I remember those August days,
Trembling on the brink of summer
Like a swimmer dipping a toe.
I remember blameless hours spent
Drifting through the heat like a blowfly,
Indolent and
Slow.
I remember casual cricket games and
Cut price soft drinks causing a local sensation.
I remember the group gatherings behind the scout hall
To share cigarettes and have a stab at being adults,
Secure in the knowledge that such things were impossible.
Adults were a separate species and we would never grow up.
We were complete as we were.
I remember November, hopping from
Pool of shade to pool of shade like a bullfrog,
All to get to the river and fry anyway
A tangerine mosaic of sticky sweets and dry grass,
Of swimming horizons and excited, sleepless nights where
We would play childish word games and
Talk for hours about precisely nothing.
Yet, to us, it was everything.
A loosely jointed circle between the pool, the shop and
The park, in those days when icecreams were 50c and
School a rapidly sinking memory.
I remember the sun hovering above us like a polished golden coin,
Cycloptic witness to our petty thefts and juvenile scheming,
Striking down on our heads like a marshmallow hammer,
Making me want to stretch out and purr.
I remember the slow receding of the heat
When the summer scale is lifted for another year
And life must be faced once more.
I remember the web of friendship we had woven with our
Words and with our deeds dissolved under the rain of Autumn and
Left me with cupped hands, hands
Filled with the sugared water of my happiness.
Sweet nectar that dried soon enough and
Left my hands sticky, *****, stark against the
Bitter wind of the winter.
I remember falling off the tightrope of my life and finding
Not the net that I had never needed but
A drop that I could only guess at,
Where the sun fell away with quicksilver speed and
I was stripped naked by the wind left
Cold and shivering, hugging my knees as I fell.
I remember growing up and leaving my childhood
Behind like a skin I had outgrown, like a
Friend that I had broken contact with.
I remember coloured dreams breaking like crystal.
I remember being at the top of my mountain and
Tumbling away, away
I remember crying for my
Joy gone by.
I remember, one day I will forget and
Then I will have moved on and my hands will be
Clean again.

A sidelong glance,
A lazy stare:
Silently, our souls compare

Whatever was and yet to be...
It plays out most delightfully.

You faded into rumour
(Something my head heard my heart once say)
And now your ballet-flat footprints in the
Valleys of my mind fill with time and
Volcanic ash and the heat and the flash of
Our glorious supernova collapses into a
Dull grey chunk of **** and pig iron.

I look closely, and I see your thumbprint.

You're still with me.

The path is long
And overgrown, so
Heaven knows I'll walk alone.

No matter, though:
The moon's my guide,
Her fingers silver, laced with mine.

"So where to next?"
I stop to ask.
"All that you wish shall come to pass,"

She whispers mute
With lips of comets'
Tracery. I'm struck, astonished.

Feet aflame
And eyes the same,
I trap the wind and speak her name...

"My precious, gorgeous
"Tireless Guide,
"I'll run until you're by my side!"

I take a step,
Then run, then fly
The overgrowth left far behind.

It's better this way--
Infinitely gracious through some colossal mistake of philosophy,
Fists bleeding crumbs and spent cartridges but no, not here
Not even heaped in trembling awful coarse and remnant parts
So I gulp my spent errors - hid in the corner cloaked and dripping,
All chin-slicked rivers and dead raw mouthfuls my
Open-jaw distention retching light and dread obscenity.
And already I'm done - the earth is too rich and your face is too much
And my skull is not a crown
And my eyes are not a crown and
My fingers, stretched in nets of elegant blue recurve all casual magnetism
Slow repose and measured coronas of flesh and revelled refraction
But no, still not a crown
Not even down here where the rainclouds cough
And as I lift my face and tongue all wrapped all very strange in
Feathers and claws and elegant uniforms still no still no ah! here there's nothing.
But the maps are not a science and never you promised me never no
Never, not even as we stretched and turned in revelled liquid bursts of languid sanity.
My skull's a cracked chariot, never not a crown
And it never could it hold, not even for a moment,
Even a broken-down notion of you.

The teeth are stones - the mouth a line while
Fingers bend in knuckled spines.
The face? A slash of lips and eyes
While pages prance with sprawl and lies.

I carve the dusk with
Silver wings:
This day’s long dead – now grander things

Can softly speak,
Then spread, then sing!
This starlit cauldron’s simmering...