If we could bottle souls
(Like petrified coals
Of past lives and future sparks),
When would we uncork
The energy of the living?

A yearning beneath the seething
Of untapped existential angst.
A rush to restore
An end to eternal suspension
Entropy's 2nd law.

It is easy to forget
what the heart can’t bear to remember,
and every time I slip into bed
with someone new
I hope she unpicks the uneven stitching
of thread of unfulfilled promises that
“Time will heal all wounds”
(it does not).

But you are no surgeon,
your hands are not deft
but as steady as my fluttering pulse.
Old wounds gape open;
I am all bones and deteriorated sinew
old and slow
so very cold
the spaces between failing organs bleed
congealing dreams going stale.

Still you try,
with each fresh incision
slicing away diseased tissue
excising decaying matter,
believing this patient will recover.

Time might heal all wounds,
yet still,
let’s keep the defibrillator close.

The train pulls out of the station. The dull drone of its engine and the periodic thump of metal wheels meeting rail breaks accompanies the dusty scent of steam and burning coal.

The journey continues in silence, with him reclining backwards in his seat as she pages through his book. He stares into space, vaguely acknowledging the scores of faceless passengers and thinking about how they are all shared voyagers in time and space. She smiles at a witty line, and flips the page.

Brakes are applied, the train gently eases to a stop. Pistons sigh and coupling rods command the wheels to halt. She returns him the book, and a silence settles.

“See you when I see you,” she says.

He stood up, buttoning his navy flannel blazer.

“See you…if I see you,” He corrects, then leaves the carriage as the doors slide open.

Do not mistake solitude for solace;
your mind is an empty room
all your hear
are the echoes of your thoughts
voiced by your inner voice
shouts bouncing off cranium
and rejected by
lips pressed together:
an adamant attempt
to hold your peace.

You leave me,
believing in this eventuality:
that people will leave you
that I will leave you.
You just wanted to strike first.

Before you cast yourself away,
into endless horizon and ocean blue,
there is too much I want to tell you.

But no matter,
just remember
it was you, my love, who told me
that life is never about bobbing to passive waves,
but in forging a new wake
in this endless ocean of possibilities.

Your silhouette diminishes,
waves lap at these lonely shores
and I wonder if it is the weak
whom are not lonely.

Feast your eyes
on this!
100% Super One-Twenty,
Windowpane, chalk-white,
on a navy backdrop.
Fully Canvassed, mind you,
for the elegance of the suit
is dictated by its drape,
the structure the cloth streams
from shoulder to waist.

Here!
Do you see it? No?
The shoulder, it’s expression:
Spalla Camicia!
Simplification of the cumbersome Neapolitan,
shedding all the padding
of the English shoulder.
(Padding, I emphasize,
is for insecure prepubescent girls.)

Ah, but the star of the show,
the six by two,
the armour of choice of all dandies,
the de facto of the eternally stylish,
the double breasted jacket!
Shoulder wide peaked lapels
drawing horizontal lines
that elongate the torso,
nipping the waist.

(And as they say,
I like my jackets like
I like my women:
Double-breasted.)

In the dark abyss of night,
we quietly wait
for the inevitable gold of sunrise.
Like fresh wood fed
to dying embers;
our sparks renewed with light.

In truth, I know naught. Why I am so sad?
It worries me; you say it wearies you.
In lieu of times much simpler much happier;
sandbox wars, creaking swings, afternoon swims
we’ve essays, tutorials and internships,
then sales meetings, social events and the
occasional blind date. Entwined by work
and a distinct loneliness, we clutch at
fragile things, irrational whims; silence
rings a mutual suffering. So bring me
back to bygone days, revisit the ways
you raced me to the pool, we crafted sand-
castles, walls higher than Jack’s bold bean-
stalk, we tried coaxing winds to whistle as we
reached our toes to touch the sky, to dream of
walking the moon, firefighting, saving
animals, or even following Tom
Sawyer into his cave in search of gold.
So, darling, take me back to the past, what
gilded sands of time cannot quite bury,
to reclaim the lost innocence of a
spotless mind, to relive a time when life
was not measured by schedules, to regret
ever saying: “I can’t wait to grow up”

Sleep eludes;
Insomnia.
Hands tick on;
the night sleeps.

Somewhere, someone is waking
Here, I am writing.
Sleep eludes;
yet the night sleeps.

One reason why we fall
in love is because we want someone
to accept the person we are
because we, ourselves, cannot do so.

There is so much I feel but
cannot begin to describe them with words,
maybe shattering,
                                   bleeding and
                                                              loss
can begin to point at my pain.

It is that which defines me,
molded me
into who I am. And ,
so its absence
is accompanied with a disorientation;
of lost identity.

The sky is lightly turquoise;
a colour that if it were an emotion I would describe it as
a light cheerfulness
or the wan smile offered at the end of a long day.

If I could distill the sky into liquid,
and paint with it my thoughts of you;
a light cheeky hue streaked across by a drying brush
cannot obscure the blank emptiness of my canvas beneath.

Let it storm and

let it burn and let it all wash

over like the crashing waves of

turbulent air.



I am nothing yet I am the storm;

I rage as the fire and burn as soot in smoke

inhaled.



I am the storm's eye, the

cold core of burning logs, the

quiet stone resisting the the thunder of waves, the



emptiness of my existence.

The latest contamination.
Under the skin; inflammation.
Stitches on
A bleeding heart.

To love
is to douse oneself
with kerosene,
and offer another
the match.

I am separated from you
by a white wall of wood
whilst you study quietly
on the opposite side.

I am separated from you
by our friendship
and my doubt.

I am separated from you
by our identities;
how I constantly battle my demons,
whilst you continuously escape from yours.

The irony is in the balance
of similarity and difference,
how you look up into the night sky
and wonder about the stars,
whilst I look down upon earth
and ponder about this world.

We have the same demons,
which I went to arms against,
but you met with pills
and the smoke of burning tobacco.

I look at you
with a sense of misplaced loss,
and another night will go by.
Tonight, I'll lay in bed wondering why
I wanted our paths to cross.

I’m significantly annoyed and at the same time resigned
at how you flit in and out of my thought-space.
How even as I try to shut you off
and out,
you never truly leave.
But instead remain hidden somewhere under the cloak
of my numerous other distractions;
away
from the spotlight that brings to the fore
things I know I am better off doing.

If only, believing by force of will
can banish you
forever.

(But I know, you’ll come back
to haunt me. Even if I think, sometimes, that
you are dead to me.)