Out of the window
a courtyard yawns,
Passion flowers overwhelm
sun-brushed brick

A cat paws a
gutted cassette tape,
whilst pigeons
steal into the
forgotten yard building,
with newspaper windows
and wonky slates

I guess they own
the vestiges of the old
car in there now;
rust on rust on rust
Their own kingdom
in old boxes and older dust.

They aren’t aware,
of the lunacy of it all;
this human race.
People are just
no good to
each other.
Money before morals
before health
before warmth
before kindness
before love
before life.

I envy them,
those
birds-
they only
Have
to worry about
the
   cat.

When the sound of life is anything
before the music begins
before there is time to listen; when
a child coughs in the next room

I wake carefully, pressing an ear
to the last beat of a dream,
and find: you're not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

Carriages of wind move past my window
move disturbance above the pool of a tortoise
who periscopes to the surface,
expectant, in the least, for a gulp of air.
I swim and sweat somewhere beneath my bedroom ceiling
somewhere beneath the air I prefer to breath.
But your not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

When children sleep in the afternoon
when grey breezes whisper away the sun,
when an avalanche of crow-call murders the dove
perched on my sill, there is nothing and none to tell
and no circumstance worth repeating at a later time.

You’re not here now.
You’re not in the next room.


MChallis © 1998/2015

I knew this girl once.
I won't say we were friends
Because we weren't.
I should say, she knew me.
A girl knew me once.
And I was too afraid
Too young
Too angry
To know her back.
So we pretended for a while
And then we stopped.
She stopped seeing me
Just as I started seeing her
Just as I started knowing
Just as I started being.
Time dragged me
And I tried to be blind
I tried to stop seeing
And just when I thought
I was ready
To never see again
She appeared
And drew my hands from my eyes
And looked at me for a long time.
We saw each other as we always were
As we always are
And then we turned our backs
And walked apart.
I screamed
And realized
I would never be blind again.

The road was darkest between streetlights.
Patches of mystery carved into the sharp, blue night.
A glow, a house, a chance, a kiss.
A scattered bolt of static on my wrist.
Grass and past under our feet
And only the air between us.
A long, deep breath is all I have to remember it.
I stole that night into my lungs and cleared the glorious path.
The long blue night, the glow, the light.
One
Breath
At
A
Time.

Next to my pillow
lies your shirt
from the last time I saw you.
And each night I hold it up to my face.
And before I open my eyes in the morning
I breath in your molecules.
They enter my lungs
and make their way up to my neurons.  
Have you seen my neurons?
They're amazing.