1.
Silence
She opens her brown eyes wide
But shuts them tight quickly
Time passes
She tries again
This time squinting
She looks at the clock
So carefully arrange on the bedside table
7.03am

2.
Silence
The world is gently stirring
Soon people would be making their way to work
Like ants filing out of their nest to forage
Five minutes more pass
"I'll get up now" she thinks

3.
Silence
Broken by sudden noise
The air around crashes violently
Heat and noise invades her sanctuary
Explosion, the whole room rocks and shakes
The silence and dust

4.
Catherine Maddis was her name
It stated that upon her door beside the bell
Which lay across the floor in the hallway
Shouts, screams and pleas pierce the haunting silence
From beyond the hallway
Footsteps echo

5.
The dust settles
Smoke seeps into the room
All is still, the pleas fade
Slight movement, a spark of life
Her arm falls, a trickle of blood trails to her wrist
She looks so peaceful

6.
So quiet
Broken by the increasing sound of footsteps
Far, far, nearing, nearing, faster, faster
Faint echoes and scrambled words
Finally a peaceful silence remains
Fade away

He wrote poetry

As one may take the bus

Patiently waiting in the eye of the storm

His storm, the storm of thought

With or without cause or fuss

Or an element of uncertainty

Whether or not the wait will deliver

Deliver us to the fate of salvation

She made a show of hesitating on the threshold,
Leaning against the doorframe.

She regarded him with a small, false, enquiring smile,
He said nothing, merely looked at her.

And still she advanced, still smiling,
The expanse of skin about her collarbone was mottled.

And there were hairline cracks in her make-up around her eyes,
Stop at the window, consider the view.

The sun shines on a glitter of green,
And summer strides up the hillside.

He watched her where she stood with her back to him and her arms folded,
As if she were holding another, slightly self clasped tightly to her.

He noticed her poor bare feet with their stringy tendrils,
Once the world had seemed to him, a rich, coloured place.

Now all he saw was the poverty of things,
And the ghost of a love past.

The vision :
(dreams torn, torn)

A picture came to me in the darkness of night,
Of myself in ten, twenty years time;
Worn out with the struggle, weak, and no longer able to fight,
Finally giving way to the forces ranged against me,
Sad and grey and defeated.

The sketch :
(in harsh charcoals)

This dream that came to me,
Was as though I had finally and sadly, late in the day,
Lost my innocence.

The Canvas :
(Life, existence)

I had been high-minded and apologetic,
Full of enthusiasms I didn’t quite mean,
And guilt’s I didn’t understand.
And now I stand looking at the man I could’ve been.

In Oils :
(violent colours)

I had spent years thrashing around in confusion
As drowning men pull each other under,
As wave after wave we are swept away;
Our cries obscured by the thunder.

My signature :
(...)

See my writing on the wall,
There’s no one to catch me when I fall;
But Death was on my side:
Suicide.

She was simply there,
An incarnation of herself.
No longer a nexus of adjectives
But pure and present noun.
I noticed the little fine hairs on her legs,
A speck of sleep in the canthus of her eye.
No longer Our lady of the Enigmas, but a girl,
Just a girl.
And somehow by being suddenly there like this
She made the things around her be there too.
In her, and in what she spoke, the world,
The little world in which we sat.
Found it’s grounding and was realised.
It was as if she had dropped a spreading drop of colour
Into the water of the world and the colour had spread
And the outlines of things had sprung into bright relief.
As I sat with my mouth open
And listened to her, I felt everyone
And everything shiver and shift, falling into the most vivid of forms
Detaching themselves from me and my conception of them.
And changing themselves instead into what they were
No longer figment, no longer mystery,
No longer a part of my imagining.
And I, I was there amongst them, at last.

Her hair was as black and as shocking as burning tyres;
And her pastel-hued eyes that once surveyed the dawn,
Could set the world aglow;
And her skin as white as alabaster and soft like the new found snow.
Her voice, oh, her voice was as cool and clear as ice,
Probing and touching and reaching like wanting fingers.
But she left...
She had left him with a life like a ruined photograph print,
One half burned to ashes and the other half torn,
And containing only the single, voiceless image,
Of a pair of red shoes moving in the winters breeze.
Outside,
The moths spin crazily across the slate-dark road;
In the midnight a puddle was ***** by the wind.
He plunges into the obscene night, taking the backroads,
His hands naked against the starry cold.
The leafless trees accosts his soul,
And the icy wind shears the skin from his body,
And all the while;
She looks down at him, there all alone;
Her body limp and swaying from her hanging tree.

Tiny tiny
Bubble of silver
Beautiful in the half light
Caught for a fleeting moment
In the rays of the sun
Adrift
Spiralling upwards
Towards the light
Air bubbles
Tiny bubbles of air
Escaping from the void below
In each a word
A single word
Perhaps
‘Hello’
But more likely
‘Drowning’
Travelling silently
Until
Finally
They reach the surface
And
Burst!
Without a sound
Lost
Among the waves
Silent words
Silenced

‘You are beautiful’, I whisper to her
in warm but silent words;
her hair fell to the side of her face
over her shoulder like a veil
revealing her slim tanned neck
that I loved to kiss;
the candlelight glowed on her cheeks
as I lost myself in her eyes

This is love for she is in my waking thoughts
And nightly dreams, my heart heavy for her
When we’re apart and the sigh in my soul
Whenever we touch.

‘You are beautiful’, she senses the words
that he whispers into the wind
she feels his gentle hand upon her face
knocking a veil of hair upon her shoulder
revealing her neck that she loved to feel
his tender touch and passionate kisses
the candlelight in his eyes
‘but this feeling inside…’ and she turns away.

As one falls in love and
With a drop and one of those
Sudden slight sighing surrenders
A heart is given to another to hold
The sincerest smiles unfurl the most delicate rose
Plunging deep into ravines of passion all-consuming.

If I lived forever and a day
You would never be more beautiful than now
Your presence brings me to the brink of life
Lifted by a dawning sun your eyes aglow like jewels
Setting mine at peace with the waning moon
That turns the tide pulling my love to you.

Red velvet candlelight blushes
Deep lingering lip-staining kisses
Captured, cherished kept close to the heart
To form the sweetest of memories
To have and to hold for now and forever
No matter where the avenues of life take me.

All the little pieces had fallen together
Like morsels of coloured glass
Used to make combinations under the hand
In the depths of one of those polygonal peepshows of childhood
Love had been found and nurtured and grown until two hearts beat as one
Discovering a breath of life that distance cannot break

My body lies crumbled on the sand,
Like a dry leaf in the glow of dawn;
A shrivelled voice inside my head whisper’s something
- I could not make it out at first
- But then the voice cleared it’s throat, then repeated :

Each day is not a chapter
But a mere sentence
In a library for unfinished books
Called Cemetery

It was then that I opened my eyes,
Knowing that this was not going to be a sunny day...

And at night I looked for solace in the darkness
But found only emptiness...