Wiling away someone else's
restless hours as they serve you
your elegant cafe au lait
you're flicking through newspapers
or maybe waiting for a friend
or a lover
or maybe contemplating
your next masterpiece
scribbling or drawing
on a folded napkin
or in a notebook
& watching someone
get out slowly out of a taxi
as someone rides by on a bike
& the first umbrella goes up
& it starts to rain
& the music is jazz
or blues & you're
dreaming of something
just people watching
& the hours pass
by almost invisibly
as if afraid to disturb

We never liked the same music.

We never did
like the same music.
In a sea,
a virtual ocean,
of song recommendations, we
would only find one
or two
that we both
intensely
intensely
intensely
loved. And because of that,
those few, rare songs
became magical
in their significance.
Like small pearls in a tsunami
of grit.

What kind of music do you like now?

I wish I had told you
when even the stars had been
too cold to breathe, that
yes,
you are my disaster.

See, your hurricane blew out
the paper-candle-sun I'd so
precariously perched
back in January
for warmth and solitary
subsistence.
Instead, you dragged me out
into harsh, hot, white
spotlight,
my hand grabbed in yours,
with your series of purple and then more
purple verses,
while I resisted the fact that
that
I wanted, want
wanted, want
to be more
than fodder for your poetry.

You may not comprehend
the catastrophe conjured
by your hands, your words
but I know myself.
I've always lived on the
edge of disarray and I
think I relished,
relish
my mania
because now I'm
stilled.
Stilled.
Wagon wheels stuck
in African mud,
halted
by stop signs of
violet violent violet
velvety verses.

Now I'm cowering under blankets
for artificial warmth,
with my thoughts
and a book, all clad
in the ghosts of your hands, I've been
stilled.
You've thrown silence
into the life of a musician.
You have scratched the vinyl
to break the song into pieces,
stop
stop
Caution.
This is a broken record.

Stilled.
If you are a hurricane,
then I am a bigger blossoming wreck,
still
you have managed to do it -
stilled.

All I want is to shatter
teacup
after
teacup
against the walls
and scream
into your too-brown eyes
but I can't say or sing a thing,
cowering -
stilled.

I wish I had told you
when the stars had been too cold to breathe and
you and me
you and me
did not even bother
to inhale or other such trivialities;
our breaths had been stolen
in the time and space of a white
aeroplane,
I wish I had said
yes,
you are my disaster,
so what am I to you?

The poet stirs the
rain drops, the sky bends and folds
an old cat stretches.

You want to drag me to the Sea
I want to write poetry
'It's too late for such a trip today'
I say & sip my tea
You still want to drag me to the Sea

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Little girl in a blue
snow globe.
Pressed white shirt and tartan skirt.
Hair slipping
out of a ponytail or braid or something
like that.
Laughter like a current
to be lost in by a boatman.
Her first time at the beach.
Writing
childish saltwater sonnets
in the sand with her toes.

Paper-plane sky
kisses
sea brimming
out of its seams.
Singing, on-off key,
school choir tone,
'Never Let Me Go'.
Who needs, she needs
nothing
but
the horizon
cupped
in outstretched palms.
Innocence stored
in jagged-shiny shells
waiting to be
buried
in hot, bare sand.

Time comes to shore, oceans
grow warmer,
shallow.
No more of kid braids
but a woman in
azure.
Her whole life having been
a half-moon run
out of deep, dry wells
in search of,
in search of...
in search of
what, but
hope.
Cracking oyster shells
looking for
pearls.

Time again comes to shore.
Cigarette pants for tartan skirt,
in a blue-almost-black.
Staring out
at water lapping before her,
before her, after the sky.
Before,
after.
The horizon is a pretty picture
she wants to hang
on the wall of her heart.
But she, schoolgirl trapped in snow globe,
remembers
textbook phrases like
'Humans are made up of 75%
water.'
So we are drowning every moment,
she thinks dryly.

Water within,
inevitable.
Maybe her skin or nerves or vocal cords
sensed it all those years ago
in the schoolgirl's snow globe.
Like crying, like love,
like fearing, like dying.
Shifting, receding, flowing in
and out.

Could emotions be tides she dares,
dares not
row, row,
row through?

Where did it all leak away?
Was it in the salt
running down her face?
If she is 75% water,
where has it drained
to leave the heart parched,
and her tartan days a distant drought
of memory?

Snow globe melts away.
Wade in, wade in,
have your fill,
until skin is slick
with better pain.
You told the ocean years ago,
you sang in schoolgirl choir tones,
never,
never,
never let me go.

Now it never will.