Posts tagged poetry

All my words dried up.
They stuck fast in my throat,
There was a drought,
My voice broke
And what was left
Fell
Through
The
Fissures.
Frozen hopes and frozen wishes
Unthawed by summer’s kisses,
Ground themselves to dust
In the friction of my desperate heart
Turning cogs long-lost to rust.
Without fiction, I’m sure I’ll start
Forgetting the few I still trust,
Return to my original art
Of disappearing
In plain sight.
There’s over six foot to hide,
But this feat, I have mastered,
I’ll vanish into the me of the past
Before your very eyes.

I handed him my heart in a halved pomegranate.

He picked from it the reddest seeds,
The reddest secrets,
He read each
And then dug deeper
Held in his teeth
All I had been
Bit fast and clean,
Nothing sweeter
Than youth’s dumb pulse
Naïve and eager
Beating blood into a fever.

I couldn’t bear to watch him
Tear the fruit into pieces
So, I left him to his feast, then
Returned after an hour
To find my offering,
My gift to him,
Not even devoured.

So, here I stand
The walking wounded,
Not even defeated.
He left me with an aching heart,
Not hollow,
But half-eaten.

Watch me forget
All the jokes aimed my way,
All the times you would say
What everyone was thinking
And let me sink in that sorrow
Again and again.

Watch me forget
That you’re not just bad for me;
You’re possibly
The most destructive
Thing I’ve loved since
I first saw the sea.

Watch me forget,
Forget your girls, your girls,
Utterly enchanted as I am by your words.
If you’d only turn and look back at me
You’d probably,
Definitely
Watch me forget.

It’s not that I can’t sleep,
I just can’t keep
My eyes from opening
At the hope that
You’ll be there,
Every minute or so,
But the light dark of the Summer air,
Apologises for your absence,
By closing these eyes again,
With lullabies of silence.

And at the break of day,
When my sighs and stretches,
Put slumber away,
I’ll let the morning mist
Cloud my sight
For just a second more,
Reach out a hesitant, hopeful hand,
Desperate to find yours.

I can hear the waters rising,
As I become again an island;
Throat tightens, eyes widen,
Desperate to let the light in,
Hoping it will bring some company
Or at least a little relief,
But all that falls is night and
I can’t capture that in writing.

I swear I saw your face light up,
Just like I swear you’re bad for me,
Just like swearing colours your speech,
And I think I like that most.

Knowing we’re growing closer,
And closer still, on a map,
A finger space perhaps, if that,
A heartbeat away, in fact,

Sets my pulse alight again,
Gets my hopes as high,
As my throat, then I
Lose my breath
In the torrent of possibilities.
I’m gasping for air,
As I consider when and how and where,
And if you’ve known and if you care.
And if I could
I would cope
I would hold my horses, hope
That they won’t bolt
From out my grip
To the shore and the surf
And the sand, but trip
On the dunes and fall
In full view of you
And your white mares,
Your laughing is lost in the misty air,
As you ride the tide away and I
Sit in the embrace of the greying skies.

I think too much of lonely coasts
Lonely, like the dawn’s rare hues
Lonely like me, when I lose
The only thing I write about.

I
If my ink could think it would tell me
To stop writing about him
If I hear my paper rightly
As it flutters in the wind,
Muttering bitter nothings.
Little smudges on my skin;
The evidence of love, erased,
Scrubbed and washed down sinks and drains,
To find me again in summer days.

II
I’ll drink my words in evening tea
And wonder why it is that he
Still occupies these spaces
My heart and mind let out for free.
I’ll spend August chasing
Rhymes and phrases
Over butterflies and
Freshest daisies.
I’ll sit and drink,
And pause and think
And write him out of me.

The difference is
I’ve thought,
And he’s lived
A thousand lives
To make him wise.
Whilst I’m inclined
To believe
Certain shallow fallacies,
That help me keep
My head below the water,
My eyes are fixed,
Above the mist,
And my mind wanders further,
In and out of the abyss
In and out of tortured bliss,
In and out of love with his
Fading Elysium.

