never wanted
from the start
to be or
not
   to
     be
   to
en-dure,
painfiully.
        he loves me    
                        he loves me not

dear Life,
i take vitamin c with chicken noodle soup
cause i need a double boost of immunity to you,
Life, you're virus-like
slow and steady persistant stream of attack
on my will's white blood cells,
eventually wearing me down with:
     term papers,
      lies,
      paper cuts,
      and a nicotine addiction
dear Life,
i got a triple boost of immunity today
i drank orange juice with my vitamin c and soup.
HA.

I watch from afar as we rut on the bed
Your breath laboured as you reach your inevitable ******
You ****** deeper and my angel cannot fly
Pinned down as it were by the tired worldliness of it all

Never balanced
Two extremes
Just a dream of solid things

After you died
She brought your clothes
In a black bag
Saying maybe I could use them

I took them out
And you were there
I held them to my face
And breathed you into me

I put on your coat
And felt its arms
Holding me in
A warm embrace

Your strength and comfort
There for a moment
And then gone.

They took you from the hospital
They didn’t know why you had died
They wanted to do an autopsy

It took 3 weeks
We couldn’t see your body
It wasn’t fit they said
And eventually we got

A Report
Brain - 2 and a half pounds
Body - healthy, unmarked - not emaciated
No needle marks on the arms
Liver - taken for analysis
Traces of Tuinal and Physeptone
They cut, weighed and analysed you
But couldn’t find the reason
Why you had died
Drowning on your own *****
In a mental hospital

My mother took you to her hometown for burial
To the cemetery hedge where you were conceived
Later she told me that whenever you cried
She shoved a dummy covered in malt into your mouth
And then she would leave you
Her bundle of idle words, looks and *****

Poor Dorothy looking for escape
The war child who knew no softness or comfort
Poor John a quick coupling in the dark beneath the cemetery hedge
Begotten from chocolate, stockings and a Burslem teapot

All the dreamers lie asleep
Tumble fast to gentle deep
What is seen tonight will be
Tomorrow mixed with memory
Ghosts fragmented on a thin
Mist that scatters in the wind
sadness solid shaped in stone
a desert isle for those alone
the shapes will shift a thousand shifts
while sleeping heads refuse to lift
a cloud of rain, a distant star
disguise from dreamers what they are
forms unfurling as minutes pass
yet remaining objects without mass
the sleepers’ tricked, pulled into space
and dreams are woven in this place
sever ties with feather chain
rejoin the world awake again

I can still feel your hand on my shoulder.
You against me,
Your touch growing bolder.

I hate you for this
What you've made me miss,
My skin still heats with your memory.

I can finally say
Your face has started to fade
That the cool light of dawn
Brings my mind back to me whole

I've seen my heart shatter
No. Maybe unfold.
I watched a broken man clatter,
through his life wearing a blindfold.

This is what I have left.
After all the touches and tears.
My soul, drifting in waters uncharted.
My mind, expanding beyond imagination.
My heart, not whole, but healing.

your oppression,
my depression
A struggle between
right and wrong
direction-less presence
facading happiness.

just tell me i will be missed,
my leaving will not be wished.

just one last kiss
one last glimpse,
what the future could hold
i feel it slipping away,
one last time.