shoulder lengths of your hair. Our eyes met in this moment and I took your hands in mine and began to turn with you, slowly at first, picking up speed until we were at arms lengths from each other, spinning faster and faster. As we slowed down, and took in our surroundings, we were no longer along the cherry blossom, snowing road. We were standing in an empty church that was a forest inside. It was a dome and the trees, thin and tall all around us curved inwards as they reached upwards and only a small circle at the top where they all couldn't reach each other let the sunlight in. The sunlight was soft and it was directly upon us as we stood in the middle of this very natural, comfortable feeling place. There were no pews in the church, just neatly cut-down, thick, many rings of age tree stump seats. There was no one else but you and I in the green, brown, amber, soft pastel mist but we could feel the eyes of an impossible-to-count number of people upon us. We could feel the eyes waiting. Watching and waiting. It seemed that there were voices, softly whispering and chattering, they brushed past our necks and ears like a breeze, which you couldn't tell where it was coming from. We were still holding each others hands. We looked at each other, not grinning, not smiling exactly, but just the corners of our mouths creeping out and up, arching in understanding, perhaps just less than half way to a closed lip smile. We kept looking at each other, locked eyes, unable to move them, not needing to, not wanting to see anything else. We kept our gaze for the time it would take for vows to be said but there was only silence. Just long, deep, concentrating silence. There were no rings brought forth and we knew that we would never wear any. I put my hand into my pocket and you traced my movements with your eyes as I felt around and pulled a watch from inside. The band was not solid, though it was bright and shining gold. It was formed of letters, words, joined together in lower case cursive all the way round. It was a perfect fit for your wrist without any adjustment. The band read, 'innocent when you dream'. It slid over your hand onto your wrist with complete ease and as it came to rest a small wisp of smoke appeared to rise up from where it met your skin. It was searing you, but you did not feel any pain. With your right hand you reached inside your jacket, to the inside breast pocket and you pulled out a watch also. It was identical on the face, and the band the same colour and font but it read different. It read, 'this is all I'll ever have'. As you slipped it on my wrist, just the same as upon yours, it seared my skin and I felt nothing, but thin wisps of smoke arose from around my wrist and I felt my wrist get noticebly heavier. So, with our watches on we both looked at the time and when we looked up from their faces to each others we were then upon a bed in a moonlit room, where the white light pushed through an open window. We were on our sides and naked except for the watches, on top of the sheets, our heads on pillows and music began to play. The music grew louder as we faced each other and I could see your lips moving and knew mine were doing so also, but there were no words coming out, there were no sounds to our voices. We were speaking calmly, at a conversational speed, not hastened or rushed and not exacerbated. As we mouthed words and the music got louder, the sound became more and more like that of a ticking clock. It was slowing and slowing and getting heavier and our mouths started to slow down until our lips were simply pursed. The rhythmic tick-tocking was all we could hear and we began to kiss, soft and gentle and we closed our eyes. Then, every sense seemed to disappear except for the sound of time, almost like a chisel being hit with a hammer into rock, and it continued growing louder and louder. I opened my eyes and I was awake and it was dawn and the clock beside my bed was making it's constant, normal, supposed to, sound. I looked to my right and under the covers swept my hand across to the other side and felt the entire absence of you from the bed. I turned my sleepy gaze from the plush pillow to straight ahead of the bed, where a full length mirror stood and reflected my now half upright position. And looking at myself, I realised that I wasn't frowning, I didn't have tears in my eyes, and I seemed to lack any completely descriptive expression but I could see clearly that my mouth was a curve of wistful, melancholy, slightly turned up at the corners, never smiling, closed lipped and tired.


Monday, December 21, 2009

The Snowing Of Never Knowing

Snow had begun to fall the last few days. It wasn't quite Christmas, but that consumer-buzzing, rushing, fake-jolly Christmas cheer was all about. You could see it; on the shopkeepers' faces, almost like it was a plead to buy; spend, feel something, live. I was keeping on at a friend's place in the nearest big city when the snow started. I'd heard by call that there was a light snow, the first flecks a-fallin' the night before I arrived. I was asleep the mid-morning when my friend awoke beside me and stood up to look out the steamy balcony door. She remarked, excitedly that it was snowing. I drowsily replied, querying, and dragged myself up and out to have a geeze also. It was a fine sight, all that soft white, light, feathery snow; swirling about and drifting in from the same marshmallow coloured clouds. The rooftops within sight were dotted too, some covered, in thick white layers, neatly stacked on the roof shingles. It was exactly like being a tiny little plastic figure glued to the ground of one of those shake-up Christmas paper-weight domes. Someone had the thing by the grip and was pretty fucking vigorous on it alright. We stuck our heads over the small balcony ledge and out put our tongues, trying to lick the snow from the air, waiting for a tiny dot of the frosty magic to land in our mouths. It was a childish, giddy, excited feeling. It was the first time we'd seen the snow fall. It was the first time I'd felt the romance of Winter scraping years off my life, I was ten years old again and suddenly, in that moment, life seemed simple and wondrous and I did wish for the feeling to stay. Though, as always, the day beckoned.

Not completely dressed and aware every furthering minute of the crisp and cold seeping through me I went back inside and got under a hot shower and dressed my hair and self for the day. I was stepping with anticipation to get outside and be truly surrounded in the evidence of wind and gravity and December. When made it outside, plenty layers clothing me underneath my stretched black jeans and tired, red leather motorcycle jacket, I delved my pockets for a crumpled pack of cigarettes and shook one free with my gloved hands and after a couple of clumsy attempts lit the darn thing between my icy lips. Exhaling, it was almost as though I wasn't smoking, as I watched the hot breath escape in front of me, more or less the same as when I first stepped outside, heating the valley wind in my lungs and pushing it back into the mid day.

