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There’s aesthetic anaesthetic
in the beauty of your form
and it
sedates the silent screaming
of my grief.
like chloroform.

and then,
your eyes are dampened charcoal,
large and lovely
set apart
a doll, they roll,
your eyelids flutter,
set the beating of my heart.

Below
your boyish nose is Elvin
(perfect, small and straight and neat)
and I could
listen on for hours
watch its end move as you speak.

I can’t
articulate the angles
that compel me in your face
but I can’t stop myself from staring
(there-in everything is laced)

but still I know
we’re not well suited,
though our needs are well aligned
because they’re
all so insurmountable
also...

you can be unkind.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Micheal Wolf Mar 2013
A gentle throbbing at first
Then with the hands twist
The journey begins
Reality replaced by road
Metal and man as one

That's what he misses today
Throbbing but from surgery
To save a life to ride again

He sleeps under anasthetic
He dreams
More and more
The wind gets stronger
As it tugs at him
The engine drowned by music
Ipod at full tilt
Throttle to match
He is alive

A car cannot do this to a man
It cannot feed the soul
As once he said

Four wheels move a body
Two wheels stir the soul

— The End —