You held me as I
Washed our dishes,
Soap suds sticking to my elbows
Bent against the curve of your
Arms that went on for days,

And I, in that moment
As the bubbles blossomed from
My dark fingers into the
Splash and sound of
Your tiny sink
Knew that
Even if you asked me not to
Wash away
Every inch of me from your kitchenette,
I couldn’t.

Somehow, as your breathing tickled
The side of my neck
I knew that leaning in
To wash away my sins
Meant leaning out
Into the ever widening eclipse of our
Infinity

Try as I may to hide it, Beloved,
My writing knows when I don’t love enough
The stranger I have become to you.

- Why I will always wash the dishes

I am made of water

I first learnt it when, at age 13
I dropped a glass of it
And it trickled through my veins
As my father told me he didn’t know why he loved me

After that, every day I was kissed by sunlight
I shimmered
Like a pond lost in a forest of
Thought that no one visited

I used to look at my hands and wonder
Why I could see right through
The sinew
And bone
Into translucent fluid bubbling
Where blood red should be

But whenever someone deigned to hold
My shaking digits, I felt the cold
Of my insides freezing us both
Eventually, when they could no longer hold
My icy arms,
They let go
On their way to greener pastures

Then I would melt
Seek the sun,
Weep for joy at the torrents inside me
That flowed again

You cannot touch this liquid life
Unless your fingers are blessed by a burning
Unlike anything before or after you,

I long to simmer in a scalding embrace,
You whom I have yet to meet,
You who will boil my insides until
One day,
I disappear
Like a pond dried up in summer,
Its filaments caressing the sun,
Lost forever to the world below

Until after years,
I will rain again on gardens
That men will worship
And whose beauty,
(Nourished by a love that no one knows),
Will enshrine our embrace for generations

Like so many
Lemmings
they rush to southern climes for
greener pastures
year round golf a
Slower pace
Cheaper prices and
Tropical temperatures

Leathery
Tanned
Unnaturally taut and
Sun-spotted
they crowd the local haunts and
Clog the highways.

At best they tolerate whoever is not
Pensioned or
Privileged

At worst they ban the
Underage
Unfortunates
from their gated communities  
and social gatherings

The pendulum has swung from a time
when the Old were at the
Mercy of the Young
to the present
when Youth is
Oppressed by Senescence

Once democracy’s backbone they now wax
Conservative having obtained their
Slice of the pie

Now there is no pie
Mother Earth has been trampled to death and the
Toiling hands of those who
Stoke the fires of industry are
Blistered and discouraged