I cannot write a sonnet
or funny limerick that will leave you
laughing into your third whiskey
of the night. I cannot spread your legs
with words and I guess geography and
lack of voice have always blighted
my route to a real home.
I cannot write greetings cards
to a second aunt sunbathing in
Great Yarmouth and coming back
with frostbite and head-lice.
I cannot write a song
and sing it to you in a way that will
leave you kissing your pillow
and wishing I was there to steady
your brand new appetite for living.
I cannot write a psalm for G-d
or an ode to nature without sounding
like a lost cause or reluctant romantic.
I cannot write the score to
the sounds of thunder that siren
with friction in the sky
nor can I give form to happenstance
memories of worms in the soil
and rainbow braids in your hair. I cannot
do much this year save from writing
an obituary and hoping you will understand
what it means to drown in open air.

I thought the ceasefire had come.
I had survived the press gangs
and carpet bombs
and the drum of war had been
reduced to the constant undying
thud of my heart.
I was hoping to feign retreat.
Three days of deepest winter
before a new year in the sun
hanging like Christ over the Zodiac
and not from the branch
of my father's tree.

The extension cord came loose.
Bread knives are now curious
fascinations
and sit in my stomach like
so much red wine and that writer's pride
in greeting death.
I was hoping to gain a peace.
To place it like a necklace
or badge of honour on my breast
to remind the tourists of the ******
that ravaged the town
I had grown up in.

I have eight years left to die.
After that I will grow fat
and loose in mind
and forget why sadness is
so important in the modern world
of dying art.
I was hoping for vague release.
Something to **** cowardice
and that hesitant breath before
the pull of a blade or jump to the sea
of endless black hole
and icy relief.

I thought the ceasefire had come.
We had stood outside to watch
the confetti
fall to the ground with delay
in a wind we had come to suspect
would destroy us.
I was hoping to gain belief.
I thought the rockets  had stopped
or else been pointed to the sky
in a bottled message from all mankind
to another place,
to another time.

Lonely furrow, deep
deep enough to plant
watch over , **** and water.

Aspiring poets curse

Blight, of their fellows
rampaging through
a meagre crop, loved

[for Joe Cole's prompt]*
~~~

Grain of sand?
I have no remembrance
of me being a grain of sand.

All I can tell you about
is this me you can see:

this glassy transparence,
a melted me,
metamorphosed
by fire.

Seemless frontier,
I can't but to split
daring to reach
the other side.

Grief, from this
sandy longing?

Yes, you may
say that's me.

you, who are of my heart, you, who
still the breaking waves upon my shore

i am but a scratchy grain of sand,
yet i knit the pearl of your longing

crack the oyster shell you cling to
and know your beauty

see that your heart's desire
has been within you all along

When I wait for northern lights, absent is the moon
and too the sun has gone, silence of blue green lights come
like colored ghosts of whirling skies, they fly
and I no longer think of night stars
I can only dream to fly, to shine
magenta in magnetic fields

But tonight it is you
that burns across, beyond the heavens
dazzling brilliantly, now beyond this earthly plane
to join a symphony of seas and stars out there, unknown
gathering in the ethers of forever

Last night I dreamed of you
smiling, as you laid
in green fields laughing
and tonight I will see you
in the northern lights
shining