Einstein's Relativity tells us that time slows at fast speeds,
So much so that it stops when travelling at the speed of light.
As you look up at the stars tonight think of this:
The photons that travel across the universe to your retina,
Are created in the depths of a star and destroyed within your eye,
In the same instance.

Season without light,
Comfort in the cold,
Solace in the night,
Warmth in your hold.

Have you seen the morning star?
It keeps it's vigil in the East,
A prophet of the dawn.

It rises when the night is at its coldest,
The warmest light in the vast blackness.
It rises when the night is at its darkest,
The brightest light in the black vastness.

Have you seen the morning star?

The North calls her.
Siren song echoing across baron fen.
Pulls at the tartan,
Begs her home again.

That Highland jig,
She remembers with a whistle,
Longs her to return,
To the land of the thistle.

It was wrong to love you,
I knew that.
Sneaking and skulduggery.
A web of lies.
Lies that tripped me up,
Lies that I believed.

Now that I think back,
I know that you wove those webs.
But I liked being caught,
I liked playing your game.
I loved you.
I thought you loved me.

A little book,
Embossed in gilded paisley swirls,
Bound with string,
Casting its shadow on that shelf.

A dark book,
Filled with muttered words,
Jet thoughts,
An inky spectre on that shelf.

The little dark book,
Paisley words and muttered swirls,
Jet bound string,
The inky spectre that shadows myself.

Defeated,
Energy depleted.
Down on luck,
Out of pluck.
Bruised and broken,
All words spoken.
Wind knocked out,
One last bout.

Raise head,
Not yet dead.
Stand up straight,
Shake off hate.
Dust off self,
Drink to health.
Look to light,
En garde, fight.

Rocking boats,
Rolling seas.
Dead men float,
Stay, please.

Love's a labour,
Throughout the years.
No safe harbour,
Blood, sweat and tears.

Storms ahead,
No land in sight.
For you I bled,
Morning star bright.

Helm to weather,
Helm to lee.
Eyes of heather,
Sail your sea.

Scars of crimson.
"Red sky at night."
Dangerous women.
"Sailors' delight."

Rocking boats,
Rolling seas.
Dead men float,
Stay, please.

Sail away with me on my gigantic whale.
Until the waves ripple and roll and swallow the land.
And in your salted eyes of open ocean,
We'll find a new home upon the blue.

You're a pair of spectacles,
When I met you I put you on.
You corrected my perceptions,
My blurred sight is gone.

You prescription works wonders,
I can see clearly, see happiness.
Adjusted the dull to the vivid,
Focused good from the hopeless.

I see the true radiant beauty of the world,
With your lenses I see precision.
Like seeing for the first time,
Thank you for giving this vision.

I am haunted.
Empty hands.
Chapped lips.
Lonely bed.
Cold home.
Cold heart.
Your absence still lingers.

Why are you my poltergeist?

Pressure,
Crumbles stone.
Pressure,
Produces diamonds.

I have this black cloud that follows me around,
It's not big, or cumbersome, about this big.
It's not bad, just quite gloomy, quite dark.
Sometimes it rains.
A relentless, despondent downpour,
Soaking my insides with a numbing damp.
It doesn't always rain.

Do you have a cloud?

Every now and again I like to sit down,
On a park bench, pew, or a bar in town.
With a cup of tea, let my worries untie,
And give a moment for each passer by.

I drift from out of the fore to the scenery,
An extra within the biopics of humanity.
Each person has a vivid and complex life,
Someone they love: family, husband or wife.

Within each person is an epic untold,
Each a vessel of the tales they hold.
Some are of loss, some are of love,
Wandering nomadically from up above.

And in each of these stories I play a role,
Sitting on my perch, warding off the cold.
I am but a tiny part of their life's narrative,
At most a stranger they exchange a glance with.

And I wonder, how ignorant am I?
To let each one of them to pass me by,
Without stopping them and enquiring,
What each of them is most desiring?

They are all chaotically unique,
Each one of them a kind of freak.
All a bizarre consequence of nature,
Chemistry, and their family's nurture.

Wide eyed as this realisation becomes clearer,
I'm sitting here and out of focus in your theatre.
In the wings for my cue, not yet a factor,
To step on and become your lead actor.

