Oh, the decisions of the heart.
       To live without your voice,
                 or let it tear me apart.

So Herodotus muttered marble dust into his beard,
And foretold the white clay of the mule road,
And the whiskers of Greece grew long with legend.

Too soon, what will be left in Oceans emptied
of their brothers' and sisters' songs?
there, where their pale, phantom presences
in their chorussed schools once thronged?
We humans think of ourselves as Kings,
Emperors, Rulers, Overlords of all
expecting other species such as theirs
to be held captive forever, to be in our thrall
We watch them from afar on Tourist dinghies
on TV whilst eating fast food, faces fixed in ghoulish grins
never acknowledging our human interference
for the plight these creatures of spectral white are in
dismissing in disgust their now scarred and fungi'd skin
The mourning songs of the whales are surely
those same songs born of centuries of human slavery
though their words are alien to our human ears
we are told that they are intelligent,
wise beyond our puny human years
but soon, too soon, shall they fall silent
their shapes mere shades in the depths
of the litter strewn seas
in dried bones on every plastic polluted shore
upon the bleached and barren reefs
from which colour, just as their songs have faded,
has faded too, forever, forever more

I must confess,
Amidst the swirling blizzard
That I had been waiting.
How to explain that feeling
As you lent into the storm
To cradle my focus
Before it swam away.

I still remember
The first encounter.
How when you're a child
Worlds alter during mealtimes.
As the adults in the room hesitated
I saw then that you lived
In the gap between their words.

I was raised in fear
To believe you spoke only
The language of regret.
To never disturb 'neath the hood
Or pause to revere, the haunting beauty
Of those lingering webs
Misting dew drenched fields.

I see you approach
In dreams, as soothed calm encompasses
Those vague surroundings
Outside, on the line
All that haunts us is just time
Looking back, like a drawn
Face in the basin.

I understand now,
Perhaps, I realised even then
Under the night somewhere
In the faint darkness
You walk beside me.
Under an emerging moon somewhere
The paths of our shadows meet.

the diver pulled
the body from the lake
his limp arms
kept falling off the stretcher
a tall black boy
about 7 or 8 years old
motionless and staring
through me and the others
through the green treetops
and the painted sky
through his mother’s tears

the ambulance slowly
drove away
and  we went back to our games
and joey and I made a house
out of a big
cardboard box
and everything I said
was so funny
to joey
and when joey said
anything
I laughed
and all we could do
was run and laugh
until joey’s mom
called him for dinner
and he left

the sky turned dark
darker than i had ever seen it
and i climbed into our
cardboard house
lit a candle
the rain hit the cardboard roof hard
the wind blew
and the candle flickered
out

summer was over



                        
                        
       ­               

                      
,

When I say
that you are my Sun,
I don’t mean that you are
Luminous,
Brilliant,
Gilded,
Beautiful,
Bold,
Warm,
Or even the center of my universe.
I simply mean that
I cannot look at you
Without hurting