you know that option for signing yourself off in a card
not simply 'love' or even 'lots of love'
the one with the deeper meaning
the more you think about it
the more it becomes

yours truly
these two words put together have different intentions
there's the 'yours truly' that serves a kind, platonic message
there's the 'yours truly' that's meant for business, formal and mandatory
but the one this poem happens to be about
is the one you write when you want that person to know
.... well, wouldn't that be telling?

it's a game of interpretation
dependent on dynamic
not only in the world of cards
but in life, in literature, in love

see i've had 18 years to ponder this
and, you see, the phrase 'yours truly'
always reminds me, somehow, of pride & prejudice
another 'most ardently'
it's one of those phrases
that isn't just a phrase
it's a message
an intention

i have never been 'yours truly'
not until i met you
in a world where intimacy = romance
there's you and i
more than family
in words not yet discovered
not yet in the dictionary
i could describe us
but that time has not yet come
and i reckon i'll never find the right words
i doubt i could even find the wrong ones

nothing has ever really come close
nothing but yours truly
because you see
that's the truth of it, brother
i am truly yours
and i know what you're thinking
this sounds like a love poem
and you'd be right
it's just not a romantic one

i am yours, truly
truly yours
yours truly
in any way you arrange these two words
it's perfectly describing you and i
yours - because i belong to and with you in a way i never have with anyone else
truly - because i couldn't think of a greater truth

yours truly meaning;
a walking, talking anchor, a source of comfort
a however long phone call, a casual distraction in the form of a chat
a sentinel at your side, whether physically or not, i'm with you
a sister, a brother, a substitute for all and any family you might need
a warm, breathing reminder that you are not a **** up, because here i remain
a portable, perfectly willing cushion, a simple solution to touch starvation
a buddy for those long nights where sleep escapes the both of us, a comrade in insomnia
a single, everstanding, ever dilligent and passionate reason to continue living, another life you have saved
a fellow adventurer, a fan of not just the things you love but the things you love and owe your happiness to
a stubborn loyalty, a fierce, angry, vengeful power that will never dim and never die out, a companion in the worst of times
a reason you can rest your weary body at the end of every day and every night without fear of the nightmares or abandonment

so george
this is a shambles
a rambling mess
but the point has always been
that i
am
yours truly,

alistair.

there's a void that lives in my ear
dark and twisted and cruel
and i thought that
that perhaps i could learn
just to live with the silence
the echoing, harsh nothingness
of the void

but you see
my void houses
yet another creature

oddly, the two are as
light and day
the void is cold and cruel,
dark and silent and oh so endless
but this other thing
oh, the void's friend
is loud and restless,
eternal and painful and insistent

so even in the potential
i may have seen a window
a porthole of hope
for respite

my resigned silence
has become this maddening,
neverending hell

and it all lives in my ear

you see the branches,
they shrivelled up and died

look at my ear as you would a tree
a firm, long standing oak

roots and branches for nerves
a resilient base for an ear drum

imagine the tree has fallen
all but the base

you can hack at it
you can hope it may function
just as it did before
as trees are just meant to

but the roots are dead
the branches are cracked and gone

so imagine an ear as an ear again
it's purpose to hear and receive

now imagine a silence
as promised by description
of ailment

only there is one exception
that constant, infuriating noise
the one that keeps you awake
that fuels your insomnia and
campaigns your insanity

a working ear drum will still receive
the noise
the vibration, the impact, the pressure
but as a tree functions
so does an ear

with no roots and no branches
the base is just a base
it may receive

but no message shall be truly received
not with my ears

nothing but constant static
or a piercing ringing
seldom a painful tone
but enough to suffer with

too loud and you hear the blaring
you feel the pressure

you try in vain to double down
to cover where it affects you
but it only gets worse

too quiet,
silent
and slowly,
very slowly
you may just lose your mind

in my ear lives a void
the roots are dead
the base lives on
and the void's host
may just destroy me

oh, you
you're shades of blue
the calm of a daily sky
the depths of the vast ocean
the ice that shrouds your being
but i have more than examples
you're blue because you're sad
and there's a reason
that a child will always choose
a blue crayon over the rest
when asked to depict sorrow

you're blue because you're apathy
sometimes you seem to care less
about those closest to you
than those you haven't even met
i really hate to say it
but on regretful occasion
you seem more selfish
than simply apathetic

oh, and you
you're shades of red
the tenderness of amore
the flash of thunderous anger
the trickle of blood from a vein
as always, there are more than examples
you're red because you're intense
and i don't know how to shake you
how to make you
realise what you're doing to me
there's a reason
red depicts the strongest feelings

as for you?
you're a bright, strobe like
sickly and arrogant
y e l l o w

because you're annoying.

when we die
our lifeline amounts
to nothing more
than a straight line

but when we're alive
our line spikes and flies

so knowing this
doesn't it make so much sense
that we feel most alive
when riding rollercoasters
and soaring through the skies?

when we sleep
are we in actuality
rehearsing our death?

imitating that solitary line
or following that erratic pulse
that stand to prove our mortality

a small fascination
with two lines
and simple parallels.

there's a boy
and every inch
every aspect of this boy
is another line in a poem

he dons himself in jumpers of blue
and baggy
hair shaggy though short, short
enough

and a strip of black
it permeates the flesh
and the chapped hue of his lip
and he dips
through doorways
or for the sake of hugs
sometimes you'll see a tug
at his sweater weather sweater
though, really
how could there be
more to cover by jumpers

there's a boy
who embraces from behind
takes time to rewind
and he's such a nice boy
but when he loops a long arm
around your shoulders
and across your chest
and you feel the slight grace
of the boy's chin

you feel the sun expand
but somehow it seems
a modern myth is one sun
when one expands
within you
and yet the other
it's at your back

there's a boy
whose jumpers are more than colour
the wool and it's hue
are statements of mind
and mood
and the boy is sad

but, my god
it's so beautiful
when the boy smiles

i don't know what to tell you.
there's a place out there
that's not yet tainted and desolate.

i don't know what to tell you.
somewhere there's a blade of grass
that's not yet crumpled and sorry.

i don't know what to tell you.
somewhere there's a world
that's not yet at war and desperate.

i don't know what to tell you.
somewhere there's an answer
that's not yet empty or shallow.

i don't know what to tell you.
somewhere there's a reason
that's not yet overlooked or inadequate.

i don't know what to tell you.
somewhere might be out there
but that place is just not here.

they never talk about the trees
with history so shaped by poetry,
tales of the aesthetic and also
the way in which the light bands
across the delicacy of skin along her neck,

how could they neglect the trees?
the source of which material you deface
litter with your soliloquies and your...
your scrappings of failed attempts to...
how could you not devour them?
with all your grand metaphors and
your passing, blindly romantic drabbles

the pen is mightier than the sword
so turn your weapon towards
your blank canvas battlefield
and write of the trees
revel in the symphony
note the calibre
of such leaves as they thrive
and not just fly but soar
oh, and recall the aching;
the bark can only withstand the wind
for so very long

before the unstoppable force
renders the immovable object

a hopeless nothing on the forest floor

tell me,
if you fell so completely
with not a soul around to witness you
did you ever really fall at all?

perhaps,
in the end of all ends,
we are meant for nothing more
than the perpetual hell we spend the majority of our lives in.
after all, boy, who are we to ask questions such as these?
exactly. nothing. no-one.
not a thing you or i say will matter to any of them.
so that is why we write our stories.
it's the only way our words will matter,

and it's the only way they'll listen.