We fold together like paper.
Our hearts beating;
Breaking and twisting open
Love's ***** dome.

With flight our minds
Melt words in pools of autumn sun
As we carve our initials in wood.

Our shape flits
Like butterflies
As we lie wet and naked
Moving together in heat.
Floating like lillies,
Like rose petals
Descending down the riverbank.

©Jack Aylward

Emptiness rang me again:
The slow pitfalls of exhaustion
Slashed the hard roughness of my lungs
As I lay there escaping, trying
To think, trying to speak.

I was wordless, unable to move
I thought how ashamed I was, how cold
The world could be to see the
Trembling words from my mouth turn
Into blood....I was actually
Coughing up blood....
Blood that turned a blackey red
When the air dried and my
Throat burned like
The claws of a thistle.

My gut felt as though it had wrapped itself
Around my heart, letting
The muscles tighten with *****
As they pushed and pushed
Harder and harder
Gripping onto the walls of my stomach;
Churning and tossing as at sea.

Steam from my sweat rose from my flesh
And dripped onto me from the roof
As I became massacred by
Feeling, as though I had to mutilate myself,
When the acidic horrors of my
Nightmares began burning off.


©Jack Aylward
(Published in the Scotia Review magazine, no.24 edition, Summer 2001).

Love we both envied;
Even in death
We shared
The same skin,
The same smell,
The same waste
Of insanity.

....We broke away
From each other's touch;
Entering the last few
Dying seconds of humanity.

©Jack Aylward