You’re the name I hesitate to type, to write,
To murmur in the spaces either side of midnight,
To let infiltrate my mind,
Draining through the nooks,
And down my spine.
Across all my skin, you climb,
In blood, you swim against the current.
Fighting pulses, all you’ve done is
Wake the turning tide,
Burning eyes
Follow the contours of your thighs,
Little fires rage and die, behind the smile at which you glance.
These lips know our kisses would leave relics on each other’s skin
Mistakes of magnificence,
These hands know they could encircle yours like birds,
But resist.
I resist.
You’re the name I hesitate to wish, to miss,
To love.

Time held you back,
And me, at the throat.
You held my breath,
And I held your coat
Around my lonely shoulders,
Shivering at the heat
Of passion’s hold on my tongue
And your eyes holding me.
And all I want is a hand,
A hope: something more to hold.
And all I get is an empty palm,
And a heart that’s growing cold.

Time sat still between us,
Daring me to make a move.
Instead, I only smiled,
Fearing you would disapprove.
I’m an embarrassment to lonely,
Too pathetic to accept
I will never be the thought
You cradled as you slept.
I will never be the reason
You sit and think, and yet
You know too much about me,
More than I had planned to share,
There are minutes, moments, seconds,
When my sighs drift through the air
And you catch one in those fingers,
And unwrap it just enough.
Hold it, fold it, throw it
And we watch it fall to dust.

Your eyes are closed, you’re sighing,
But they fly too high to reach.
Time gave up its trying,
And moved you away from me.

The year I loved you was a whirlwind of bitterness,
Fears and doubts,
Blown back
By the littlest hopes,
Shouting above the storm,
Proudly waving the times we shared
Above their heads, crying
‘Think how in love they could be.’

This year, I love you like a blizzard,
I see you less and less,
You move me
Backward,
But the littlest hopes
Shout above the storm
With my voice. And they’re proud of you.
The snow drowns my sighing.
Think how in love we could be.

I wish I was a wanderer,
Because wanderers turn heads.
They stir bedsheets and burn bright in books,
They can captivate with looks,
Private glances, midnight dances;
The artisans of fine romances.

Wanderers have all the fun,
Just ask the stars and the setting sun about
The one the boy in the cafe follows with his eyes,
Until he drifts out of sight,
The one the locals shopkeepers smile at,
He stumbles over language, but it’s met with a laugh.
For little failures don’t linger
In a wanderer’s mind.
He doesn’t have to rehearse how to say ‘I’m fine,’
And sound convincing
In his native English.

He’s busy thinking brilliant things;
How dawn and dusk sing a duet,
No doubt, he’s seen them both,
In the company of
Fascinating people.
I can write them, and him, to life,
I can wish until my throat is dry,
I can walk and talk, perhaps I
Too,
Can be a wanderer.

You’re already more than I can withhold
In these cold, expectant bones,
Pacing rain-beaten streets
In the furthest dark retreats
And empty hollows, I can hear your name echo, encouraging
These dormant hopes,
This ignorant bliss
To surge and seek and seize and
Miss.
I’m missing you too soon,
I’m pounding bricks, you’re cupping fists;
Asking where I got that bruise.
I slipped… which is true.
I tripped, right over you.
This is it, here we go again.
The best laid plans of mice and men
Often go to shit.

(Source: birdcagesfromitaly)

I wish the nothings between us would grow sweeter,
That I could leap in faith, not teeter
On the tip of inhibition, on the tip of your tongue;
I thought I caught a glimpse of the words I long
To hear, but they fell dead or fled
The same second you turned your head

Away. But that’s coincidence,
You’re not one for compliments,
Except when they’re addressed to you.
Well, arrogance is nothing new,
Nothing I haven’t seen before.
I wish the nothings between us would mean more.

At least, as much as they mean to me.
But that’s a want too far, and, honestly,
I know that we are not akin
And lust is just a fleeting sin,
But I would fall from grace for you,
And fall flat upon my face, too.

(Source: birdcagesfromitaly)