The Rains' Refrain

There is cold between my fingers and wet upon my head. This rain today, since yesterday, has poured with no relent. This pen gripped between my fingers the others to a cigarette. My ears collect jazz and the orchestra of the bitter night upon the wind's wings. My reflection is laid in every puddle, on every road, in the silver of the flooding ashtray, in the cafe window panes and bubble-gummed sidewalk. My eyes are glass and hazy where I couldn't wipe. And my coffee arrives, so hot and still and calming. I need thermals for my heart, iced over in anticipation of you and so imbued by the waiting and damp and mould.

Rain drums harder and becomes the only sound to drown out everything but you. The street is emptying as the tears cry uncontrollably and inconsolably and no one wants to bare their weight. Ink runs smear on my pages as I write my sorrows on table thirty eight. This getting wet is like nothing I've seen before or drank. It's a wretched downpour. But it eases and streams away the trash and umbrellas and splashes on all the cars and everything, giving it all that crystal, beady, pre-delivery new look. There are idiots in tshirts who huddle past under the eves and silly girls in track suit pants dragging their cuffs, which to my hate's a tease, still getting the saturation they deserve pleases me.

My coffee's flavour curves luke warm with the breeze and melts the danger in my mouth. And just like it all around me I can't get warm. I shiver and grit my teeth that chatter in time with the pitter-patter and think of you, when you last listened to my heartbeat and your counting aloud the pumps of the icy organ inside me. The notes it plays in refrain. Saying steady as the rain, goodbye. I'm this rain of refrain which will not subside. I'm all refrain, since yesterday.

Heart, The Machine

All the things I wish to tell you are the things I'll wish that I never said. The instincts I persisted, in imagination, to evacuate from my head. In the overflow, my steel-capped toe boots filled with storm water, to carry the penance weight of lead. Where as I stepped, ostensibly aware myself, lead your heart to mine to dread. I fed as always in pattern my haste to nurture love when just mirage. Not realising, so exactly, how to soften my own so far is hard. I see with such perception now; heart: the machine; manufacturing and productive, must be oiled and pumped and kept and clean. And in service, as it clocks the hours, docks all the missed acquisitions and insteads. And when emptied of all energy it's just a lump of cold, shiny metal well forged and readies with no assistance it's resignation to join the others in love's landfill garbage gorge.

When Let Lips Meet

you can kiss me anytime, she suited said
don't try and work out so suitability when
just don't let it get to be a should've then
swift take to making me your present tense
and as my lips like magnets duly present
you'd wrong to let time's watch get you so tense

Past's Glass

let us please; with lips all over each others
never cease to in dream or foresight wonder
or be seized so boldly ignorant to claim
the scolding of the others tiring name
laid in aim, with eyes upon eyes; the glass
should show only glistening within: the past
let's say we'll wipe away the mist condensed
of all the hindsight, fogged events
and look through to where sky meets sea at last
and make its sail, flight or drive the task

Love Sick

love, as I swallow, you are the lump in my throat
and though sick, the cigarette, that I still smoke
left in a grey cloud of nicotine I persistently choke
all behaviour I know to you and this history cloak
you're the same's the coffee I buy when so broke
love, this fire's embers of questions of why stoke

Only Your Love Is Not A Secret

Dear Secret Admirer,

I got the short note you wrote
on a rectangle of torn envelope
signed warm at the end with xo
and your phone number in hope

write me compliment of nice car
and coffee sometime, you asked
and's if your pen a feather you tickled
my curiosity's persistence to interest

I reread and driving decided reply
the nice car's owned by a nice guy
how about coffee tomorrow night?
I'll wait for you at table thirty nine

and so, our grandiose story's written
over and forever two be smitten
of my life you became it's love
of coffee and you there's never enough

I Missed You

you've long gone love lost in boxes
slid under beds, on shelves, in closets
you've hid their presence to evade
the costs you know you owe to pay

their letters and photographs you keep
the tokens given from others that seep
into your heart's growing storage room
scripts of romances you never let bloom

crystal ashtray and trash and treasure
jewelry and gifts you chose not remember
feathers and trinkets adorned years ago
you try but can't add up the things you don't know

you're not sure why you're looking here
or what about the past makes you unclear
is it consuming fear the chances you've missed
or wistful thinking what others used to insist?

pert kisses of lipstick on letters you wrote
missing stamps where you never got to post
reading them you recall innocent intentions
and things you now wished you'd mentioned

one stand out letter finds your fingers
reading each word its potency lingers
its prose sinks in and you decide confess
you then let this one go and now want redress

even though it's dated five years prior
you're determined to stoke the fire
it's not as heightened now; your ego
a heart once disowned now willing to show

with the letters scattered out on your bed
you try remember the last thing you said
reaching for the phone you know the number
dialing, you pretend you were their only lover

rings add up and as about given up hope
a familiar voice answers the call, hello?
and you pause a second, whilst it hits you
you say hi, your name, then I missed you

Save Your Smokes For A Rainy Day

dispose of your cash, throw your cigarettes to the bums
know if you don't you'll only drink and puff down to the butts
if don't help them quit get them quick through their day
like a dog licks it's wounds you give to wish them away

you say well I'm saving my smokes come a rainy day
sell them I wont or let them be taxed before my pay
you tell you'll hesitate to fund an other's drug addictions
for you it's pleasure, them necessity that's the distinction

your preparation is appalling, so admiration well lacking
you're less silver screen for your endorsement's acting

Somewhere Along My Line

in response to Somewhere Along The Line
as Billy sings I know's the truth
and for knowledge of it catching up on me
I live it waiting sure I'll never rue

with a verse of Virginia cigarettes
and cancer it's enjoyment's toll
and words of a lover with now so satisfied
but for lust's conquests a damaged soul

I relate and my conscience somewhat berates
but still I live in hope the cure's
such gratification and will death assuage
that I didn't live indulged in pleasures fewer

Just So Right

rife you lay your innocent lips upon mine
ripe you say is given a young love's time
rite you claim disdain no horizon's line
right you aim to preside our love sublime

Not Enough, Love

she wrote me of the new year, on it's eve, nothing's gonna change
instinct and evidence of her ignorance to the way I operate
because as the new one was rolling in on Lorne's cold lick of wind
I was determining my resolution of not being nice not a sin

I was camped on the hills' side by the amphitheater's stage right
living in a weird state of mind watching Franz end the year's last night
and my thoughts were not with her for the messages she sent
instead they were with another whom I was sending what I meant

Ben Gibbard's voice is my only thought for the past three new years
and the anti-climatic short lasting feeling as another to fill appears
I'm rarely of resolution or aim to change my ways for the occasion
but her dull reply provoked my disinterest giving ease to persuasion

this just passed new years I called an early night retiring to sleep
unexcited and too sober state of mind a smile was hard to keep
seeping in from all around me was others' convictions of joy and love
but personally I could only see how this year love would not be enough