Call a                          doctor/ plumber/ priest
My heart is               broken/ leaking/ deceased
My life is                   worthless/ so much better/ over
I'm going to              **** myself/ tell your wife/ Dover
How could you         leave me/ not know/ lie?
I hope you                return my stuff/ come back/ die
I'll never                   forget you/ forgive you/ go away
I need                        closure/ a DNA test/ to tell you I'm gay
Your                           face/ crotch/ top of your back
Is                                so beautiful/ lumpy/ unusually slack
Your                           ex/ mother/ best friend from school
Always made me      great coffee/ feel inadequate/ drool
I will                           miss you/ **** you/ stalk you forever
That way we can      be friends/ get away with it/ be together
I'm sorry                   you did this/ I did this /we failed
I promise to               pay you/ dye it back/ get you bailed
Please don't               leave me/ show the Polaroids/ write or call

(*delete as appropriate, just delete it all.....)

It’s so beautiful
how the universe aligned
to push me further  
into the storm.
I would have never
found the calm
at the centre otherwise.



So grateful at everything and everyone that was wrong for me. What I found so tough to understand and undergo is what I call my spine.

thrice do the floorboards creak
beneath your feet, eldest first
and every step is a wound
vitriolic and repeating
i hear the tenebrous stair
spiral forth with the sound
of you leaving

and by the intervals of sleep
i will fall forever, hymnal-red
through the ceiling
our wildest dreams fade faster
in the folds of my memory

thinking of those eyes
one last time
wrapped around me

The thing I am most grateful
for is that when my heart broke,
it broke open.

Did you feel it?

'Round about 11:37pm
Eastern

Last night

I was rebroadcasting
This enormous grin

This joyous
Guffaw

This hoot
And hollar

A small
Connection

Causing
And releasing

A death star sized
Blast of joy

You had to feel it

It was
Just after
She left

When I
Could think
Again

Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

He left her for the keys
Standing in the hall
Shamefaced secret.

She watched him
Walk down the road
To catch the bus.

We all know wrong doing
And do it anyway
Never seeing.

They had been on the bed
A bunch of keys
To his office.

She had moved them
To under the bed
Out of view.

He needed them for work
At Hyde Park Corner
To open building.

Had she seen them
‘No’, she said.
Lied.

Her brother got blamed
After keys were found,
She kept silent.

This is one act of cowardice
One thoughtlessness
Never to be repeated.

Love Mary x

I loved you.
You,
with your distance,
your lack of affection,
the fugacity of your loving,
the minimum attention.
You,
with the meaningless kisses,
the passionless love making,
the forced caresses,
always causing me deep aching.
I loved you like that,
just the way you are.
Bittersweet and all,
I wanted you.
But not anymore.

DIRECTIONS

I’m heading West
(where ever that is) .

I march off into the distance
of field & sky.

West is where
my uncle is.

I cut through
the heat haze.

My uncle’s dinner
wrapped up in a scarf on the end of a stick

as if I am
running away into forever.

Tea slops in an old milk bottle
with a piece of cloth as a stopper.

I stare into the empty air
as if suddenly I will discover there

a sign saying:
“West – this way! ”

My Auntie Nellie’s instructions
still stamped on the inside of my stupid skull.

“Go west into the field
with your Uncle Michael’s dinner.

“Tell him. . .”

Me too terrified to tell her
I don’t know
where West is?

Typical townie!

I search the farm field by field
‘till I finally find him

sprouting out of a field
with a cloud attached to his head

beside the broken rickety gate
where the tiniest ever wild strawberries grow.

So this is where West is!

Why didn’t she say so in the first place!
This I know!

Why send me like a fool on a child’s errand!

My uncle devours everything ‘cept
the scarf & the stick.

Tells me
(“Oh no! ”)

to go South to where Uncle Seanie is

and. . .