I was strolling now, a pep in my step as melody filled my ears, as often it does when the world immediately around me turns me on; writing and composing me that soundtrack to a wonderful moment. I sort of heard The Band, playing with Little Feat and Jackson Browne crooning softly along. As I neared the roads, busy with cars that looked like they drove out of igloos, they pushed the breeze past my ears and I swear Tom Waits' rasping grasped my ears for some seconds or so, reminding me that the cold inspires loneliness. And I sure felt it, for the time of year called upon a gathering of those close to you to be closer and warmer and I had a near nothing of that. Just my memories. That's what I had. I kept picturing my Christmas' past and the ways I'd learnt to be without bother by the facade of Saviour's birth's celebration. Back home, Christmas meant the heat and that meant escaping the heat and that meant the mountains. The tallest mountains as close could be. Christmas'd grown to be my time of reconcile with mountain roads, sunsets, long afternoons, and lapping up my favourite luxuries: take away coffee cups with alright coffee, mixed packs of cigarettes up that high altitude, and conversations, learning and knowing. Oh the knowing and getting to do so. I'd not spent the most recent Christmas' with the same persons or person. I'd actually been with almost strangers. People I didn't know what connected us but could feel the yearning to get so.

And about this time, filled with all this thinking and longing I stepped into a dim cafe down the bottom of the hill near the city's station and get-going hub. It was a quiet affair for an early afternoon and I got myself a seat and some coffee and a book from my satchel. It's easy to waste away the hours, sip them back in black brew and watch them wisp away on the tips of cigarettes. I guess that's the magic of heating and a cozy spot when the weather's a downward pull of smiling and not knowing so sure why outside. I got on my laptop after a bit and advantaged myself of the wireless network, high speed, world wide web of pseudo connectedness and talked to a few people that I didn't really need to and looked at a bunch of stuff that didn't make me really feel anything. I just kept noticing my attempts to escape and swirled endlessly in my contemplation of what was I doing with my lead up to holidays and why I felt such obligation to be a part of something. Mm, being a part of something, such a tiresome affair. Needing and wanting and trying and maybe, maybe feeling something.

It did occur to me, with a sly grin creeping across my now rosy face, that a perk of this cold outside, get inside to watch the weather mode was the inclination of company to create their own heat and magic. Having sex. It sure was another experience, for some reason, knowing what was beyond the glass and walls of a small space and making something corresponding, yet opposing inside. Fucking and keeping warm was a sure special feeling I was growing addicted to, and knowingly so, anticipating the wistful feeling of the Spring as the snow melts and so does the exactness of the nearness that yearns when two are cuddled close and sheets and blankets tangle and move like waves, pulled by gravity and crashing.

I'd closed my eyes, I realised, and had that kick in the head of awareness of surroundings and looked consciously around me and then down at my quarter still filled coffee cup. I sipped it and it was cold. That's what time does, what waiting does, what distraction does. It turns your warm spell of liquid content to distasteful, cringe as you swallow, light another cigarette to mask the taste, not at all satiated blend of mellow hope and distraction. Ah well, at least with coffee, the beauty is you can order another pot. Love isn't as easy so. I perked up at this thought and the carrying away of soft focus montage memory of when I last felt warm and loving arms. Everyone always talks about Summer love and it's in movies and shit too. I don't quite get why Summer love is so romanticised and how people identify with it. I don't see love as something that happens in heat, in warmth, in minimal clothes and sweat and stink and that fades away with the falling leaves of Autumn and turns bitter with Winter. It's the inverted for me. I think for most people. Love happens in Winter. We're conditioned to coalescing in the cold and neediness when strength wanes.

I'm a bear and love's hibernating in a cave and you spend the pending seasons gathering and saving up and leading up to it and growing fat with hope and desire and readiness and then you take to the slumber of love and have a hazy dream that swifts by all too fast and when you wake everything's changed and outside isn't the same anymore, even though inside is and you don't know where time went but you know you're thinner and more worn from it and though there's some rejuvenation and content, that's all in your head, just sweet dreams telling you that you did the right thing and that you tried your best and the first taste of the fucking berries or whatever is like that bittersweet ripple on your tongue, through your body that there's another time ahead and I'm that bear that thinks love, well there's another Winter ahead and I only remember the way I felt the last and start wandering, thinking and living for the next. But I think, I'm not a bear, 'cause surely bears are something of a tough, sturdy, brave creature and I'm actually not that at all.

I lift my comfortable self from my abode of away from the awareness of the day and ash spilling off my still-lit-cigarette, pay for my moment of distraction and contemplation aids and flick the lengths of my scarf back across my neck and shoulders and swing out into the even colder of the dusk and drop the butt of my smoke into the mounded, hard snow and watch it extinguish. It's just another day, another spent way, another nothing to feel or say, excursion towards the holidays. I think Christmas will be lonely. Likely cold, and bitter and dreamy in the anticipation of when I'll feel okay and warm again. So far, away here, it's cloudy and windy and smoky in the valley. There's no seaside breeze that cools the humidity off the brow. I don't have a car and winding roads to climb to a sigh of it'll all be alright. The snow's still falling and I can hear Bob calling me now, telling me of a girl who'll give me shelter from the storm. And I know the storm's not the swirling snow and the ice-brick roads or the false hope on stranger's faces, but truthfully it's me. I'm the snow storm plowing through the valley, colouring the season and masking with loneliness everything in sight. Pep in my step, pretending to myself that I love this Wintery everything, knowing that self-convincing is the key to continuing I finally arrive at my friend's place.

It's empty still, their day not over and mine never begun. I spark on the heater and light a cigarette inside, I'm sure they'll mind, but I'm all for lack of caring and I look out the steadily steaming glass and everything just keeps passing; swirling about outside and I have a moment, where I think maybe it'll pass. Maybe my contemplation of all this disdain will wander off with it all too. Maybe, eventually, my feelings will just melt like the snow and pool at the bottom of roads and on the green grass and I'll only ask why isn't it cold anymore and commence my hate of the heat. I do love Winter. Magic is about everything you can't see and won't stop wondering about, knowing it all the while an illusion. Anyway, I think, at least I had that beginning moment, that bliss of magic, wondering why everything is the way it is, a new morning, a new day and even though it was cloudy and swirling and sad and I couldn't taste any of it with my tongue out in the wind it still felt like being alive. It still felt like I didn't know everything I wanted and that's a pretty way to be and see life.

