When I look at you, I see a wall:
A wary way of walking through the world,
hands pushed deep into your pockets,
keeping them safe from other hands.
Your laughter comes only controlled,
even smiles sometimes shielded
during our careful conversation
that’s calculated before it clears the air,
sentences screened for slips of the tongue,
holding back secrets that sit in your silences
when I ask the questions you can’t answer.

Whoever took that hammer to your heart
has this hard shell to answer for,
this barrier built on top of broken trust,
a mountain I am not strong enough to move
so instead I choose to love you from the outside in,
drumming on the door of this fortress you made
when someone made a fool of you.
May this love make such music that one day
you find yourself holding my hands
as we dance to it, laughing, talking, smiling, free.

I arrived at my station in Kaliningrad
as if posted there by an army of desires
entering through the gate with a firm set jaw
into the guarding teeth of iron girders
driven into the soft soul of the soil
by hammering heels as bold as yours

approaching a fateful encounter quite naughty
amidst ghosts in an Eastern European night
its sights built when all roads led to Königsberg city
taking pretty daughters of frightening Prussian knights
to a military parade past the rust of heavy industry

a call to arms wrapped tight up against youthful skin
dark forces dressed in lace trimmed girdles of passion
its secret codes covered by accents slightly Russian
sounding like love slipping into a cold war assignation

you were too beautiful by half
too perfect to wear jeans
so like the uniform concrete paths
abandoned to such ghastly stains
they attract me like works of art
that someone envious of being outlasted
had to spray with swirling tattoo paint
yet the matt camouflage fades fast
while your beauty is chiseled into my days
its ageless gloss defying the wind and dust

whipping across the wonderful blocks called home
built by socialist bloc labourers whose ***** hands
must have toiled for the day you were born
and set free the naked ambition of men that yearn
for a dessert of finely moulded vision
beyond the blue vein cheese and a little wine
into warm baths steaming away the tension

which had crossed our paths with precise chains
snapped together in a demand for attention
“stop - no tourism beyond here after 5pm”
but you knew diversions locked in 'till round 2am
a stress release submitting to the pull of a comforter
gentle in the peace of the goose-down we slept in
the softness of the rattles
the worst
of your corrupters

Caution! If love hurts you are doing it wrong.

It drags me under
Then
Spits me up onto the sand
My lungs filled with seaweed and water
Burning
Making it impossible to breathe
But panic isn't an emotion
Its a friend
A familiar presence
Because the ocean has done this
Far to many times
For me to be surprised

Close your eyes to the flames of days past-
those trips to the great mountain,
the first time you shot a gun,
that evening drive home from the sea, tired and salty and content, made so many times it became one
Let your heart jump only for a few bars when
you hear music that is now a memory
Or when you are handed beer that tastes of a warm afternoon spent fishing-
Close your eyes for a moment only,
lest you be consumed by the flames you feed.

Be careful darling,
It's the nice ones who get burned.