Lying on my bed suffering a case of Sunday afternoon musings.
An apathetic approach to the inevitable week.
A marching fanfare of deadlines and due dates and doodlings.
If beige was a day, tomorrow would be just as bleak.

Falling through the inevitability of time and life and death.
Life is just a diary of appointments to be met.
Dabbling in thoughts and feelings before my following breath,
Moments follow the next whilst the last I forget.

Monkey's on my back again,
Sat on its throne.
Lording over it's dominion,
Making itself at home.

She changes the weather.

A day when parasols turn into umbrellas,
And when umbrellas turn into parasols.
Undulating thoughts on an undulating day,
When the weather syncs with the mood lulls.

Howling wind hurls at the cracks in the house,
Shrieking at the effort to keep standing strong.
Walls bowed, timbers shattered, beaten, out.
The shell remains, a home that doesn't belong.

Lashing rain on the pane of the pain.
Flooding the banks of the river eyes.
Only relenting to an apathetic dawn.
Left marooned on an island of lies.

Term began, and autumn rifled with luster,
The trees shirk their leaves with growing bluster.
And she asked why she had to hurt her?
All she'd wanted was her galaxy cluster.

The universe will expire in 20 billion years.
The galaxy will be torn apart in 4 billion.
The sun will engulf the charred remains of Earth,
Our home planet, in fewer than 5 million years.
Our bodies will creak to a halt in less than a century.
Our love may burn down to embers in a decade.
The horizon will bury the sun in half an hour.
Our lungs will start breathing, and our hearts beating,
Our bodies will resume in an instance.
Time marches forwards inevitably.
But this moment will remain.

Unborn promises adorn your adored form.
Unbent backs bend ceaselessly at your toes.
Draped with wishes and kisses and warm.
A crowded duvet of people for your woes.

I tore myself in two when I walked out your door.
With half myself left crumpled on your bedroom floor.
The half I kept were parts I never liked that much.
You were the best of me, was I only your crutch?

The idle chattering of a family occasion.
It swings around every holiday.
The gathering of peas from the same unhappy pod.
Talking without saying anything.
Bloodless, insipid, mundane.
All emotion sunk deep down, beneath the layers of years.
Hatchets left swinging in the breeze.
Bury one in me?

Red lipstick absolutely everywhere,
In love, enchanted, besotted with you.
******* and naked on the kitchen chair,
You made me burn upon my church's pew.
Fire extinguished as fast as it began,
Another rung along your boyfriend chain.
You were never part of my cosmic plan,
Be patient, fishing is a waiting game.
Make something of the moment you're in now.
You're never guaranteed another day.
I need to forget, to remember, how?
It doesn't even matter anyway.
    Dreams were the seeds of our reality.
    We're always missing something aren't we?

"I'll write to you from the road."
I can't be here right now, stifled,
with the mundanity of our daily load.

I want to live with my hands,
I want to send postcards.
Words of far away lands.

Perhaps if I run out of stamps, or
Places to see I'll return,
And maybe I'll buy some more.

Snow drifts like a lost child from the heavens.
Bringing premonitions of my youth.
Blanketing over the present.
Hiding the world under a temporary beauty.

Observed from my lofty window,
Flakes as large as hands glide to earth.
I wish I could touch them.
I wish they could cover me.

Alabaster soul,
Heart in a hole,
From world, withdrawn,
Visibly forlorn.
Eroded by life,
Tired of strife.
Crumbling down,
Lined by frown.
Slumped stature,
Final chapter.
Last confession.
End transmission.

One positive thought kicks it all off,
Hurls you out of your slumber,
Throws you down the stairs,
Push starts your day,
Raises a smile,
Induces cheer.
Try to love
yourself.
Never
Break
The
Chain.

For me dawn always comes too late,
Darkness weighs me down like cement.
No light can break through all this black,
By dawn my night is permanent.

I'm drinking the moments that I've since drunk dry;
In these days when we were and the sun shone.
I'm sipping at the taste of your departed smile: lie?
And I raise this empty glass to our life gone.

