I LIKE TO SAY YOUR NAME

I like to say
your name

when you're
not here

turn you
into sound

conjure you out of
thin air

so that you appear
before me

dressed in sound
only

memory sketching in
the rest of you

as if sound
was just an outline

and love
colours you in

adding the voice last
so I can hear you say.

"Hello you..!"
and there you are

as present
as present

can be.

I like to say
your name

when you're
not there.

In democracy we breathe in
life-saving oxygen
in dictatorship
in carbon dioxide's poison

LE JEU AVEC LE FEU

I caught
the mirror

watching me

it stuck out its tongue
I stuck out my tongue back

both the mirror and I
smiled

that "Gotcha!" moment.

It's tinkling laugh
like broken glass

as I fell to the ground
in pieces

all my shattered selves
staring up at me

the mirror
for once

silent.

ZAK'S PRAYER

Little Zak
(just a little scrap of a chap)    
with a deep Barry White voice

enquires(as he enquires
about everything) :

“Why is your hair white? ”

He listens patiently to the explanation
how after a head injury

“I went white overnight! ”

Being a good Christian child
he tells me

he will pray for me
for the “black to be back! ”

I’m very tempted
to dye it for the next day

just to prove his prayer
right.

When his fervent prayer
doesn’t turn the situation around

...he frets:

I tell him
God & me

are both happy
with it…like this.

“Really? ”
He asks.

“Really! ”
I affirm.

“Have it your own way then
but man...

it makes you look
old & grim!"

I grin
tell him that I am what I am

but that I can live with it:
"Ok..!" he sighs "...have it your own way!"

WORLDS AT ONCE

I watch you
sleeping in the mirror

& touch
your image

& you echo it.

Only your laughter
inhabiting both

worlds at once

on the other side of nowhere

...a dream away.

The mirror laughs
in its sleep.