God created her to look lovely only in moonlight.
To only be beautiful in the most intimate moments.
Like when she shifts out of her tired clothes
and lies in her naked bed gently swaying to sleep.
When she shimmies around the hard corners of
her granite-topped kitchen,
cooking sweet broth and dancing to the music
she only plays alone.
When she sings
loudly
in her car.
Windows rolling down as
the wind tumbles through her hair.
She is unseen
and she is beautiful.
So profoundly beautiful
in her own time and measures
and this is her most exquisitely silent misfortune.

Sunday July 6, 2014 1:16 PM

I sink
Sank in July
And scrape with my hate
I scraped why
Deep into my sides
Like knives
Falling from the sky
I want them all
To land in my eye
And stab
What's left of my mind
July 5th
You're my sickness
If I had more fists
I'd punch out my own ribs
Blood the color
Of my lipstick
& beg like a liar
With no power
I fly lower
Than ever
& ever
& ever
& ever
& I'll never remember
Why
But I'll always remember
July

Say my love is easy had,
  Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad--
  Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
  Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue--
  Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
  And I get me another man!

You tucked your sugar candy wrapping
with surreptitious dainty dips
and lots of little body wriggles
in between my couch cushions
I found them when I did a clean

amongst a weight of quiet
tight squeezed tears
pushed by love out of sight
shaped in dainty pears
appealing with question shaped
twists and marks from subtle turns

I wish your apple secrets
kept so **** sweet
unwrapped and served
peeled with berries on a plate
in neat dressed shiny mint
response coated lozenges
so I could press that sadness out
and dissolve that reposed tinge
of unsolved hidden hurt
between your sensitive tongue
and my own open heart

I'd throw your cares
that empty wrapper stash
into red liquorice skies
to chew through a dash
of  lamp lit tinctures
and catch its splash
in tutti frutti sprays
wet with an array
of well licked flavours
but please keep away
those sticky fingers

look at your paper trail of pink and white
let's follow and pick up each far flung bow
there's a picture on one we can see smoothed out
a part of a boulevard not torn but bright
and it's a bonbon for eyes that dry I'd treat
tucked in a chat upon a couchette
to Paris with you tomorrow night

I’d come back home from an early shift
When I wasn’t expected - True!
But the house on the hill was cold and still
So I went off, looking for you.
I couldn’t find you at your parents place,
They said they hadn’t a clue,
Your brother said he’d not seen your face
Since the day we spent at the zoo.

It wasn’t like you to disappear,
You might have left me a note,
It wasn’t until I came back home
That I found one, stuffed in my coat.
‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.’

My heart flipped once and it almost stopped,
I’d thought we were doing well,
We’d been together for seven years
I was truly caught in your spell.
I’d thought that your air of discontent
Was a phase, but I couldn’t see,
You left on the first full day of Lent
So you were giving up me!

I wandered around our empty house
For days, in the throes of grief,
I felt my heart had been torn apart,
Then I thought of my cousin, Keith.
He’d lodged with us for a month or so
And I’d seen the spark in his eyes,
But barely noticed the answering glow
Of your own, so now - Surprise!

I found a bundle of letters then
In the back of your bedside drawer,
From him to you and from you to him,
I’d never looked there before.
They spilled their passion on every page
Like a toadstool, spreading its spore,
His love was greater than mine, he said,
He’d love you forevermore.

And you said terrible things of me
That I’d treated you with neglect,
That I’d taken your love for granted, and
Was an albatross round your neck.
I couldn’t believe the things I read
From the one that I’d loved to death,
But now, I knew what you really said
With every disloyal breath.

You’d slept with him while I went to work,
He’d never worked in his life,
But like a Judas he’d worked his will
On you, a deceitful wife.
My stomach turned and I felt quite sick,
For days, it tumbled and churned,
The pain in my heart was like a brick
Til the day that my anger burned.

           *     *     *     *     *

A month went by and she came again
To knock at our own front door,
‘I’ve made an awful mistake,’ she said
As her tears ran down on the floor.
‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ she said,
‘To make the pain go away.’
My eyes were sad but my heart was glad
As I said what I had to say.

‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.
I haven’t a place in my life for you
Since you left with such little grace,’
Then I shook my head, for my love was dead
And I slammed the door in her face.

David Lewis Paget