hovering over catastrophes
sowing clover until hollow
daisy-cuttering hearts in the
unjust absence of tomorrow
Coming home to him who loved,
a little late, a little flustered,
unshowered though they’d met again
– against her better judgement –
– his marks tarrying all over her –
Coming home to him who loved,
she knew he couldn’t but know,
the very second he’d smell her
– and then he’d see the redness –
– sense the palpitations of her heart –
Coming home to him who loved,
she remembered the man’s gaze,
his keen beard and carnal smell
– him who loved no longer enough –
– she had allowed, he had indulged –
Coming home to him who loved,
waiting on the threshold, smiling, loving,
waved as she stepped out of the car
– buried his face in her neck, and kissed –
– averted his eyes and held her hand home –
Coming home to him who loved,
she let him touch her where he’d kissed,
let his tongue search her where he’d looked
– he couldn’t ignore, he couldn’t unknow –
– she cohered he who loved and he who didn’t –
Accept that she doesn’t want you to be there
for her, everythen, everythere, everytime.
She wants to get hurt, she wants to know fear,
she wants to learn life lessons in crime,
in passion, in absence, in love, in hate.
She will be and kill what you hold dear,
she will leave early and come home late,
she will be proud, waste and ace her prime.
Accept that she will one day be gone,
accept that she will answer to no one;
accept that you will find none like her.
Ever again.
She will be just as unlikely as a comet
shooting across both your life and pain,
and you will never have that sort of grit,
she alone will make it a boon or a bane.
She will be more free than you’ll ever be,
you know, for you tried it and failed miserably.
She will be just and unfair, both lock and key.
And turn away.
Accept all of that and live, or be damned
for you’re alone in the hot, glistening sand.
She’s already out there past the crossway.
The wild horses hoovestormed the heart
swept acrossthrough relentlessly
clangingiron on the hollowhull
echofilling the shell with life
and futurethrills
the cavalcade over the wildhorses
slept in the newlymade loveswire
silentawe swelling the inmostcentre
whinnyready for the next pulserace
Busying ourselves in the garden after the frost
the weeds are in better shape than the crops.
The constant struggle wears us out,
the unrelenting going against
– for Nature is restlessly reluctant
to relinquish the want
yet generous to hand out the need
as a rule in the guise of a seed –
in the kindness of our heart
we pry the ground open
to snatch sustenance from its jaws.
We harvest everything we can
to stave off what we think is hunger
and randomness and chaos
for we want to feed the sated
in the kindness of our heart.
We are an odd species:
in the kindness of our heart
burns a savage desire
to tame, to shape, to conquer,
to be unmortal.
Uncontent with good,
unsatisfied with enough,
we vie to overcome and surpass
measuring up by measuring out
in the darkness of our heart.
Yet what we cannot have
we burn to the ground,
in the kindness of our heart,
for fire erases, cleanses,
renews parched lands,
weeds the soul out.
Sometimes, it is better to just
burn everything
in the garden of our heart.
The lantern outlined your pockmarked face,
watchman who survived far more than thieves.
Even the darkness shivered with fright.
In a fingersnap
with snipersharp
accuracy
you tore through my heart
ghost, soul and bones
when you laughed
when I said
I love you
.
The night had been long, the night had been short
burning up the last of the last wick
pantomiming my way home after work –
the day had been longer than eternity
and I moving like a rattling bag of bones
The night was long and the night was short
intoxicated by the smell of her skin –
lost in the hours of her lap
the day inevitably whorled away
but I was to be stilled again
The night is long, and the night is short
moments like meteors for an attentive mind
scrutinising emotions encased in seconds
in curled strands of hair and wringing hands –
having to inhabit stillness in motion
The night will be long and short –
full of words that pinch and twist the heart
each breath a farewell to love and time
with only smells like petrichor to keep sane
and spoken words echoing like footsteps
I spent my youth under vast blue domes
the cerulean so heavy it was suffocating
lying down it felt like a lid sealing shut.
Trees whispered cryptic, leaf-and-sun songs
power lines seesawing across the car’s window
also sang when the mistral blew the laundry dry.
And the hawks, the hawks,
flickering through the clouds
their cry pinning souls in the heat.
Blond locks of hair turned crimson in the dusk
the fateful petrichor in the black autan, pungent,
time was as unending and volatile as space.
Such expanse overpowered every sense
lightning-jolted the heart to the origin
like those summer storms I loved so much.
And the hawks, always watchful, on the prowl,
scourge of the infinite, parched fields
when the driest acorns pulverised underfoot.
In the warm embrace of the night I sank
built the cities and lands in which I grew
stillness sought in motion to gain peace.
The day, sunlit tiles framed by a window,
crystallizing specks of dust in sunshafts
church bells unringing the flock to work.
I spent my youth under vast blue domes
pretending I was an unfettered hawk
against an immense, blueing eye
Right above the surface of the sun
disaware of pain, despair and joy
floating, floating, floating in a blue dome.
countless year-long days past since she went
every memory of her flared from under the bed
in a lock of hair balled up in dust
The day was torn and grim birds yet began to sing as if they knew nothing’s eternal and old gives way to new that man, one day, will fall t...