In the quiet spaces of the day –
A morning’s walk, a garden’s calm, a lapping foreshore’s thirst –
I hear my body thunder.

dried crispy shreds
of stifled hues
and deadened, blunted scent

withered remnants of ephemeral beauty
hope’s loss preserved in dessicated form

watering you with my tears
won’t help much.

Gaily, blithely,
We tread the scarlet fields
Plucking at blooms that star the stone-cursed earth;
Painstaking bursts from frail stems, begot in meagre rivulets,
In barren battlefields of our making.
Important to note the distinction
Between deadheading and slaughter.

Does kindness weave amongst the greying strands
Or do you comb the goodwill in with hands?

My operatic villain, my sweet Djinn
I wish you’d put recycling in the bin

Draw the doorlatch, turn the key;
Stay in your tower, but not with me.
Shake free to pull the chains in tight;
Store tainted objects out of sight.
Wipe clean the traces I have left
As I lie prone, exiled, bereft.

My sickly scent shall still seep through
Cracked window frames, to chasten you;
The odour of humanity
Will swirl with sugar in your tea.
Ants will trail through, borne on their feet,
My broken matter from the street.

I cannot live for your fine ease;
I cannot die from your disease.
Unloved yet loving. Cast aside.
You promised me your heart. You lied.

Power of Love plays so soft, teen feet soon come to halt,
Their hair raised as if charged by some voltaic fault;
Nonchalance swift laid by, I scan quick round the room,
My eyes spark as you stand in dank hall’s schoolroom gloom.
When I see your taut form, my small heart surges forth,
And batters me upwards; my future points North;
But gaze fix’d well beyond, on your lofty prize cocked,
My head wilts once more South, the night’s budding dream rocked.
Against you, against me, I have laboured in vain,
When not here, prospers hope; when here, hope’s crushed in grain.
The slim roots still to come will vault strong through, elsewhere;
But for this cruel first time they are singed with despair.

Your words get caught in reeds within your mind,
Released at random, drifting in the flow;
Cascading, tumbling, jostling as they find
An outlet that will finally let them go.

But oh, my love, what wondrous words they are!
They speak of life’s injustices and slings,
The beauty of a ray of light, a star,
A hummingbird’s light battering of the wings.

I long to twist, dugong-like, in that world,
And snap at thoughts as they go bobbing past;
Construct a pliant reed-raft, water-pearled,
And bear them to a shore where they will last.