I see you in my dreams,
A white body in the water,
Your legs close to mine
Almost (but not quite) touching my knee.

I think back to the day
You came to your door,
Still wearing the warmth and stickiness of sleep
Which almost (but not quite) melts into me.

I wish I did not feel this way
But I do not seem able to stop.
Maybe winter will cool my ardour,
A question of almost (but not quite) wait and see.

I kissed your lips last night,
Almost drowned in cushions of flesh.
Should I avoid these somehow?
I wish almost (but not quite) that I could let it be.

I realise it cannot happen
The way I want it to be.
For all my so called liberation,
I am almost (but not quite) free.

My head and heart are in the ascendancy
But my body is in thrall to the drugs.
My diseased brain is at fault;
I am almost (but not quite) the real me.

A pale blue silk thread
Has been sewn onto my pillow;
My future hangs by such.
Now, I understand the actor’s question,
“Do you like killing beautiful things?”
In that case it was a rose
Planted, fed, watered, sprayed, nurtured, admired
And then cut.
It was grown to cut
Like the lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world was grown to be slaughtered.
The alternative would be the slow death,
As each petal falls to the ground,
To be collected and secretly placed
In the shape of a heart on a bed
Or laid out on the grass in a line leading the way to the casket buried in the earth
I call out.
But she has gone,
Trust me, she has gone
Perhaps something remains,
Hanging by a pale blue silk thread.
I do not deny the charge but I admit no guilt;
It was me.
I drew three dots on my thigh in biro ink
So ******* what?

Oh, I want to **** her
Yes, I do,
I really do
Oh, I want to **** her
But I want to ******* too.

Oh, I want to kiss her,
Yes I do,
I really do
Oh, I want to kiss her
But I want to kiss you too.

Oh, I want to hold her hand
Yes, I do,
I really do.
Oh, I want to hold her hand
But I want to hold your hand too.

Oh, I want to speak to her,
Yes I do,
I really do
Oh, I want to speak to her
But I want to speak to you too.


Oh, I want to watch her walk by
Yes I do
I really do
Oh, I want to watch her walk by
But I want to watch you walk by too.

Oh.

Empty,
Full of hope,
Not yet born.
A second heart beats waiting to say hello
You dread saying goodbye.
Why did it have to happen?
She cried.
I lay down beside her on her bed
But she did not want me there.
She could not fathom
The reason for death.
There is no reason
Other than to help us love life more than we do.
What do you think?
Blue or pink?
Alive or Dead?
Living within you,
You will never lose this time
This dangerous gift of love,
This precarious gift of life,
Breathe in,
Breathe out,
Hope. Love.
Again,
In, out,
In out.
In.
Out.

In


Out




in




out…..

Words,
Whisper them into the half-light
Words that describe me, define me, identify me.
They are limiting;
They do not allow for anomaly, contradiction or freedom.
Or the depth of the water in the well
That seeps away slowly in the heat of the morning.
I am one person,
I repudiate the others;
They fill my head with thoughts that I rejected long ago.
I spurn them still
But they crowd in, they bill and coo and **** on my morality.
I am weak and defenceless
But I fight them with words,
Words whispered in the half-light.
I draw my silver sword,
I thrash it left and right,
Sinew and muscle jar as the blade hits its mark.
But the surgeon’s scalpel
Draws foreign blood;
It is mine that must be shed,
Mine that must paint the town red.
A sword? Why, I can hardly kick a football.

If I were a bird,
I would fly over to him
And sit on a branch by his window
And sing melodies all day long.

If I were a lion,
I would leap on to his bed
And lie down beside him, heavy and muscular,
To give him the strength he does not have.

If I were a flower,
I would grow tall and graceful
And give out the perfect aroma
As he sits on his garden seat.

If I were an angel,
I would float down and lift him up in my arms,
Leaving the disease where he lay
And restore and return him to you.

If I were the sun,
I would shine hot every day
To provide him with the warmth and succour
That his ailing body craves.

If I were God,
I would cure him tomorrow.

I am none of these things
But I am his brother
And if all the love I feel
Were transformed into a melody,
Into the courage and strength of a lion,
Into the perfume of the finest rose,
Into a choir of angels,
Into the hottest sun,
Into the most powerful deity,
He would rise from his bed like Lazarus
And be well again.

“Do not be afraid”,
The poet said.

