"Somewhere", spoke the grey lips in the wall.
Somewhere before sunrise,
before the first bird crows to dawn
and the apathetic are yet to uncurl
the grit that gathers like dust
between the folds of shallow eyes.
"Somewhere". A derogatory term.
Their humanity bears no resemblance to us
as skin and bone the only price to pay
for "unpeople".
Cities made of paper,
soaked in a drought. Somewhere East.
Or maybe South? Somewhere far off relevant,
so alien to home, allotted just enough frames
for you to feel how fortuitous;
but not enough so the screams
swallow your evening meal and you swat the sound of flies
pouring through the static of your transient box.

Her words hung to frost
in the Moon-White air.
There I fell,
steel-cold in their presence.
The allure of longing
a familiar solace
only February bring.
​
An empty tongue,
bent to hiss all the shapes of
unripened promise
that burden green on a winter tree;
behind torch eyes
that bleed memories
down to the wick.
​
I could lend ear
never tire of our solitude.
​
I yearn for that colourless sun,
where streets not blushed pink
from summers lick
but wind cuts brick grey
and windowpanes orange with laughter.
​
For in such black months
we birth anew,
flowers breathe colour
to dead roots
and the busy people
calm to a welcoming halt.
​

War by means -
not where nations play chess
flex dispensable might.
Not where metal sears flesh
in man-sized graves.

Or in hollow trenches
where the political class
bear not a crumpled tie,
unscathed from the
scourge of skirmish.

War by means -
not where children sombre,
set free kites, for frayed cotton;
carried in acrid wind
the only freedom they'll know.

Or midst crumpled towns,
where mothers weep
bleeds the river dry;
cautious sorrow
shake not the dirt
for landmines prey.

War by means -
one whose cause
cannot be sourced,
for its fire that consumes slow,
internal, across fields
where strewn roses
breathe their last.

Left to wilt,
under blackened heat;
for this unyielding ache,
unreciprocated.
My love for you,
a great conflict
- a war by other means.

I concede.
This iridescent mask has sheered.
Melancholic holes breed a home,
a numb unwelcome coax cracks
in a frame so familiar.
The comfort in self, picked from marrow;
left all but a carcass
in the shadow of chipped smiles
hung from walls torn with cadence.
A weathered translucence,
where light fails to flood
rich in the poverty of hope.
A hope that tomorrow brings
the chance of remedy,
birthed from a purging kindle
to char the taste of sorrow brown -
until I'm softened to sand
and reshaped in former image.

We voyaged with contented vigour,
not a second glimpse to the blackened moon.
Bodies numb, fallen stiff to the chill
beneath dim urbanity -
only the warmth of us
thawing glacial palms.

Fractured hearts ruminate,
filling scars where voids once evident.
Further the night wandered,
I embark its goading path -
tantalised in speech
from such copper-buttoned eyes;
steeped with stories
of a past torn from its flesh
and dressed to resemble me.

Our ghosts confide,
beckoned forth in rich exchange;
the currency of gilded tongues.
Stitched as testament to brick fabric,
where apparitions tucked rest;
those musty Shoreditch steps.