i looked Love
straight in the eye.

Love looked right
over my shoulder.

takes courage
to recognise a lie.

takes a lie to keep
you growing bolder.

we lived at a staccato rhythm
punctuating each other's
exclamations, yet
traced not a mark
on noteless time: an empty score

dissonant parts leave
not even the faintest of echos



- - - - - -

I think of it, sometimes
in passing that corner. or

climbing those stairs,
two bodies entangled against

the rail. getting off
the rails. did they, too

recognise something
stranger in a stranger?

something I too thought
I had found. that night

I saw it. I was sure. the light
behind the pain. fireworks

behind closed eyelids.
ready to chase it all down

the rabbit hole. I was
already falling: Wonderland

wondering, wandering lost.
but no. it was just -

just a wet puddle
on impassive bitumen.

just a mirage. a trick
of the light.

whose light? I suppose
it was nothing, just

something very
ordinary

after all.

there, now -
Fukushima sakura unfold
in perfect pink oblivion.

here, now -
wind tears a madman's
origami from umbrellas

wire crane's feet
curl to the sky.

I once went
on a first date
with a woman
so lovely
she made
my bones ache.
She said: "I just
want to make clear
that I have
no baggage."
I said: "How sad.
At our age
no baggage means
no life."
That was also
the last date.
How smooth
am I?

  ~mce

alabaster
ivory
white
creamy
eggshell
and just
the size
of a woman's
thigh.

You'll be a mysterious cavern
I discover by accident.
I'll be an intrepid explorer.
I will enter you like a cathedral
expecting holiness and hidden treasure.
You will grip me in your darkness
and hold me like the man I am.
Holiness and treasure will keep us there
until spent and satisfied,
we will return to our worlds
better than we have ever been before,
pleasured by the treasure we have shared.

~mce

However much think you know,
It is no more than
the thinnest gossamer thread
In the vastness of what is;
However much you value
Your worldly experience,
It is only a tear
In cistern of salt water.
Take courage, only the earth abides.

  ~mce