“Come, follow me,
Take my hand” he urged,
As he stood on the burning bridge.
“I will guide you into places
Where you have never been,
To see sights that you have never seen”

And guide us he did,
This wonderful man,
With words and rhythms
And rhymes and reasons
That we had never heard,
The lines of which we had never learned

And when he took us home,
At the end of our long journey,
We felt refreshed and alive,
As if the sky had washed us
In a way it had never done
Whilst we sang a song we had never sung.

And this poet even put us to bed
And he watched as we dreamed
Of worlds we had never seen,
Of words we had never spoken,
In a way we shall never forget
And with a love that we shall never regret.

And the poet said,
“Do not be afraid”

yes,
he spoke of the language of flowers,
this man of Gaul,
he spoke and, as he spoke,
i looked out of his window,
i saw my thoughts trail across
a sky as blue as that in his first film.
i stood, naked, as he shined his light on me,
it picked out the old, the new,
it bathed me,
it made me feel beautiful again,
as any human, being, gone, to become.
he asked me to do what i wanted to do,
i laid on his floor,
i looked up,
into his eyes,
i saw that he knew
i was doing what i wanted to do,
i was speaking the language
of romance, poetry, of stories new and old,
my body twisted this way, that way,
the way it used to,
i was speaking la langue,
l'ancienne langue,
des fleures,
d'amour,
d'une vie,
une vie de la beauté,
oui.

Do you remember me?

The boy whom you loved
In that world where you walked
And clicked your heels?

The youth who had grown
Into manhood
Whilst you explored another land?

The young man from whom you recoiled
With anger and spite
When he moved you aside?

The brother who stood by your bed
And witnessed the beginning
And the end?

I am the keeper of the flame
In my heart which flickers
Still.
Until,
My beginning,
My end.

I remember you.
Do you remember me?

When I saw you yesterday,
You smiled at me
And, in that moment,
I knew the secret of life.

You were saying in that smile,
It is my turn now,
I am going to carry on
What others before have done.

I saw in your eyes
The sight of ancient times;
People I did not know
As well as those whom I loved.

It was strange
To see such faces
In the eyes of one so young.
It was a thing of wonder,
Like a beautiful song.

Your mummy will sing to you
As I sang to her.
She will talk to you
As I talked to her.

She will impart tales of times gone by
And she will speak the names
Of people you will never know
But you will take these forward.

Then one day you will look
Into the eyes of your child
And you will see what I saw yesterday,
When you smiled at me.

"When shall we stop looking at women?"
Asked my friend.
As another came into view,
I hoped
That we had not stared
Too much, too long, too anything.
Educated, sincere, honest,
No-one should vilify his roving eye.
Later, as we sat eating,
The beauty parade continued;
We were polite, gracious, complimentary.
I walked through the tables,
The thin waitress caught my eye - the other one -
I returned her smile.
We left for home, my friend and I
To take to our beds,
Each of us alone,
Without enjoying the touch of another's flesh
Words of innocence,
A song of joy.
We had come into the world with nothing,
Only to lose everything.
"The day we die" I replied.

I cast off my clothes, as he had asked,
And stood against the tree nearby.
I bent my head as he demanded
And the river, well the river ran by.

I brushed my skin and looked into the sun
I waited patiently, stared him in the eye.
Voices from surrounding hills faded away
And the river, well the river ran by.

After it was over, I picked up my shirt
It was cold and wet, I don’t know why.
The insects danced in drunken delight.
And the river, well the river ran by.

We walked on through the grass and the ****.
The music in my head caused me to cry
He did not notice. Perhaps he did not care.
And the river, well the river ran by.

I ****** in the water and he looked surprised
The wild sheep grazing, seemed almost shy.
A rotting skull crumbled into the earth.
And the river, well, the river ran by


Afterwards, he left me alone and drove away,
He shook my hand and said goodbye.
I never saw him again, my friend.
And the river, well the river ran dry.

What is love, my love?
The kiss in the morning, the last touch at the end of the day,
The liberation of our thoughts, the words we do not say.

What is love, our love?
Letting go and turning away head to the wall,
Confusion, anger, spite, laughter, that is all.

What is love. Their love?
Walking alone but thinking only of her,
Thinking only of him; the loneliness a blur.

What is love, my love?
You, you are my love, my isolation, my fear;
No longer a blink, a silence, a tear.

And when they ask us,
And they are certainly going to ask us,
Why did we love, my love, what shall we say?
That was before, this is today?
No, we shall walk each of us into the shadow of the band
And dance slowly, gloriously until we can no longer stand.
That is what is love, my love.