Aftermath

When I close my eyes I see you
On top of me, beautiful and flying
A wild flower, married with children
Things said to whip up my desire

You did not guard the line
The words come back to me abused
Betrayed, spat on, nullified
We are humans, after all, not angels

Now the headache is here & silence
A bottle of wine spilt over my eyes
What God gives, God withdraws
What I want or need He knows best

Emptiness sets in, rage & despair
The way out of prison carefully blocked
For we fear the other’s deprecating look
Trading our lives for flickering death

Burnham Beeches

They sleep, eyes closed, leaves fallen
Their starlight and midnight in Zone 11
Inconspicuous smouldering in early hours
A love game on an island beaded with owls

My games do not make a system
Here is Egypt, here my fingers touch the lake
A sad city, gloomy lovers, blunt spikes
Running and standing and grinding the soil

Knives and destinies, wheels of grass
I look for a prophet drowsing on the bus
My journeys, their trains with tickets aged
My light in the room by its occupants is gauged

People a hundred times larger than mist
Hold on to their gardens around waterfalls
I have come here to be silent in hedges
Munching on in the procession of mud

It looks better digested than derailed
Down-to-earth accounting held in peanuts
Insider information, importance among branches
Ridiculous, vulnerable, conceited and proud

Failure

There is a gaping, shrieking pain in me
A mad woman tearing off her hair
On the bottom of an empty abyss
My heart cries for her, it cannot do anything

Looking back to ruins, smouldering decoration
I wish this were but a bad dream
If parts can be glued together and work
If life is not a grinning sarcastic midget

What now? Prayers, penitence and hope
Mercy will have its last word, but the horror
Of the moment will live long after
In a memory crippled by satanic voices

The shock of my collapse anguished by lies
Fragile trust succumbing to monstrosity
The tree is down by one casual blow
Which comprised weeks of derailing love

Accusations and guilt follow like sheep
I am sure I will never do the right thing
Want the right thing, another grim touch
I just want to cry slowly, eternally

Midnight Breeze

Goodbye, my dear, in the blaze of the setting sun
It was me who killed you
May you live happily in other people's lives
And shine as you did in mine

Too greedy, perhaps, too desperate as well
For a place called home, me forlorn
On the ocean's shore in the wind
Eternally lost, wondering what is life

Days will come and go, the same struggle
Mistakes and victories, the mill-wheel
Did not mean to hurt you, nor me bleeding
Sitting on a crater with dynamite

Desire splitting the Earth in two
Everything could be overcome but that
The life itself, the life that turned to kill
So that is me, waiting for nothing

Too close in our whispering dance
See the fragility go up in the air
Thread-like shapes, pouring hearts
Broken, twisted, cracked and shattered

But why, why this torture of a garden
Where things were ready to grow?
Is it a lie or is THIS life?
Did we seek our blood from the beginning?

Maybe, maybe we lied before we spoke
Who knows the truth when your part is missing?
Your choice not to suffer more
Mine to stare into the midnight's breeze

More likely, we crashed into our mirrors
Recognized ourselves in disappointment
As the true faces of our incomplete lives
As two languages pressed into one sentence

That is how our trajectories beguiled us
Promising to be THE path, while behind
the soil, magnets misshaped maps
And we missed in a devastating boom

Waiting for the comet's second round
Energies that pull themselves into each other
The half-time of anguish, that is left
The full-time of the moon over the road

To An Unknown Lover

When your hand bleeds
I lap glass from your veins
Crunched desires & loneliness
Squealing into the night's void
Tremours from a broken eye
Your darkness a silent reproach
Your beastie rings
As they break in flames
From within, beg but don't stoop
Rags everywhere, threads
A midnight crossroads without lights
Tweak my heart, chop it
As I knock, knock & knock
on a ramshackled shed
With featherless hens inside
Half furious, half compassionate
See the waste, the damage
One, second, third, another
Their wounds gaping out round
As they gather here
Souls not burnt out yet
On a string hanging from a secret purpose
As they stare and pretend
They don't, the horror, the horror!
Of dumped lives
Masked in candy wrappings
In a park promenade
Behind their invisible tears
Lurking, praying, sighing
Endless hours, patiently wilting away

I have seen you, heard you, smelt you
Made for the nearest shop
To get some Christmas dynamite
To blow myself up
To erase the panoptical boom of hope
From my memory
Ambition of logs laid off
At a ghost town station
Pointers pointing nowhere
But at each other
Emptiness salted by good intentions
For you wanted a saviour
But harnessed a devil in a space shuttle
A slow taster of blood
Languid enchanter of glasses ringing in ears

Ocean Whispers Between Us

I
I may need a biometric passport
Fly on the wind instead of blown seeds
For this bait is too strong for a sperm whale
My little burning star, a palm of simmering rain

But when reality replaces ideality
And Zeus melts lamely in the afternoon sky
A tearful woman sits waiting for a horoscope
Days fall from a rope strung between her planets

I am a word arriving from nowhere
When your desire has pitched up a tent
My ears love, my eyes eat my fingers
Their limbs flow in the shadow of birds' wings

Are we a sentence in timeless duration
Squeezed out of transient bubbles at night?
Water looking for its boiling point in armpits
Dry land hosting elk games in the freezing morning?

I cannot get enough of your words
And wish all your poems were endless
Bolting of thunder, lashing of the wind
Touching of softened fields of sweet lava

The soul has had its way into a cellar
We are roasting a rat, drinking humidity
Dark sensors, blind tongues, tied thoughts
plot in a holiday resort after the fall-out

Here is your coal to burn, old, black and hard
Here love squirms under the whips of pride
Fear with scissors lock pants in a tub
I wash you, you wash me in the ocean between us

II
We are the blue blazing in northern steel
Architects munching apple flesh at gates
A thin glass line purchasing a ticket
The developing history of nuts in levitation

I killed a rabbit for you, tore off a piece of field
Sharpened knives for my whirlpools told me
There was a splitting leaf releasing insects
Lunch after lunch building a housing estate

A feast on top of a TV tower, unlimited views
Occluded systems rasp painted breath
Taken hostage among swallows at conference
Moving south with bushels of snowflakes

Premature derision, the north pole between us
Torn planes on the wings of torn calendars
Forty years after, bread of ashes, beds of ruins
Sharpening of teeth in the fenced off moonlight

I have cooked you, spiced and spattered with thyme
You have drilled a nest in me, stuffed with void
Round after round smudges bloodstains on a tie
A tear lurks in the grace of an electric chair

Vast arctic reserves, tatters of light
Me a melon nailed to the straits of a post box
You a herd of moose conjuring up grass
Clouds, islands of blue, orders of red, stiles

We are not desperate sadists in graves
I'm letting you bite off my minerals on a ship
You touch me with rakes plugged in essence
Let's be more cruel, my grey, it brings us closer!

III
You are an apple at a winter fair
Lucky men licking stories off birch bark
Tied in a boulder
Lined by smoke from a ship's funnel
Jaws spread from Dawn to Dusk

A furnace closed to balance off
A 24 hour off licence
Attempts to abduct a flower garden
Pass the ball to spectators
Knitting dust

Waiting for a mayor's head
Spitting, chewing, playing ice-hockey
The land of high motors
Ringing of infinity
Achieving of circling cakes

Your little whisper in the moonlight's grace
Don't leave me alone at home!
For I will lock you out
Or hang myself on your golden hair
As you sing buckets of loving passion