Then, I hear the kettle whistling, and making another cup of coffee was just steps to the kitchenette away. And I thought, assembling my next moment of snow-stars gazing, that I'd probably do the same the next day and begin with the shaking, tumbling, loving of that little dome filling my day with some moments of magic and child-like smiling. The truth of everything up, coming down, but slowly, amazingly, sublime to the eye and alive with never knowing. Snowing and never knowing.


Monday, December 14, 2009

We All Try To Ride The Time-Machine

why is feeling content
so desired but a truth made dire
when you find yourself pretty sure happy
but so quickly still inquire
as to what more is there, what other
pursuits and pleasures are left
why is content only a walkway
to the edge of emptiness' cleft

I got something I long sought
and thought'd make me smile
and sure enough it does
but I wonder if just for awhile
will I ever feel truly satiated
or do we want until we die
is the most to hope for living
knowing happiness is a lie

it seems everything's disposable
as something new's available
we almost strive to say this doesn't
do as the old was able
like it's easier to know
what was good than wonder if will be
the other, greener pastures,
life's tempting possibilities

love's like this they say
you know it,
you just do when so
but then when it ends your conscience depends
on the fact you didn't know
I read a gem of wisdom
printed on a vintage coffee cup
it said love is handling a time machine
which concisely sums it up

who knows whether the past
or future holds the answers
we all try and live somewhere in-between
the figures the clock dances
you can't want something forever
because want is only change
disguised in what we think we need
and revealed as truth in age

and you can never know it all exact
so why get caught up
in wondering endlessly whether
you've ever had it good enough
the best you do is just know want is change
and do what you can to slow
it down 'cause the longer it's the same
the longer you think you'll know.


Monday, November 30, 2009

Missing In The Big City

it's finally night time in the big city
and as a quiet rain gently begins to fall

a lover sighs looking up into the wet
and at their other, tired thoughts stall


a homeless man makes a cardboard box bed

and fills it with the nothing he owns
nearby an empty can clanks and rolls
in the distance a truck exhaust groans

a man on holiday wishes he was home

knowing the warmth of his woman's arms

many miles apart living a conviction
a girl wistfully gives wind to her heart


Thursday, November 12, 2009

Of Course Remorse

my days
are all coffee stains
and cigarettes
and beer
and in this murkyness
why you left
with every drink
becomes more clear

it's a hurtful mess
surrounding me
that I know
you had to leave
but I grieve you
and the relief you
gave me
and earlier my mistakes
I wish I'd percieved

now all's left
is empty bottles
I thought I could pour
some soul out of
but the feeling
remains
as my pockets
empty of change
and I know
what I need's
too great a cost

if I ask you
kindly
even if you
remind me
of my sins
can you share my load
it's difficult
this road
though I know not
what you chose
but your heart'd
go well sowed

into
the fragile earth
of my desperation
and I'd give recourse
and remorse
you're owed
just to be taken
into your home
a guest to rest
with hope reside
where love's confessed
and can abide


A Carriage Of Marriage

you married me to your hand
and divorced me from your sight
you led me blindly with no plan
just ahead with wistful plight

and I knew not to feel any better
or inclination for more
because I too was looking for a past love
and through you to tie the score

we bound each other fruitfully
to the future hope of redress
and found a way to live for love
fowarded from a previous address

yes, now the only mail we get
is sent from despair to hope
it's safe to say you can make closeness
and care well enough to cloak

and now, though our marriage is just
a carriage for memory to ride,
it strikes me just the same as other people's;
a convenient way to forget and lie.


Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Morning Procession's Warming Confession

I woke up this morning,
in warmth, lain next to you
and bathed in the feeling
of my small bed resting two
as morning light consumed
in procession through the room
I couldn't help but feel
the day moving all too soon

looking in arousal at you;
your eyes so wide and pretty
the certainty of your affection,
like an arrow pierced me
though the pain I felt
wasn't brazen or discomforting
on the contrary it only dwelled
in my chest as love or something

your smile spoke good morning,
your soft hands said, 'I want you'
your eyes read like a story
of there no desire left to choose
I smiled back to affirm that
I knew so and requited
with confidence then locked eyes
to yours knowing you'd find it

we lay there, silent, just gazing
at each other for awhile
so smitten at the length of
what our intentions compile
and though soon then the inevitable
commence of day did ensue
I was surely most content
to get to wake to it with you


Sunday, November 1, 2009

Exit Etiquette

there's dignity in the honesty to say that now no more
do I love you and it nags me a feeling I can't ignore
it's realistic to sit at a mirror and in morn tell then
your lover that it's over but I never thought of when
and there's admiration aplenty to not instinctively
devalue with conclusion in together's exit; history
and as some others do, to feel inadequacy or spite
I think to tell yourself the truth is; no one's got 20/20 sight
when it comes to the road the heart leads from another
and just as sunset for sunrise shouldn't leave time in wonder


Thursday, October 29, 2009

There's No Consolation Like Coffee

your eyes cast down
I put my fingers to your chin
and as deep you sighed
breathed your anxiety in
and though all inside
pent-up could not be still
your despair still faced
my embrace's steadfast will

I held you in silence
consoling words not needed
and just let my hug
of understanding speak it
I know, I know
I whispered soft to you
it's taxing at times
what life seems let accrue

at least if nothing left
you'll never cease have me
and for your happiness
and smile my strive'll always be
and at that what was left
other than cups of coffee
and a couple of cigarettes
and not let be forgot it

a heavy slice of warm
sticky date pudding with cream
exactly the way I allocate
you and I my favourite dream
where you and I remain
and we stay young and handsome
and tip our heads back together
keeping life's best at ransom


Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Ash Of Your Passion

all the cigarettes;
conduits on your balcony
and sipping tea with them,
gently you immerse me
in ash of your passion,
soft so I can't dust
and fleeing inhibitions
falling under lust

it's warm the blanket of
your legs seated on mine
hours escape though we're
so aware the time
but still awake with you's
more the kind of dream
I live to stay up for
and rather let the moon sleep

there's a peace and calm
in our love's dessert
a little piece of cake
we take like we deserve
a moment of luxury
some would say heart's cosset
a content that gushes from
hope's wide open faucet

when finally we retire
to each other's arms
and disarmed from the day
awake's the only harm
the calm that settles from
your final look at me
is a lullaby that I
close my eyes at to see

and it's so sublime
to rise next to your lips
to be met by your
affection's purt morning kiss
I smile with an ardence
that awaits be benighted
and you just stare right back
locked eyes at me in silence


The Punish Of Wonder

I punish myself for wondering what is
and contemplating my once disposition
as if in hindsight I might find that I
rightly decided with a mind of non-fiction

but my hindsight only arouses a doubt
that I've sacrificed my foresight desire
I'm persuaded now that I made a mistake
my mind's tired in its fighting to respire

I let my lungs be scarred by soot and tar
and my throat scored and broken by smoke
if to just be able to only rasp your name
the most I deserve, as consequence, to hope

it's like my dying lungs took my breath
and wrung all the life I'd left to give
as I felt you with tears in my eyes disappear
and realised to be near you's to live

can I say I'm sorry for the road I made
for myself, well not with entire remorse
but truth's I regret the chance I'll never get
to know any but the now chosen course

clear to me like the grey plume my abode
is love's known only as found when lost
you can draw any conclusion but the evident truth is
that it's never knowing: the sonorous cost


Tuesday, October 13, 2009

It Takes Time To Take A Picture

when I was growing up I took a photo
and hoped it captured what it meant to be young
I found it long after, buried away
and I remembered what, when old, I'd wished I'd done
I looked at the picture long and hard
and admired the content, perhaps naivety, on my face
I could see the thoughts and dreams
in my discerning, romantic eyes of fortitude on display
I sighed at the sight of the love
next to me in the picture, whom at my expression was aimed
and cried a couple of tears
for the innocence time and memory from me eventually claimed


Wednesday, October 7, 2009

You Subscribe To Lies Before You Die

I wish I knew who I am
as discontent is all I conclude
I wish I knew where to aim
when impossibilities my only truth

if I had an Allison
maybe then I could bellow
my aim is true like Elvis
to my other world tortured fellow

to the one by my side
I always smile to hide distaste
of myself and conceal the evidence
of seeking self-knowledge that I hate

am I quickened in my youth
to wise on all that normally takes
a person fifty years or more
to understand what time instigates?

I'm lead believe when I'm
at that fifty years of life
I'll be so spent on the truth
that I'll turn to their youth of lies

just to die feeling as though
I'm at peace for nothing to resolve
is my future set by my present
with only naivety to absolve?

to turn from contemplation
to idealism to finally demise
is my view so now realistically acute
that to fiction I'll let my mind subscribe?


Wednesday, September 30, 2009

To Love's To Let Delegate

as Winter nears and Summer clears
my fear of what I thought love dissipates
inhibitions sink as I disappear
in your affection, that instigates
changes in my disposition of love's
fiction and as our story implicates
I make haste to see that between
you and me dreams' poetry dictates
that to love's to let go and another to show
you that your heart's subject to its extent of delegate


Tuesday, September 22, 2009

If Dreams Could Redeem

I can't remember when I last felt this way
when or if I ever wanted someone so near
it's unclear but it may be that I never did
that I never let myself want anyone so dear
but now a night ends slowly and so it hurts
to not feel the hours pass quickly with you
I hear the clicking of the clock from my bed
as lying awake in the still night is all I can do
I choke on the silence that fills the room
and cigarette smoke stains all my senses
I think of tomorrow and what I might want
until I'm indecisive but for you and the past tense
will you be a lover that I sleep with forever
set to seep through the echoes of my dream
will I one day look back and wonder if I did
everything to leave me nothing to redeem


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Gardener

There was once a girl who wanted to be a gardener. Through the course of love in her life something happened to her; strange and peculiar perhaps, but with a resounding feeling. It started when she cried a tear. And the tear followed the crease of her face before it fell and turned into a seed. She picked it up and held it; held onto it. And then, when, she thought she’d found the right place she planted it on his lips.

After awhile of watching, waiting, hoping, but not knowing it, having already spread it’s roots down and through his skin and mind and heart, it began to grow. And, did it grow quickly and strong, before long sprouting. It grew flowers and foliage that were bright, warm colours, filling up all the eyes placed upon them with a feeling of warmth and love and satisfaction. There became an abundance of leaves; skin soft to touch, holding the weight of paper and expelling a scent of fresh. The ground all around the two of them felt soft and earthy and you could almost taste the soul seeping up from where some of the roots had pressed just through the earth reaching for open blue arms.

So, before long, not having expected so - though no one ever does - she realised that she loved it. She had fallen in love with the strength and beauty of those stretching warm colours, which contained in them all she was proud of, admired, desired and knew as life. She loved all that they became from the beginning; as just a single tear sown with a tender hope.

Imbued in her love with the beanstalk-like stretch to the clouds so intense, she neared herself to it and didn’t even realise an assimilation taking place. She was sowing herself to it; deliberately, intricately and infinitely. Her hair stretched itself out longer and longer, broader and thicker with the coverage of the foliage and her body thinned in places with the branches as she likened herself with all her like of the everything. She smiled and was happy.

Then, one day, and it was a day just like all the other warm, comforting, immense days a sole leaf flickered and twitched and then began to fall, lifting swiftly upwards a few times in the invisible hand of the wind before descending slowly and softly to the ground. With the one, having touched the soft, cosy home of earth, another slipped silently away as though sliced with a small surgical knife making an incision to commence an operation. The leaf fell as the other and watching helplessly she tried to reach out and catch it but nothing happened. She looked in all of the directions she knew and could and noticed more of the leaves stepping off and away from her. She tried again, to stretch her arms and hands out to catch some of them and collect their warmth, but she had no hands to do so. Every part of her was bound to it and to him and all she could do was will every single one with all her might to stay a little longer. She watched them so closely that she could see the slight cold eating into the brightness of each of them a little already.