I don't want this to be yet another whiny poem.
But two years on, it all seems so thoughtless.
And I am indulging you with my tedious problem,
Because at what point did you become so heartless?

I still exist in that endless summer day, your lover.
Reservoir through the trees, my love resigned.
And all you have left of me is that favourite blue jumper.
And all I have left of you are laughter lines.

Solitude,
Often the best cure.
Escape from the world,
Shut the door.

Gather your thoughts,
Collect your mind.
Draw in breath,
Leave troubles behind.

Relax,
Put your brain to sleep.
Save some time,
To count some sheep.

When it all gets too much,
Take heed, I implore:
Find your quiet space,
And withdraw.

You painted me with the colour of your insanity.
Detailing the greens of my eyes,
Flecks of gilded crimson.
Brushed the canvas with lies.

To the girl in the library,
This goes out to you.

Incomprehensible.
Mind galloping like a stallion,
Imagination boundless.
Lives compressed into a second.

You stole my day,
And made it your own,
Stood there unknowing,
I belonged to your eyes.

Your bewildering beauty,
Seized my soul,
Held me in our moment,
Lived our future in you gaze.

That instantaneous love,
Shared between the shelves.
Perfect in that moment,
Imperishable by reality.

Drinking to forget is cliché.
I drink to remember.

Liquor floods my chest,
Thawing the icy heart,
The heart that beats defiantly,
Despite being apart.

You swim back into view,
Smiling, happy, joyous.
I'd never seen such beauty,
What was wrong with us?

Like the clock in the woods,
Together by some design.
We ticked in sync,
Who crossed what line?

I must think myself lucky,
Two blissful years we had.
You gave me life,
For that I am glad.

But time moves on,
And I do with regret.
I can put you away,
Back in the drinks cabinet.

Meeting you seemed so spontaneous,
Besides your smile you seemed dangerous.
We snuck off early in the evening,
Away from the party that was still singing.
Ambled round with no intentions,
Somewhere quiet without interventions.
Hands entwined discussing nothing,
But seemingly covering absolutely everything.

Stopping off to have a midnight tea,
In that moment 'you and I' became 'we'.
Walked you home, sun was dawning,
You wore my jumper and filled with yearning.
The birds awoke to call our daylight,
Contemplating the last kiss of our night.
One last look outside your front door,
Then I knew life would never be as before.

Voices filling the time between the hours.
Songs and interludes and news.
A world within a box in the corner.
The world within a box in the corner.

Companion: radio.

Dismembered,
Aching presence.
Phantom limb.
Lasting absence.

Heart pumping
Thumping dully,
Functioning.
Fruitlessly.

Let the sky fall in on itself.
Soak away my misery,
Wash away my hurt,
Drown my despair.

Add my teardrops to the deluge.

I resent you
For what you do
You carry on
But I am gone
You ignore me
And you don't see
I can't do this
It's you I miss
And us, together
I wished forever

But why?
Was it a lie?
Did I make it up?
Did I run out of luck?
You made me love you

Shell like.
Insides evaporated.
Sense of self gone.
A sack of biology.
Corpse.

We're all dying,
But are we all living?

Each beat my heart makes,
Is another one wasted.

Each gulp of oxygen,
Is one I won't make ever again.

So I ask what is the point?
A collection of limbs bound together by creaking joints.

Thunderous waves crash down,
I am swallowed by the sea.

Violent tides of the world's storm,
Only in darkness is darkness born.
Raging swells fill my chest,
Night falls within the tempest.

"I think I need to work on myself."

Actually, I probably do.
I've grown up so fast.
I don't actually know who I am.

What do I like?
What do I do?
Who am I?

I'm a stranger to myself,
I'm confused when I look in a mirror.
I'm confused when I look inside.

Am I good?
Am I bad?
What is my purpose?

Am I meant to know?

Flickered and died,
The flame in my eyes.
Died inside of me,
I untangled your lies.

Home is what you make in the chaos,
A place of you own within the mess.
A bit of self forged understanding,
Finding sense in the senseless.

You fell for another man,
But it's not your fault,
I don't know who I am.

You fell for another man,
Don't protest, you don't see,
There isn't another person.
That man you thought was me.