I remember it in colour
A lurid confetti of moments
Made of every possible hue
Most were blown westward
But still I kept a few.

Paper has a fate, like ours
As colour soon turns to dust
Yet we strive to return the lustre
And try again we must.

So we notice fresh new colours
As we paint another sky
Redrawing all those hours
Which went flashing by.

I spray my sun a stagnant yellow
And drown the horizon in doleful blue
But the picture is as imperfect
As my memories of you.

We were fed, and fattened
By the millet strewn tales;
Which swayed like barley in our minds.
Those wooded bowls of grain
That spoon-fed our souls
Warmed and filled us
Until we grew whole.
But they had foretold;
The Patriarchs,
That we’d grow old
And as we did, we’d forget
That once we’d eaten, like they had
And that once, we’d too, tasted oblivion

I can see him there now, shading
The high beating sun with his palm
Ignorant of times diligence
He’d stare idly down on his world,
The burnished street below
Was all he ever needed to know
But unaware of the transience of bliss
He never felt the night closing in.

They fall on me as I sleep
Their faces born from memory
Climb out the encroaching darkness.
How many nights have I dreamt of them
Of the words I would say,
Yet I only say, "you should not be here."
But they never reply,
They are shrouded by silence.
Their eyes, they are alive though,
Moonlit inquests drawing the tide
Asking, pleading without words.
But they don't speak
So is it me that is asking
The cud of that question
Is it me that asks not to wake?

1

Around my great table, long dead faces from my past
Chew the empty morsels
From the golden days we thought’d last.
But we’re no longer immortals,
Running through the eternal glade.
And now as I look closer, my friends start to fade.

        2

But sat in different places, they again reappear
Though now with their aspects pale
They don’t seem to be really here.
So I begin another tale,
One I know they’ve all heard before,
It’s met with a Gorgons quiet, when I’d expected a roar!

              3

Now before me, there is Stevens; sweetest of them all,
Rise, and with a great effort,
Try to summon the call.
Yet nothing is heard, apart my thought,
Singing over to itself the one line
‘Please, stay my friends, more wine, more wine, more wine.’

        4

And suddenly I see Evans, a foe more than a friend.
He was still the same small ******,
That he was from his beginning to end.
As I was not actually certain,
Whether or not a ghost can digest,
I thought I’d answer my own question, by stabbing him in the chest.

                5

Evans just carried on talking, in that dry nasal tone,
Always elucidating,
About all that he had ever known.
And I remembered how elating
It was when I heard he had died
Everyone else cried madly, as I just quietly smiled

                6

But even faithful Evans, fades now from my view.
And as a smile on his lips died there
It’s then that I really knew,
That I am forever cast out here,
In the mind’s castle, I wander alone,
The place that’s my prison, and now my only home.

            7

So they look on me now, with pity;
And even that is leaving their weak glare.
They are turning to water before me
And I can only stare.
Oh, how I long for that time of laughter,
And to dip once more in that water.

8

But whatever did happen to those days,
When we were touched by flight.
Where is the life that we lived all ways
From dawn through to the night?
It all went past me in a moment,
Leaving only this sweet torment.

I placed desire in a fur lined chest
And buried it in the ground.
As the constant will of an undying thirst
Ran alongside tears and laughter,
And many miles of tireless dreams
Passed through my hands like water.
Clods of earth and jewels untold
Blinded me in their mist,
So the more I squeezed them in my fist,
The less that I would hold.

I placed desire within your heart
I gave it up so it no longer grew.
Instead sprung wings on which flew
A new beast quite apart.
Desire and want climbed away
And with a natural succession
Came the reign of another woe
That feeds a mans obsession.

So I placed desire in a fur lined box,
Alongside treasured stones.
And laying now deep in a garden plot,
It rests amongst your bones.

A consequence of merriment and early summer
Warmth, conspired to put him on that midnight lawn.
Lying there supine, his innocent thoughts drift
Amidst the sweet pungent scent of honeysuckle and mingle
With the stale wine on his breath. There is beauty in decay
He thinks, and only death and beauty can flower in creation.
The supreme bounty of all is death and the life there in.

In the dark garden he dreams a little of paradise
Not the mistake of paradise, but a consummate paradise
Unsubstantiated, and free from the vestige of interpretation.
It is here where all else is shadowed and dark,
That he sees clearly a myriad of blossoming colours,
Sharp transfusions of light that glow from leaf to blade.
And he thinks to himself, as he dreams a little now,
Amidst this broad wash of sunshine all around
It cannot yet be midnight in the garden