THE SMELL OF PURPLE

She says she can smell yellow.

She says she can smell blue.

despite, not being able to
spell either colour.

“Yellow smells the same -  as blue.
...like a wet kitty drying by the fire.

Red smells like
Mummy when she kisses.

Her kisses smell different
when she kisses you...

...then she smells like flames
with little orange tips!

Purple is my favourite smell...
...it smells just like a magic spell!”

I kiss her goodnight
like lilac (only lighter)

with little flecks of purple
scattered here & there.

GOING ON WITH ME

Never did like my own
birthday.

All that cakes and candles
stuff.

You could keep it.
Strictly for the birds.

Every day was my birthday
far as I could see.

Birthdays...who'd
have 'em....eh?

But to have one
is the only way to go

on to be
someone.

Miss one and
you're gone.

Every birthday
always called my Mam.

After all she did
all the hard work

when push
came to shove.

All I did was arrive.

Thank her for
having me.

"Ahhh  go on with ya!"
she'd forever  laugh.

This always the best
bit of my birthday.

Celebrating
my mother.

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.

I cannot compose brilliant poems, sonnets, or verses,

and I cannot speak to you in Latin or Greek;

I cannot move you with any language made up by man.

Love is the only only language I could touch you with

If you only knew how much I could love you.

If you knew I love you;

If I were brave enough to tell you at all.

And over time,
My pen stopped bleeding
But my heart didn't

In the height of a wave,
In the peak of a storm,
In the quiet of a moment,
In the heart that was torn;
Lay a moment of such wonder,
Lay a moment so profound,
Lay a moment so somber,
Lay a man in the ground;
People say that he was drunk,
People say that he was lost,
People say that he was kind,
People say that he was rough;
They whispered he had hurt,
They whispered he had God,
They whispered he had sinned,
They whispered he had none;
But it did not change the man,
It did not change the dead,
It did not change he loved,
It did not change how we would end.

I want
The
Part
Of
You
That you
Refuse
To
Give