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Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
Curled around you
Wire around a gatepost
I squeeze slightly
And push a gentle note
From you lungs
Half sleeping hands
Twist knots from rippling fingers
In the night, from time,
Limbs once squashed, resurface
And buzz slightly
With the orange tranquillity
Of the lamppost outside your bedroom window
My dried kisses
The saliva of pavement slugs
Travelling across your shoulders
Your hair the brambles
That catch the side of my mouth
Sometimes needing a little puff to blow
To blow them on their way
I am with you listening to the darkness
Hills folded
An earwig bumbles wearily over your cheek
With such tiny, beautiful feet
Touching your every pore
The brow of your neck
Rests the dew
Beneath the tumbling dandelions
Tumbling seed
Breathe deeply
A sharp bracing
Toes that peep out
Under the bedclothes
With the yellow dawn
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
You stared, so much, intently
Prying, perhaps, believing an honest
Love with no dark motives
Parting the strands of cynicism
That dangle around my bald head
And he noticed but did not react
(forgive me if I have misled you!)
Even to appreciate your awe so deep
And full of naïve beauty
I might have said a couple more
Would do the trick
But hid behind an alien
Shell of tears perhaps not unlike
The condensation on your glasses
When you frowned and wrinkled me away
Three is freedom when anonymity
Crowds around the table
Lopsided amongst being both
Wanted and rejected by your
Secret lover’s code
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
The words trickled over your lips
A petrifying waterfall that sprayed
Phrase with icy shards
The words
I did not hear
Although
I know that malice this unkind
Springs from greater hidden pools
Out subterranean empty halls
That echo slightly with the drops
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
My sweetness
Thrupenny leisure
Gently worn down by fickle caresses
You come to me as my dream foretold
Awestruck fancy
Shamed by embarrassment
A lilting triplet conspires
Yet peeping out tentatively
Behind a woollen blanket of squares
You come to me for advice?
Don’t dream needless sterility
Vast architecture
Hemming the fabric of life
Unpicked and seldom preserved
Purely for the sake of beauty
Don’t **** on pleasure’s past opportunities
Awake but mystified by the simple
Humdrum that everything really does
Keep revolving around a single point
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
Hold the edge of my coat
If you like we could take
A little stroll through the park
Perhaps read the paper on a bench
By the pond
Quack quack
Those ducks
Really do make peculiar noises
Somehow they look
Like they should be
Smoking cigars
With shiny teeth
And dark glasses
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
I awoke from a dream of fishes
And realised the fish was I
He swam like all the other fish
With flapping gills and beady eye
His self was him and not me
But I remembered when it was not that way
My feet still twitched
The fin of me
And tears ran down towards my ears
As I lay and thought of floating
Far beneath the surface
Did he know I?
Above his house
Where wind was tide
A bird sang in my garden
Each note a bubble of air
Floating down in answer to the fish
Through me where I lay
On the reflection
Inside
Outside
And resting on my bed
Sam Lawrence Jan 2020
You skidded
Sideways to a stop
Gravel sprayed
Like shooting stars
Looking round
Standing proud
Astride your bike
Grinning gurning
Wide eyed
Lights behind you
Along the coast
Reflected out to sea
We laughed and skidded
More recklessly
Until you planted your face
Into the ground
Too high to care too much
A calm concern blew us
Up to A&E
We laughed
A&E
That's what we'd had
You told the nurse
As she plucked
Gravel from your cheek
With tweezers
I left later
Tumbling down
Walking home
With a tale to tell
In the morning
Physically unscarred
But properly
Mentally mental
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