Two Truths

   
These two truths
have always been,
equal,
open,
self-evident
to me:
…all things change,
and everybody leaves…
…eventually.

So while I have you here,
for as long as you’ll
stay
and with no one else
but the waning day, and
the lengthening clouds to hear;
the evening’s rabbits and
lowing cows, as they gather
at the gate; while you and I
have nothing awaiting our attention;
nothing to do
to speak of
or to mention above
in passing;
let me get around to asking now,
who it is that you
really are?

And if you tell me,
as the sun goes down;
I promise only the stars
will be around to
really take note…

Well…
them and I who will listen
at your throat
and whisper
back
in your ear;
soft breeze stirring your hair
and your precious soul til you can barely stand…
And,
somewhere,
in all of this,
I will tell you too,
who it is
that I really am…

And it will not matter
if we are honest,
for we
may only be a summer long.

Missing

    
It is not that I lament
this solitude
nor look on it
with ingratitude for that which I
still have…but they
are cruel spirits who giveth
sweet liberty
with one hand
only then
to taketh away…

It rained today…like needles before the sun
came out;
but without a doubt, there could be
no streaking colours
painted for me
across a grey canvas sky…
for I
could not share them
or hold them,
still closer,
or ever tighter and golden
yet, with you…

and as life chewed at me
and gnawed my bones
and my flesh and
aching soul
I wanted nothing more,
right then, nothing less,
than not to travel,
and to breathe, and think
like fire,
all alone. And I wanted
not to miss you
and a time,
and a circumstance
I have come to know as home among
small hours
that I have leave
sometimes
to call my own.

Most Beautiful

   
Walk with me,
for we have not depths
that the lyrics would have us believe
we
live
only
in this gentle stream and the merry dusk-light
floating wild
like crimson kites, against a humid sky.

And we need
no more to survive, than this
our own heaven created,
indeed, no more,
than this nature incarnate,
and just to be.

And so we answer, “walk with me,
come,
lie down in the grass,”
cut off the shackles of present,
and past and cherish that unworldly crash
inside
as we go free
for here is where
you and I are seen, at our most beautiful.

Thoughts on Becoming Thoughtless

   
There is calm serenity,
or so they tell me,
in accepting inevitability
quite sedately…

One should not howl,
or question, they said.
One should not pound one’s
cursed, confused head,
but stop, take stock,
and plan one’s sessions,
of lethal lead poisons,
meant
to leak,
amongst my bones.

And one should not try to own
that pain
which could be layered out,
for family gains.
One must not care more
for one’s own fate
than that of suffering others.

One must, of course,
be…smothered,
in sad dignity.
One must not get lost
in health’s infidelity.

But here inside,
lies the truth,
of indemnity,
as I see with my own eyes.

One is becoming
Thoughtless,
long before one’s charted time.

One became diseased today.
It is happening anyway,
so why should one not
seek to say
all that has not passed
my cloudless, acutely conscious
and unmerry way?

It is not my choice;
this cruellest of jokes. But
for all one’s hopes
and plans and dreamscapes,
the escape,
I conclude,
(for you) as well as I,
is as random as love.

And I was always more lover, than fighter.
Now, more frightened
of the fight, than anything other.

Take cover, friend. You didn’t see that coming?
Well no, why on earth would you?
The world chooses who
will stay
and who goes out.

It is a basket piled high with woes.
A tale of the final horrors and throes,
you all shall see.

My mother will surely cry for me,
when I am gone.
But what of it?

Come death and welcome,
for clearly, some bastard lord of fate
would have it so.

Inspired by my grandfather, who died of cancer, and my mother who is suffering from MND.

Bird

    
Fashion me from straw and cut me,
please,
right down to size
for I have been anything
but wise amongst these days of late.
I have been but
a taste of many things,
most of them without the wings and halos
you’ve come to expect…yet
I’ve still grown those golden
flecks,
in my down,
that the sun breeds just
the same,
and I could live in a metal
cage,
in the lounge,
for all your friends
to prod and touch at the end
of warm nights –
with clipped feathers and a stunted
flight, they can marvel
at my plumage…and I’m sure
they’ll pay you homage,
for a genuine, fantastic choice.

Trapped Heat

   
Listen well,
for I want to tell you
of a minute's worth of empty heat.
And I want for you to feel
all
that I have need and
tender hopes for.

These are things
I would have closed doors for,
and forgotten,
some very little time past,
if only to remind myself
that I should never have asked for,
 - or deserved - ,
them better.
  
But the truth is, I'm as changeable now,
as ever,
as fickle as the weather, or the angels and these devils
that sit upon my shoulders,
and what is more, well capable, of hearing the songs
of both,
of rolling my own boulders
from the cavern's mouth,
...of letting myself out,
and promising her the world.
  

Home

   
My sunsets of pale ochre
glisten
on the waters of stolen time
that is no more
to some;
- unfathomably -
than a heathen, empty waste.
Have those who mock it
never tasted
what is true and blessed beauty,
after summer's baking heat
lays out
all grounded graces
on the surface of rain-soaked earth?
  
Have they never breathed
what mustard scent, caresses
mornings and bathes the sun's descent
on acrid, almost-August days? Have they never
begged a friend to stay and witness
a miracle
play out before their eyes? Never thrown off
feigned disguise and
laid themselves
bare
among wet grass? Never asked
to just be left there
with all that it is,
alone?
  
Tell me...
where do those,
who have not lived at all,
call home?
  
  

Let's Pretend...

  
Do you want to pretend
that the moths are fireflies?
That the areoplanes are meteorites, or shooting
stars in the dark
night sky, above our heads
as we lie on crushed glass? Do you want to ask for
a lonely wish to be granted? For a hopeless
dream to be almost answered
by these tail-lights
and beacons right now?

Or shall we not speak at all?
How about we just lie here
and stop
falling through these long days of life? Stop fighting
these sunrise-knights and their flaming torches
and the skull-aching torture
of this knowing insight...
Let's exist forever instead
inside the silence of dark
and the glow of twilight,
between the dawn and the
yawning evening plight of a sinking sun,

and we'll never endure another day, not a
single, vicious one - for we'll rise only
with moonlight and gentle stardust, to live
among the closed
and sleeping flowers,
and we'll dance away all
our beautiful hours, like ghosts,
without a care
or a worry undue...

Hush, be still...close your eyes...
take my hand...
We are there...
it is truth.
 
For a friend in need of a dream...

Lullaby on a Knife Edge

      
These empty nights,
and tedious days…
it seems he only ever
now promised
to change. And it used to be
she loved his star,
no matter what it’s shape.

It turned out
she had peeled him,
like an orange over the years,
and only then
because he’d let her take,
every last ounce of sparkling grace, and make it
pass
for life.
And her beak fell sharper now
than the edge
of the knife he slept on
when I found him.

He told me then,
I was a sacred fountain;
that I made roses of nails,
that I put wind in tattered
sails and insisted he speed
towards dreams.
But I was just me.
And I told
the truth
in his eyes, that he should
see no more
than soothing stories,
as I wound my fingers
at his temples and he gloried in my golden sighs.

“Tell me just one more
lullaby,” he pleaded, and I caressed his neck,
as I talked of never
going back,
of being here always,
together
and free;
and whispered things that barely seemed
a hair, or a breath,
out of reach or sight…

…but I sent him home, night after night,
with an aching heart and a yearning soul
in fledgling flight…

- because I had to -

and somehow,
I hoped it cushioned the slicing,
and the sharpness
of the edge
of the knife.