Clay baked, brown, red and white
In white hot heat
Points to sky, raincloud free
And sinking off into the hills
It goes on and high.
Weak legs on strong lines
Chalked toes and dry mouths,
Breaking their belief
Shattering the smitherins into the atmosphere
In hope the gods will weep.

He had the echo of the wind about him
Wild with the freeness of never
Being tethered to anything.
He disturbed the calm trees
Bustled about their leaves
With some restless frenzy
That knocked their white blossoms
And trod them in the earth.
He knew nothing of the hurt
All the hopeless bareness of their branches
Split and splintered before chance
Could have them grow and splay
Into shoots,
new and green with a
Respectable pride to their name.
How their babes would wail the loneliness
As he breezed on,
Head never turned
And never concerned with going back
The way hed gone.

It was a hell of a day
Sun and shade
Chequered your face chess board
And I was checked,
Heady between sips of beer and silent
like the smoke rising from your cigarette.
It burnt ruby, and I thought of jewels
And all the beautiful foolish things
I would buy you,
If we weren't here on a tuesday -
Mid-morning.
The awning weeps weary drops
From the drain that hasn't been cleaned since the place opened.
It has the colour of dark ale,
I stare at the pale in my pint glass,
think of the half a dozen things
responsibilities and togetherness
That could be part of us -
But are sadly too vast for these shoulders.

You hold out the yellowed filter tip
Lined red with the colour on your lips
Messily smeared - like it was done
The night before -
But I'd watch you adorn that ****
With shaking fingers,
Wobbly with all the worries of nothing
And everything.
You shift restless, pale arms stretched
Across flaking bits of bench,
drenched a weak grey by years and years of rain.
I rearrange the ashtray
And you smile at me, gap toothed and tired
Vacant as the breeze just dancing through.

'I'm bored' your voice slurs,
Like the thin trail of wine down your glass,
The redness settles and colours the stem
Colours your teeth.
It'll taste sour if I kiss you,
But I won't. I smoke.
Exhale the burn, blast it to
The clouds that creep across the sky
Lazy like each blink.
The world fades,
Black then bright.
Black the bright.
I think there might be an epiphany in my lungs
That song of something exciting.
It dances with possibility and makes
Me fidget in my seat
Maybe
Might be
Could be
Possibly.
Expectation makes me shrink into my sweater all holes and broken stitches, that itch as I pass you the last bit.
You smoke it, flick it
And all the potential goes with it
'Do you want another drink?'

The sun shower you special,
speak sparkles
Into your soul
Till you are whole
With all the hope
Of new growth.

It's a bittersweet thing
That makes me out of moments
I only half remember.
All those moments are you,
Tuned to the melody
Of how we used to meet,
Twirling together like syncrinosity
Was our name
And every other defining feature
Had died in the face of our love.
It wasnt enough,
Life takes as often as it gives
And we just had to live with it,
Disjointed and jarred,
Stepping on toes as we tripped away.
All the mistakes are
Sharp stones clutched my palm
As I make a fist
Revisiting every step and dip
Every wondrous lift and fall.
You are all
And the ache,
The sweet, profound pain
That makes up the whole of me,
Now that you're gone.

I fear the finality
Of everything.
So nothing
Ever begins.

It doesnt fit
Theres an itch,
like a wrong suit and I'm pulling at the sleeves
To relieve the wrong ness,
Because it shouldn't hurt this much.
It shouldn't look like hand me downs and disaster,
like patches and a picked at lack-lustre lie
But it is, and I sit in it like the youngest.
Not my style, not my choice
Not my face or how I feel
This unrealness is someone else's.
The pattern is loud, proud of its garish
Flambouyance, as it shows off the ache
The geometric shape of my sharpness
Against the soft of sad
How it frames the sag around my shoulders.
If only I were older,
And time could take in the waist
Sew the hems and make
Me fit
Somehow this is my skin
How am I supposed to wear it?