Soon they were falling and not even clinging to the air like the first. They were tumbling, heavier than before. Heavy now, not with life but with the anvil of time. Like magnets, gravity seemed to pull them apart and down. It was like a sunset was raining all around her as far as could be seen and there was no horizon left, the lines between all spans of time she knew were blurred in a tangerine, purple haze.

Eventually everything was around and beneath her and him in a mound of dimming, fading embers; a melancholy, pretty mosaic of pride and desire and love. She looked up and could see the clouds now closing the door of the sky once so open above and everything seemed heavy as though it might push her into the ground. But, the earth was now buried and hard and cracking at the roots in those places reaching for the last light. She felt inside her sown up and together self and sought a tear to revive the glow of the darkening tower, but found nothing. She looked for long enough and in the moments she did locate something to excrete, a small salty, saturated tear made it’s way tracing those creases, now longer and older and deeper. But for being so, they never made it to the bottom to drop. They just gathered or ran until they were damp stains that stung like sores and she couldn’t bare them any longer, so she just closed her eyes and remained.

If you go to her, there, now, you can still see her stretched up and out in the world but baring nothing and seeing nothing and though the clouds’ doors occasionally open up and the roots thicken up out of the earth, not a single leaf becomes. And the tears won’t turn to seeds.


Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Lonliness That Owns Me

a lonliness now owns me that I owe you for my dear
you took what I didn't realise given until its disappearing made it clear
you're aware a tear here or there is how I'm not usually disposed
so it bothers me now to wonder why I remember you so close
and though my memory's fading one day I may see as blessed plague
I wish there was another way we could remain knowing our love less vague


Saturday, August 22, 2009

Stripped By Our Lips

I wish there was another way
I could say all to you I meant
in the second that your lips touched mine
before you tasted so much regret

the moment now never to be
claimed can't play as I'd dreamed
actions whilst spawn of true intentions
now will never be what we deemed


Lately Lacks Any Satiate

where are you I wondered
as the train's thunder
drummed out the Bob Dylan in my ear
and further as I neared
the station of my destination
I became perplexed by a strange fear

that so cried inside me
softly and long unfamiliar
that where to place it I lacked idea
I spoke your name under
the whisper of my breath
and through my atmosphere it seared

so hot are you still
at the edge of my mind's
tongue that I'm parched for you
there's no satiate left
and my desire won't quell
I'm so spent with this want what to do

my heart a hail storm
impales my day with stones
of thought that collects and won't melt
it's a Winter inside me
despite the heat outside
my blanket of knowing what I felt


Needles

your voice in needles
creeps through my ear
and I find them in my spine
they sit there wedged
and I can't remove them
but they'll never be mine

it seems we've come
in return full circle
though I do not face you
I can place you exactly
but it's like our hands
are made entirely of glue

we've correspondence
guidlines established
as platonic hope's request
but with your every word
I sigh in solomn breath
into friendship's breast

a requite I was once
told if in absence of love
renders the gesture in vain
but as I spoke to you
it might be missing the love
that ends the greatest pain


Monday, August 17, 2009

She Was A Dreamer

I once fell in love with a girl. She was a dreamer and she made me feel like I was her dream. I couldn't dream. I'd spent my life trying to dream but was only able to live in that place of a dream through a pen and a piece of paper. So I gave her the only dream I knew how to give. I gave her words. I didn't imagine that words would ever be requite enough for a dream but she took them from me with patient, gentle and receiving hands and she made them her own. She held them and looked at them adoringly, like the dream that you have, which you share with no one, but long to tell every one. We were that dream. Our words were secrets, each one a new weave in the beautiful pattern. Every action another colour that shone different to the other. Every look stretched beyond the horizon to that place we know exists but cannot see and do not know where it is or how to get there. And just like those lovers who sit at a beach and watch the sun rise from the sandy, damp dunes and wonder what lies beyond and if they can make it, we did. But there is a small fissure, a hair's width or less that sits between a dream and reality, much the same as the one between the sky's end and the horizon. We didn't make it. When our time came to end I wondered what to say, what to give, what to want. Words are something that you can't take back and you cannot take back a dream either. I tried to think of some last words to give as my final dream for her but I could only reaccount ones already fallen off the edge of the world. Goodbye said too little. I thought to tell her that I still loved her but still loved is not a dream. It's only the echo of the tiny speck disappearing into the dissolving horizon that no one can hear. So I said nothing and walked away from her wondering if you can live in a dream forever, believing that the sun is always rising. A few steps from her I turned over my shoulder and looking at her in her mellowing, sleepy, crazy, beautiful eyes I whispered, 'keep dreaming' and then kept walking. I'm not sure if she heard me.


Thursday, August 6, 2009

The Clock Knows Only To Take

he ran fast, with a guitar he couldn't play and a heart hard to contain
panting, arriving at the station, the timetable berating him too late
he galanted down to the platform and it turned out the train never came
then in eager chase a calming wind caught up to him as he sat to wait
and on it's fresh breath the just left scent of her final hug remained
and it played clearly in his memory the extent their hold had to say
standing there in dim lit night a length of time stretched so straight
the only words between them spoken; note of the longest ever embrace
wistfully, he wondered if there'd ever be a way to lock away such place
eventually upon the train, at his seat, the window reflected his face
and the tinted evidence returned to say that the clock knows only to take



Friday, July 31, 2009

A Sword Stuck In The Stone

I find you under my fingernails
in the deep pockets of my jeans
in my hair running my hand over it
on my shirt's crumpled collar seam

