Fragment #121

what if equilibrium

were a fractalled mirror

what if we held it

half of it in the light

half of it in the darkness

and looked at ourselves

would we not cry

Fragment #199

It is cold in my heart, and the blizzard rages, rages

yet turning around I see one long line of footsteps,

steady in the snow – the fact that it is fading

is irrelevant to the purpose which brought me here –

home awaits at the end of the journey,

warmth will come back and thaw.

Still, a long way to go yet.

Fragment #113

I never said I would

ever write a poem

about us

writing about love

can’t have been

about us

those poems I never wrote

and never will write

about us

are like the tears

we’ve never shed

as they weren’t

about us

Fragment #63

You think love is a guessing game

and you have to win, every, single, time.

As if you had expertise and know-how:

the last time you loved

the heart you broke sounded

like a chicken bone

a dog snapped in half.

 

Fragment #30

Sometimes I notice a use-by date

And I wonder where I'll be at that time

What I’ll do and what’ll be my fate

What’ll the world be like

Will the situation I’m in be done

Will other shenanigans have started

Will I be expired too, and left alone

Or in some brand new life uncharted

Sometimes I notice a use-by date

And I hope I will then be all but dead.

Fragment #31

     I’m the type of people                         You’re the type of people

for whom one person is enough          for whom the world will never be

Fragment #21

 

"Let's swap roles,

You wait, and I don't come back."

"Let's swap characters,

You ponder, and I squander time."

"Let's swap lives,

You die inside, and I wield the knife."

* The first couplet is by Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet, apart from the comma I've added after "wait".

 

Fragment #81

The day the storm hit the coast

he drifted along the shoreline

looking for trouble in her jade eyes

– see-through waves through

the discoloured sun –

chaos and fury in his heart

hoping to find her of the pale eyes

forever resting in the waves

Fragment #71

 

acutely cut-chaining daisies
hovering over catastrophes
sowing clover until hollow
daisy-cuttering hearts in the
unjust absence of tomorrow

 

Fragment #55

The lantern outlined your pockmarked face,

watchman who survived far more than thieves.

Even the darkness shivered with fright.

Fragment #17

In a fingersnap

with snipersharp

accuracy

you tore through my heart

ghost, soul and bones

when you laughed

when I said

I love you

.

Fragment #196

The long and short of it lasted more so

than anything she'd seen, and it left her

– panting – sweating – and looking up at him –

both still slightly discombobulated –

Letting go

 

I didn’t know but letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet. I’ve let go of ghosts, friends, demons, good habits, bad habits. I’ve let go of memories, dead people, distant people. I’ve let go of parts of me which I thought were innate, but ultimately were inane. I almost added an ‘s’ in there. Of all the toughest decisions I’ve had to make over the years, this has got to be the most difficult one. Letting go of someone I have never met.

I had an ideal, once, and once only, and it was taken away from me. She was all I didn’t know I needed, and she had stepped into my night like a dream. The day I met her was daily nondescript. No buildup to this day, no chance of me thinking I’d meet my ideal person. So when I did, Death was amused, and after a time adorned it with tubes and a ventilator, and tied its life to a thin green line drawing mountains and abysses at irregular intervals. That erratic horizon of a line had to settle between those two, where the ocean meets them, and became as still as the doldrums.

Now we’re drowned among 8 billion individuals. We’re even specked into oblivion by billions upon billions of stars and galaxies we cannot possibly ever explore. Yet when I look at her, her uniqueness shines brighter than quasars, weighs more heavily on my mind than black holes on the fabric of the universe, appears more majestic and terrible than neutron stars. This is what I feel when I think of her.

Ultimately, our lives may not matter and our decisions only affect a fraction of whatever we call the reality around us. Yet I will not get to meet her; and surely Death wouldn’t be amused again because that is not how Death works, yet it feels right all the same. Yet I cannot shake this feeling that I have that it could be she, again, even if it’s not how Life works. I didn’t know but now I do, that letting go of someone I’ve never met is the hardest thing to do on this dratted planet.

