my love, you are neither the morning
with her bright unwinding hills

or the night, with her nets of silver stars,
you are not the sea whispering.

you are hidden from the world, an alpine
rose that nobody sees.

you flower like the sky makes its way
out of the dark, her archipelagos  

thrown to the wind, there to discover
like a frost that whitens the earth and

leaves its footprints in the leaves.

you are neither the moon, my love,
that waits at your feet

nor the sun that burns like the
summer with her mute fire. you

are none of these things and yet all  
these things carry me to you,

like a drifting cloud longing
for the waters of the night.

there is nothing of you in this late hour,
i have no voice to wrap you in tenderness,
and i wait for your arrival like a starless sky,
empty of light, the ocean's forgetful voyage,
the sinking wave coaxed to grow out of the dark.
the trees are motionless, branches fall silent in the night,
like ghosts against the sky. i am empty of light,
drawn out of memories and blue air,
a crystal that breaks, bound to the wide earth
and the white dust of immeasurable hills. i think i am
still, small as a bird, and i know that i long for you,
that the hunger never leaves me for long, colouring
dry paper with the gleam of a harbour-like moon.

Bones asleep on ocean floors
tell a story like no other,
we are a natural machine,
a creature cursed.
To soil, earth, rock,
it's been no time at all.
To us it’s been an eternity.

I think humans each have a few fundamental flaws,
and that each one is its own personal tragedy.
I think one or two are someone else.
A natural result of hearts incompatible,
not everyone can love you back.

You are to devour me one day,
or perhaps I, you.
Currently we are blank slates,
beings so young,
beings so old.
We knew each other back then,
I can feel it.
Quarks coming together,
fossilised footprints whose paths intersect,
fish in a fishbowl,
rats in a cage.
But one day you are to devour me,
or perhaps I, you.
And we will be joined as we once were,
two people sharing a body,  
hearts beating together,
lungs expanding as one.

The word soulmate springs to mind,
the idea of my heart beating anywhere
but besides yours terrifies me.
It unsettles me,
makes me sick, absent.

And I’ve felt this absence for years,
it's starting to get to me,
weigh me down, a led balloon,
a ship in the storm,
pockets filled with rocks.
A part of me wants you to feel it too.
Another hopes you never know such a weight.

Sometimes I can’t stand it, alone in my chest,
I lay it out on the table,
watch it pulse and ooze, beat painfully,
beat alone,
and I dream of a time long ago,
an eternity away,
where you and I were there, combined,
with no before and with no after,
quarks coming together,
rats in a cage,
thoughts lying only with each other.

I dream of a future, much the same,
our hearts beating, our lungs breathing,
thoughts simultaneous,
laying side by side,
bones asleep on ocean floors.

People go missing from our lives
Either leave or disappear
Or may appear unfamiliar
Hard to feel they were once
Intimate part of your life
Had a place in your heart.

Then they depart
Either you let them go
Or they leave you.

Maybe after years
You remember them with silent tears
Wished they had not gone
You shouldn't have let them go.

Guilt sits a weight in your heart
It's you made them depart
You and you and you
It's why relationships are few.

Hold those few strong,
Who knows
You may again go wrong.

The rain stops time tonight -
it halts in icy webs on glass.

All my friends have ditched;
I sit alone in a ***** tower,

the others look with pity
as I sip this cloudy beer.

I think about poetry:
a hundred years ago

I might have survived,
carried by some fortune,

but now I stare at the moon
hungrily, gently starving,

slavering for metaphor, but
nothing comes, nothing comes.

Rain freezes on the step.
The moon devours us;

my mind is a dead machine,
full of ice and grief and rust.

silence moored like a boat in the harbour,
and you flew against the horizon like a bird  

until my mouth was the night with its hungry stars
and you were the sea wind.

you were the night flowering, a ripple on
the surface of the water, the dreams of the ocean...

your eyes told me that history is made of a
a thousand bleeding wounds, your lips that

kisses are petals falling from a rose
and that we wait like old moons for night

to melt on the shore and set us free, we wait,
unquestionably free, for her gathering of

iris and blue bird, for her beautiful
and melancholy song.