I heard the choir sing in the cathedral,
I watched the black busker smoke in the rain.
The words she writes are calm and cerebral,
her keyboard maps out our commonplace pain.
You can listen to the flutes in the leaves,
the percussive crack of ice in your drink.
I listen as your heart sounds a mantra,
persisting to live even as it grieves.
We can balance upon the ocean's brink,
a mineral spray, our unspoken Tantra.

I see everyone as bright-white in beauty
whereas in the shadows you shall find me.

Uncorking the wine to keep myself busy,
replacing blood-sugar, feeling dizzy.

I paint the cave with fruit juices and poppies,
intersecting patterns, carbon copies.

There is comfort to be found in lonely breath,
to contemplate life, the absence of death.

The summer had passed without consequence.
Through blissful parks and cemetery walks,
I measured time by the slits in the fence
and hunchbacks forming on sunflower stalks.
I found a thought of you amongst the pills,
in the pelvic bone of a wishing well,
I searched through the postcards, the old film-stills,
the notes for a story I could not tell.
I know that autumn will be my demise.
Dry toast and jet-lag upon each morning,
painting anecdotes into my disguise,
and act as if a new day is dawning.
Whilst all of the time I shall think of you
in Saturn's arms, or held in Neptune's blue.

Hands, plural to make us one
Near the end of August the heat told me to stop
It's vicious, wanting you
No milder than the jaws of winter

And every person not you cuts
On the street, our wounded lips
Before October and on silver screens
Your face projected on everything

You wanted the cinema, I thought
So I spoke fumbled niceties at your door
But the camera was stuck in my eye

And the words I scripted shifted into your mouth
The breaths I take, the breaths I shout
Your smile corroded in the rain
Your endless longing,
My endless shame

It keeps me in this thought
That what I feel has no name
But the credits crept up with the dregs of December
Money is noisy, and I liked your quietudes

But the snow will blanket my blood-buoyant bright
And I will drown into night
To lay by you until dawn
To lay by you until you are gone