 

Fragment #39

  

They said Show us the meaning of love

I pointed up and said

Through the harsh rebuke of death

I look at her and I am happy

for the first time today

she forgot to be sad

Fragment #19

Why, in this long string of days,

this one mattered more than the rest?

She was gone beyond reach.

He felt he had failed the test.

He had gone on a long search,

nowhere, and in none, did he find her;

ten years and never even close:

never as smart, never kinder.

 

Fragment #85

Eventually I'll forget the grain of his skin, the delicate bridge of his nose. Eventually.

Eventually, I'll stop thinking of him in another woman's arms, whispering words of love, fucking her, kissing her neck, burying his head in her hair.

The idea, now revolting to me, I'll eventually accept. It's not actual jealousy – it's more to do with my own happiness. I used to be happy with her because I loved and was loved. Her feelings wore out but the memories remain. Eventually, I will forget.

It's easier for him because he ran away with that other girl. That's because he doesn't want to have to forget. He deals with loss by adding more. He doesn't realise that one day there won't be anything left to add. That the running away has led to a cul de sac. No more fucking around. No more jumping from one relationship to the next.

The irony wills it that I realise she is not someone for me, that the differences between us are too great, but her eyes, her hands, her personality...eventually, I will forget all of these. I will have to forget how great a person she was, perhaps the greatest I've ever met. Will ever meet.

I don't know what I will forget first, but I know what will be forgotten last: how he made me feel special, how I mattered. He would listen, and respond with the clearest-cut words, those which touched my heart where no one had ever dared go, where I didn't think anyone would care to look. I realised too late he used his skill to read people to manipulate them.

She would chisel her words so they would pierce me through and through. She would feel every place she touched, she would measure pain with a knowing hand, she would carefully manipulate such raw feelings with ease, like a surgeon with a beating heart outside a patient's chest. It was as if she had always known me, that she had been waiting for me to heal me.

He made me want him, made me crave for more of us, for more magical moments. I know that eventually I'll wean him out of my system, but for now forgetting his face is the most fucking difficult thing I've ever tried doing.

What I'll never forget is how she helped me through such a hard time with grace, care and kindness. She truly was a fantastic person, though not one for me. How I envy the man who will get to build a home with her, graced by her presence...if such a one exists, if she ever allows herself to be touched, to be helped, to be happy. The last memory of her that I will have to shed, eventually, is her look of sadness and humility in the face of my sorrow, and the fullness of her hugs, whispering to me that I would be all right, eventually.

Perhaps, perhaps they were the saddest of us all.

 

Fragment #16

I drank too much coffee today

I am way too alert, sniffing the air

like a hound on a wet trail

 

Fragment #34

Though some have tried

their damnedest

though some will try again

none could hurt me

like I hurt myself

That's why everything

will be ok

now that I've learnt

to be at peace

with myself.

 

Fragment #100

After failing to impress for the hundredth time

I went back into my cave, stoked the fire,

put my wolf pelt back onto my hide

glanced at the sky entire

lay down on the straw mat

saw the magnitude

of life, its amplitude

and called it a night.

 

Fragment #189

It was all too soon that we forgot what it was which made us what we were. Beasts of burden, that we became. They made us love the work. So we changed our mind. And we became intoxicated. We wouldn't question, after a while. We were thought important. We were overwhelmed. We thought we were central, that we were in control, that we had it all. We loved one another and when the stabbings began none batted an eye. It was the way life was, wasn't it, and had always been, hadn't it. We were we, and no one who mattered would be left behind. Words were what they had always been, yet were different now that we had only we to use. We didn't remember what we used before we, but we were so happy that we forgot. We was all which had weight. We were few, but the happy few. We were brothers, we had one another's back. We were formidable. We were infinite. We were and there would be no end to us, ever.