I wait for you at the bottom
of a coffee cup or maybe two
a new pack of cigarettes is hope
and the last I smoke is rue

your absence is the present moon
your evidence my tired, silent voice
I hear you in the melody of rain
disdain's the ache of love's choice

a photo frame sits on a mantel
dismantled the owner stares long
a cold in the room has the tune
of the sword in the stone's lovesong


Saturday, July 18, 2009

Simonne For So Long

friend, cake doesn't taste the same without you
and alone I empty my reckoned coffee cup too soon
I think of you at so many turns, on so many roads

I think and wish in yearn I didn't feel so alone

I can't yet come back and you can't yet arrive

but the home in my heart for you keeps lit the porch light
so, when in the night you reach to dial my number

remember I'm here and duly requite your hunger
and even if your voice, I await to again hear

I know all too well your love for me made clear
distance doesn't erode what's etched to souls' closeness
there's a picture of you and I old together I'm shown this

with every instance between us that owns life a bit more

and forever's not long enough for this pleasure so sure


Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Curiosity Corners

finally naked and wreathed you and I lie here still
a thin sheet between us; the heart's ill will

still, eyes upon on the ceiling's patterns I can't remove
the candle's amber dimming, through the room strewn

light touching the corners, our curious fingers meet

entwined in the covers; the truth of lust's beating heat


Monday, June 15, 2009

Winter's Remittence

It must be Winter where you are, lover whom behind I had to leave
In midst of nights of cold and frost do you sleep requiting my grief?
What for warmth do you draw near to remind of our blanketed heat?
Though Summer here it’s nights I fear: cold; for you I lack receipt

My dreams won’t leave of you and I; well wreathed together tight
And as day breaks through my curtain shades, I then wake to desire
I inhale toll with the breathes I hold for seeing you again my bide
I tell myself promise of sure commence is home for hope to reside

But not truly ceasing is there any ease to recommence you and I?
Is course of distance a wall for persistence; barrier for us to try?
Can hearts remain unchanged or left ajar, love kept from ent’ring awry?
Still to be seen, no easy said and done but intend attempt I’ll not deny

Season’s change is sayably remittent, so at Winter I’ll look to begin
My journey back to exact our act where’s left at love’s starting seep in


Friday, June 12, 2009

No Umbrella

I stepped out of the late-dinner time emptying curry house into the now pouring and growing steadier rain; settling in for the evening where's before it's just a trickle. I was filled to the brim with a couple of rounds of naan and korma. Warmed with the mild spice of India in my stomach and the free chai tea, for how long I'd been seated.

The rain was dashes of bright light with the swarm of cars filling, or rather leaving, the streets. I unsheathed my last Seven Star Charcoal Filter Cigarette and lit it amidst my new friends unbuttoning and stretching out their umbrellas. We said our goodbyes and I lingered; standing for a second to exhale the first drawn in breath of smoke into the misty night to sit, just before disappearing into the specs of rain.

It was getting late, so heading the opposite way I braved the rain and traipsed up towards the station. I entered a sea of collapsing umbrellas and splashing water; commuters like dogs all in from the ocean. There were colours of the rainbow and suits and ties piling past me, ticket stubs falling fast; everyone seemed headed my other direction.

I walked, following the sound of the trains rolling away like the thunder that never came, with a flash of bright-lit, fluoro-filled carriages like the lighting that never split. I approached where the overhead train line grew up and away; the concrete pillars holding the tracks up and took whatever shelter I could from the straight-down falling rain. It was growing heavier as I kept my cigarette from the wet, just hoping it'd stay lit long enough to get me home.

Crunch, crunch; the gravel and stones underneath my beaten black winkle pickers talked and groaned under my weight as I tread between the reversed-in parked cars either side of the pillars. The wind was still, with little bite and the night air was still thick and humid from the overcast day. I hummed a tune, a song for you. And began to sing aloud the words in my head, so I'd remember what I meant. I stepped carefully through the storm water filling guttering and continued on the upslope to my apartment drifting through the river.

My shirt was now soaked through and I could feel the cold of the pressed in metal buttons against my skin, letting the rain crawl in. My black jeans were turning blacker than the night's sky as they lapped up the rain falling from my hair and torso and where the drops ran down my belt into my pockets. My this-morning sprayed and pasted quiffed up black hair was falling from it's place, curled and licked across the forehead of my face. I could see it in my upwards vision, when I dared raise my gaze from my feet. I could see and smell and feel the diluting and dissolving hairspray as it ringed from my hair, perfuming and drowning my neck and chest and nose. I daren't touch it for the glug that it'd turn in my hands and I could sense it levelling out flatter and flatter on my head with each step.

I stopped under the carport of a nearby my apartment block of units and sat down to take a breath. I pulled my laptop from my leather satchel, fortunately invested in well to keep out the wet and rain. I lifted the lid and switched it on and connected swift to the borrowed internet. Tiring and boring quickly and easily of everything I flicked through, I tilted it towards me for some warmth. I closed the lid and patted my breast pocket and sifted through my bag realising I had no more cigarettes left. Fuck.

The walk back to the store wasn't that far but in this rain and storm it seemed quite a stretch. None-the-less I resorted no other choice, knowing that I'd not want to arrive home and wake in the morning to have nothing to smoke. So I picked myself and my bad up and stepped again into the rain and followed the road towards the fluorescent havens. I couldn't bring myself the effort to step again through and under the train line, so I walked head down by the close of the neighbouring building walls and fences and tried pretending not feel the cold so much.

As I neared the convenience store I passed through the very empty and open bus station terminal. The only sound; the rain steadily drumming and empty beer cans rattling as they rolled with the wind down the slowing incline. Only a few strange and strays were about now, the hustle and bustle of the evening trains dissipated already.

I stepped through the automatic doors of the convenience store, where the air-con was still blasting fifteen degrees from the days warmth. Wrapping my arms together around and to themselves I lurched through the aisles, having forgotten the instance I walked in what I'd come for. Staring as I walked at all the miscellaneous and seemingly new or mysterious condiments, powders, tinned varieties, whiskeys and liquors it came to me my point of journey and I approached the counter.

