I cannot write a sonnet
or funny limerick that will leave you
laughing into your third whiskey
of the night. I cannot spread your legs
with words and I guess geography and
lack of voice have always blighted
my route to a real home.
I cannot write greetings cards
to a second aunt sunbathing in
Great Yarmouth and coming back
with frostbite and head-lice.
I cannot write a song
and sing it to you in a way that will
leave you kissing your pillow
and wishing I was there to steady
your brand new appetite for living.
I cannot write a psalm for G-d
or an ode to nature without sounding
like a lost cause or reluctant romantic.
I cannot write the score to
the sounds of thunder that siren
with friction in the sky
nor can I give form to happenstance
memories of worms in the soil
and rainbow braids in your hair. I cannot
do much this year save from writing
an obituary and hoping you will understand
what it means to drown in open air.

The street-side artist drew your body with
charcoal and claimed the best form of life came
after the forest fire, over a more
fertile land, when the ash-cloud will come to
unsettle your vision from what is laid out
before you. He shaded your ******* in with
his thumb over the blackened lines of hope
that you would come to envisage yourself
in the way each passer-by came to do.
Once you paid up and walked the promenade,
you came to the lighthouse in the distance
as a ship turned to change its course for you.

thought i was over you and
then suddenly i wasn't. and i ached
for minutes that felt like
hours and pressure was building in
my bones, making me feel like they
might break free. i lay on my bed, delirious--
dreamed that my skeleton would leave
skin behind and that my
my heart would be all out and i would be
all over you.

a long brown hair
pulled from a coat pocket
must have been yours
laying in there like a mine
then a shorter but still long
red strand poked out of
the knot in a blanket
still yours, but more fake
later an almost black hair
came from inside my pillow case
it was hers, stirred emotions
just a little too late
finally a turquoise one
belonging to a friend
but the kind that ended up
naked in my bed
and left questions
do you miss me?
was it just to get frisky?
does it matter?

Leonard swam amongst the basalt rock.
A music box of echo and tide,
***** pipes of molten Earth
petrified in place. He stood within

the natural cathedral and cleansed himself
of suitcases, old postcards, and
sweethearts, whilst the White Stranger
looked out for his sweet Iona.

Amy bathed her feet in the Sea of Stars.
She left her clothes on Conrad's
carpet and held plankton in her palms.
Freckles of light formed in a hand-held

pool. They bent and assembled into order.
She was the forgotten daughter
of fine wine and bold name tags,
until she left them for the salt and the sand.

Ryan sat in the sun with his shades on,
stabbing ice whilst making a call
to the office. He stretched out on his
day-drunk fortune, collecting souvenirs

and belly fat, double chins and photographs;
his wallet purging in the tourist trap
of old Van Dieman's land. He thought
that he'd escaped her prison, a long time ago.

The screen is a madhouse
of body-building, ego-boosting,
and bad gig recordings.

I see her bronzing in the beach,
applying lotion and laughing
with a new friend.

I'm still stuck in the snow,
watching her skirt in the breeze.
I chain coffee in the morning

to counter sobriety,
to show that I know her more
than just by the light of the moon.

In sunglasses, we'll meet somewhere
neutral; an escape route to run
if the patient becomes lunatic again.

She'll administer the pill
from her pockets to ensure I'll flat-line
through her absences,

and then resurrect when she's lost her
appetite. Far away from this
selfish depression, I dream

of us painting a wall. Nothing dies
when it is made into memory;
nothing lives without your early morning call.