To forget me he'd have to leave his body
For I have carved my love deep in his veins.

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said...
but did not.

Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing. I work with my best, for instances,
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
and ridiculous and crowded with all
the believing money.

I pick it like a scab.
Its ugly and itching,
Unwilling to heal without leaving its mark.

Its funny how the past teaches but leaves one tainted.
But funnier how you never have the things you need,
but have all the **** you want.

You tell me you’re full
Like a kid with too much cake
A runner with sloshing water in his belly
You tell me you’re full
So full to the brim that it comes out your eyes
It pours out your mouth
It seeps out your skin
You tell me you’re full
So full it consumes you
Stretches till you’re see through
Pushes until you rip at the seams
You tell me your full
So full of feeling
Like a tap stuck on flow
Like a cloud always crying down on those below
You flood
And the streets run with it
People drown in it
Love flees from it
You tell me you’re full
I cannot relate
You sit, all wrinkled like a prune
So full and soaked and saturated
I ask for a drop
I’m parched
My earth is dry and caked
Cracked
Under the hot desert sun
Begging for rain

The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.

The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter--
Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared.
Far-wandered waif of other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.

If I had told you
that I was made of mud and soil
and grass and sea water
combined over two decades
you wouldn't have understood.

If I'd said my bones were branches
my hands blooming nasturtiums
my toes pebbles on a beach
on the east coast of England
you would have rolled your eyes.

If I'd said your skin after a shower
smelled like warm ground after rain
and your voice was honeycomb
your kisses strawberry jam
you'd have found it strange.

I've known you seventeen years
yet we don't know each other at all.
If I'd told you everything I believed
you'd have thought me childish.
You never did like poetry.

~

Painted in a corner

Smeared about the floor

Chants of lone forgiveness

Quiet in the war



“Deafening the sound of death”



Garden roses trampled

Broken stems abound

Wilting on the visions

Blooming losses found



“Petals of peace scattered carelessly”



Blood along the pathway

Eyes hid in the mist

Penning someone else’s name

On this lengthy list



“Alphabetical to the grave”



Standing from the shadows

Crossing battle lines

Reaching for the freedom

Voices loud can find



“Speak up children, your voices matter”



Put aside your weapons

Time has come to cease

The nation now has gathered

United prayer for peace



*“On our hands and knees we pray… send the evil far away”

It's called falling in love
Because every fall,






Has a bottom.

When you capture a pinprick of light
And let it glitter in your hand
the seconds you can keep it burning
Are so much more precious
than
       what
comes
        after.

After months spent counting raindrops
On two panes of glass,
We met in a twisted café
full of young women
And I swallowed my tongue.
and hoped I could listen
To you talk
of the ropes round your hands
When all I needed was time.
of your dreams and your plans.
When I
      just
wasn't
       Fine.

I saw you cycle away.
The silhouette of you, black under streetlight.
Is my dreams every day.
       Yet a part of me knew
It was just
   a silhouette
     of you.
And id spent far too long
      chasing shadows.

The ghost of a dying flame is
Smoke that exists for a second.
    But it explodes into
          something
  Brighter.