I could barely bring myself to speak, though the words were clear in my head, as the cold pursed my lips together for a mumble. The checkout doll seemed to know what I was about and handed me a brand new deck of shiny wrapped Mild Seven Cigarettes. It's not exactly what I wanted, but versus the effort required to explain and debate I resolved and pulled my pocket for the change. Handed it to her and left before she printed the receipt.

I stripped the plastic from the packet, stepping out, being punched by the humidity of the rain storm and slipped the foils into the recycling bin. I sighed as I looked out from under the store's eve, it easy to perceive, that this time round, again, I'd not make it- my cigarette not getting wet. So I snugged the cigarettes into my pocket and hoped they not drown and began, once more, the walk out of town.

Walking quicker now, I'd resolved my everything be drowned. I flicked my head up and slightly back to try and tip my heavy hair back atop my head, but only succeeded in it falling further when I straightened up. I shrugged my shoulders to bring closer my body's warmth and I remembered hearing somewhere that once your shirt is drenched you're better taking it off and less likely to catch a cold as the material isn't pressed against your chest. Somehow I couldn't make sense of the logic nor muster the effort required to that far undress, so just pressed on as best I could.

Finally, in the night's grey, wet, cloud and mist I rounded the slightly left corner and my building's amber lights were glowing with welcome and warm. I sort of shook myself off a little, as those dogs before, and traced the wet footprints left by the previous resident headed up the flights of steps and reaching my apartment pushed and pressed the key into the lock and turned it and made it home. Unzipping my water-filled, gravel crunched boots, I muttered a sullen hey to my room mate sitting straight ahead on the melting couch. Half undressed, hand in his underwear, watching game-shows on the too-loud television he, without turning, piped up only to drably, with query, exclaim, 'no umbrella?...'

I sat down on the balcony, bare-footed, my feet getting slightly drizzled on with the wind licking the rain under the only very small covering. I lit a cigarette from the deck which’d managed to survive. I didn’t stay up long after arriving home, the early morning already starting to show. When I did wake up though, it was still raining.


Monday, June 8, 2009

The Train Calls, The Tracks Never Answer

The phone card didn't work. I slammed down the receiver and thrust my head upon the phone machine, inside the tiny little booth I was claustrophobic. It started with a bad hair day, and it's always bad days are like this. Why are the lonliest days, the ones I want to see you the most, the ones I'd want you to see me the least. Too far is not my proximity from you but rather the words of mine you can't read, those I can't see of yours and the face I can't place at the right moment of time.

I sat on a friend's balcony; the evening winding in with dinner and cans of beer loosening my spirits. The fourth story high apartment faced the subway train tracks, risen above a dead river on viaducts. The trains pass frequently and then, that night, I leaned out and in and over the balcony and watched them trickle by, clacking and tricking the eyes with their fluro lit, commuter filled carts roaring off and away either side of the stations.

There was a funky and slowed tempo version of Fool Yourself cranking through the 51cm television in the lounge and the notes were drifting slowly and melancholy through the open apartment glass door to the balcony and moving my mood a little more cheerful. The track changed, ended. Sometimes, no. So many times, I want you here with me, with a cigarette on the balcony and a beer in hand and a long, wistful look down the train line as it disappears either side of my horizons. Roads never ending, but never taking me back to you. Trains that go so many places, but nowhere I can find you or feel you or see you. So many trains, but none that I want to take. I just watch them, with growing despise as everything tires me more and more.

Crack and psst. Another can of beer. Click, chink, zsst, swoosh, sizzle. Another cigarette. I love exhaled smoke in the fluroescent lighting, I love the way you and I used to consume ourselves with it rising. Clouds in the moonlight, a covering for us both. I am thinking of you, I'm always thinking of you. Every train is just another ticket I'm not holding with you. I think of you.


Friday, June 5, 2009

I Do Want To

Distanced. Without a phone. I couldn't contact you, if I wanted. I do want to, at times. I don't know what it is I want to say though. And we never said a lot when together anyways, I s'pose. I think, when I think of calling you, it would be to let you know that at that moment, or perhaps a second before you answer, I wanted to hold you. Bring your back to my chest with my arms around you. Match your breathing to mine. Locate your hand with mine and clutch it and stay warm together. Watch the moonlight sneak through the curtains playing with your hair and turning your face soft as a ripe peach. Breathe in your sleeping smell and run my finger tips the length of your carefully placed body.

I think, that if I called you to say this to you, just saying it would make it feel more real, more possible: within reach. But it's not. You're not within reach, even by a phone call. It's too cold to type to you and see only grammatically incorrect sentences and spelling mistakes and your pictures, but not you. I go to sleep with music playing at night, or during the day if I sleep then - which I sometimes do - just to distract myself from you. Or if beyond distraction, then to imbibe the music as a means of traveling through the universe and across the continents to right where you are.

I hope I fall asleep dreaming I'm with you. I thought I saw you the other day. Passing by on the other side of the road, your head down, watching the steps you treaded on the footpath that was still glistening from the five minute before downpour. But at an intersection, who I thought was you, looked up and forward and I could see it not so. So I put my head to my shoes to stop trying to find you. I don't know why it makes any logical sense that you'd be here sometimes. Of course it's an impossibility, for the most part. But I guess, sometimes, hope doesn't know how to not grow from want. And what I want is you.


Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Sleepy Street

Dark; illumintaed by the Hotel Venus Love Hotel across the road; I step out into the early evening of Hongo, where the night is so still and thick that you can hear the scratching footsteps of the late-shift working business men and women scuffling from the station. The amber hue of everything is almost romantic, but under the arches of the train track viaducts it truly is the sleepy suburb area of Nagoya that I was promised. When it is sleepy, I mean seedy, which is what I was shirtfronted with when the glass bottle fracturing and shattering on ashfelt chimed and echoed in the adjacent street to where I was seated at work, pavement based by a gutter on my laptop. The nights nor anything have ever felt cautious or dangerous in Japan. But evident everywhere, there is something sinister going on, always.

The man; stranger, in slightly tattered cargo shorts and a dusty polo t-shirt, maybe a little off middle-aged approached me, perhaps just for unfortunately making coincidental eye contact with him. He walked, and kept walking, with that slow, confident, dark and moving with the darkness of the night steadiness. Speaking something I could not understand, his word for it's pronunciation and likely unfamiliarity was of alarm. I begun the scenario creating and playing out of what to do and where to go and what to say, where the blurs of such a pace of thought disable you and disarm you from any action.


Sitting a little more upright, and closening my laptop to my chest instinctively I softly, unconfidently uttered back my standard cowardess of only speaking English. The man was almost evily joyed as he replied that he speaks a little English, with need of gesturing in a pinch of his fingers the minute amount he knew. His words still speeding past my interpretation, I heard him say Dangerous! And repeat the Japanese word he was trying to tell me meant dangerous. Explaining to me, in a tone that spoke enough danger itself, he remarked of the dangerous area I was in and that I should be somewhere safe. Hoping my playing dumb would increase any charm I had for this intruder to my protected and safe and easy-going knowledge of Japan I repeated what he said trying to show I understood but was all unaware prior.


When he'd ranted for long enough that I'd caught up to my action plans I closed the lid of my laptop and maintaining eye contact slipped it into my sachel bag and gestured that I would get up and go somewhere 'safer'. He was nodding and saying something in agreement along with noting to me that there are no police in this area, as though a justification for the harm he about to approach me with. I stood gathering myself and my standing and collected a packet of cigarettes next to me and he put out his hand to offer me a shake. I shook, nervously, his hand and nodded in acknowledgment and he noticed my putting my ofcigarette soft pack into my pocket. Having let go my hand he stuttered and asked for a smoke with gestures easy enough to understand that universal request.


As if paying my way out of an unwelcome outcome I surely gave him the smoke he wanted though I'd normally have been uninclined. He insisted on shaking my hand again and I obliged, nothing else to do and took a second before turning to make sure he would turn too. Walking our separate ways I braced myself for that ready rear infliction of anything, even his look. And I glanced once more behind me as I took to a few doors down to try and settle. Then every sound in the amber-lit, seedy, sleeping train station street sounded like his approach or bottle breaking or husky alarming voice. I walked and kept walking, until the sound of the street became softer and the lights turned less amber than flurescent and I stepped into the first corner bar to order a beer.


Friday, May 29, 2009

Going, Going

I remove them from my bag; one at a time; running them through my hand and over and noting the detail before venturing their contents. The glue is thick and sticky and holding on the folds of the envelopes that I know propose your letters. My excitement's evident in the irregular tears, almost violent at the seams. In between eyeing the lines, as I try and face your words, the plane windows entice my gaze as we taxi along the runway to take-off. There's a definitive break in the purple, indigo cloud coverage touching the horizon. And where it meets; an orange line, licking thick with the sun's setting.

It's arrived and now in decline; the day it's taken me to leave, which has been a long day, and seemed a lot has happened. But a lot has not actually happened, though the small amount that has has held a lot of meaning; great meaning.
Included are: the conclusive Mocha's coffee session, with appropriately a foccacia; the many cigarettes; the Final Cigarette; the longing looks; the sad eyes; the heavy sighs; the tears inevitably cried; the hugs held; the silences felt; and my head turned back for one last glimpse and piercing of eyes of understanding. All of the moments where I understood, though with lack of words to describe, what actions demanded.

About to rise into the air and flee to another adventure, I sat cramped and crumpled and untidy on the aeroplane, waiting to be taken from you. You were two. When we were seated, either side of me and pouring both so suddenly and steadily into and within me. Silently I was willing time slow down. I'm not ready for this, I thought, but resolved, whenever are you ready. Never; you just go. I just went. I'm just going. But, I'm going to miss you. The promise of I miss you will keep me steady towards a return to you. And as I lifted off the ground and into the air having read both of your letters I knew that nothing could take that away or recreate it and it can never be mistaken that you are anything less than most important to me.


As I finished reading your letters, the rain which was starting up all day, became stronger and heavier as the plane climbed through the clouds. The droplets would strike the glass and speed so quickly in a trickle past the window. The rain and weather and skies, that had seemed to open up today, carried with me from place to place, and stop to stop all the way to touchdown at my destination. And though it a fortuitous coincidence, I paused with every shower thinking of the suitability of the imagery and moment, knowing that you were thinking the same.


Monday, May 18, 2009

Truth's Future Immures

lit; lover's bedtime lead cigarettes
cast silhouettes on a rendered wall
and all their exhaled smoke rises
to the stars climbing in thick waul

as perched as sparkles they glisten
and she listens to the beat of his heart
which hastens claim for what he hates
will shine though apart when he departs

tired; their loaded eyes hold sleep dust
as lust their kept open only retention
slowly, whilst night dissolves to dream
heart's confession their resolved abstention

words edge to their lips in fumbled tumble
and pause hesitant before whispered
as what they failed to say turns instead
words not mentioned intentions with kissing

imbibed in moonlight their final drags echo
their together warmth spent hands clasp
and balmy they slip, tip-toeing the steps
to the tether of the becoming swift past


Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Robber Of What To Forget

I find the fondness that you follow
me for so full that I choke to swallow


I wish myself more hollow to take
your affection but it tastes of mistake


awake you won't dissipate from mind

asleep you don't hesitate to remind


dreams seem filled with blind passion

where you wear me like I'm in fashion


I don't appease any other than you

why'm I pleased to know not to do?


this reckless you won't let me or try

to exit when our only kiss's goodbye

sigh, sigh: we say the same but mean

different; you placate; I demean


deem uncomfortable a continuation

I do of our comforting situation


but such helpless for so long duration

is part of the known your and my aging

it may not be parted, Lover, with yet
but bond of our glue is becoming unset

and yes, you know to rob me of what to forget


other people waiting

we're not strangers anymore