What is the hardest part
                    Of being alone?
It's the quietness,
A stillness making
What ought have been a home-
a house.
It's filled with beds,
But those lover's nests
Are             Empty.
And the thought is
As occupying as a dream.
A dream you cannot feel
Because the loneliness is keeping you awake

With no one to hold down your fears
         And keep you safe.

The world is in full color, the sky still sporting tones of pink as it grows dark
every word spoken is like a tiny love note to me, i wonder if im too sentimental
ive got galaxies in my heart and im afraid of all the stars burning out too fast (talk about heartburn,,,,,,, hah)
maybe one day we'll all go to space together
what do diamonds shine like on the surface of the moon?  
11 pm, watching the cars go by
ive never been a fan of light pink until i realized it felt like home
love feels like pastel colors, like the comforting presence of the moon in the night sky, the calm quietness of underwater
is it possible to die from cheesiness?
im worried i might start throwing up glitter (even though that would look pretty cool)
everything feels lighter and softer than usual
it almost feels as if im surrounded by bubbles
youre like crystals, beautiful and perfect no matter what shape or form
and im floating on air
im going to cry? but in a good way
everything feels like pastel colors and sparkles and so much sugary-sweetness its almost TOO much but not quite
filed under: "Love Aesthetic (tm)"
im going to literally scream and explode into rainbow confetti
im so gay

I always suspected electricity
Ran rampant through my veins
To make me dazed and dizzy
But unable to sit still
It made me prone to flights of fancy
So I left giddy trails of sparks
Blazing proof of my restlessness
That once brightly caught your eye

Once your gaze had found my own
My moods came in swooning flares
And you crackled alongside me
Filling my aching, empty silence
With shiny, blessed noise
We burned so beautifully
With my electric fire
And your trilling declamations
Light and sound intertwining
Like thunder that had finally caught up with its lightning

It seemed like Nature's order
A completion of the whole
Two halves that followed each other
Unthinkingly and automatically

So one day when I found silence
It felt like Earth itself was splitting

Panicked, I burned more brightly
Stoked the fire just in case
I feared that I had dimmed
And been the cause of this new quietness
So when I still heard nothing
I thought my efforts insufficient
And I ran my highest currents
Until my wires nearly melted
Thinking the sun and I were comparable
And anticipating a response

And still I heard no trilling
No crackling at my side
So I wondered if perhaps
I had shined beyond your limits
Swiftly, I contracted
Reined in my flares and doused the fire
Thinking sudden darkness
Might just shock you into sound

I finally heard the faintest popping
Not quite the rending that I wanted
But a break from quiet all the same
Afraid of spoiling the moment
I leashed my electricity
Kept myself dim so I could hear you
Though I felt the writhing beneath my skin

It finally became unbearable
So I flashed like wild lightning
Lashed out and struck the ground
Hoping for your thunder
A dark and roiling storm
Swirling raindrops and clouds colliding
And deep, ugly noise

All I wanted was your thunder
But in the end
It was only me yelling
Screaming out for downpours
Alone
Listening to my own echoes
Waiting for you to harmonize

In the end
I was always waiting
Wondering when you'd chosen silence
Wondering why I'd let you dim me
Wondering how it was we'd ever *burned

It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

Eve of Holi

A spring eve that’s all different from others
Zephyrs blowing away the leaves
Orange sky adding the flavours
Blooming flowers nodding in a rhythm
So Ironical is nature of this evening
That all these beauties act as ornaments of Kali


On a normal evening man would work
They would work appraising weather
They know it will not last long, they enjoy
Today they as if ignore it, of morning celebrations

Morning is gayest morning of the year
Every reason to see every man
Mankind being unanimous
Evening on contrary balancing it to a usual day


An unexplainable soundlessness, vacuum of thoughts
A day depicting environment without men on work
Streets still hold colours on their chest
But this colour no more is a sign of happiness


People meet each other, everyone has a smile
But that doesn’t match with nature suit
There smiles have scope within its sight
Body of people walking on street enjoy zephyr
Their mind stay startled of unusual quietness


Standing on my entrance, I observe
A swinging litchi tree, missing sound of saw mill
Smiling flowers, orange cloudy sky
Empty streets, parked wagons, and utterly silence

I was reborn last night
As she sent me a quick melody clipping of her voice...

I heard god in her words
A beauty so moist!!!

love comes unexpected
arrives with fanfare
out the quietness of the heart

Just when I think everything is falling into place,
I sit down in the quietness
and my mind starts to race
The bad thoughts start to come again,
how much longer until they win?
I lay in bed
and constantly think
        would I be better off dead?
But then I see the light of day
and I know that I'll eventually be okay

On cold, October evenings, you can hear the rustling of leaves being blown by the wind.
Your neighbor's dog barking with an echo down the street.
The giggling of children as they play games under the glow of dim street lights.
You are not alone.

And then there's the sunset,
Colors grazing what is left of the autumn leaves on the trees,
it is time for you to situate yourself back into your home.
There's a quietness to your house; bodies lingering nearby but don't present themselves.
You scale the stairs that creak with each step like an eerie tune that brings brief life into the home.
Bristly fur of a cat brushes against your goose bumped skin.
You are not alone.

The stillness of your bedroom,
The hall light peeking through from under your closed door creating shadows in the darkness.
The light representing someone is still awake in the quiet house as you're trying to close your eyes and shut off your thoughts.
Quiet sobbing turned into hyperventilating as the blanket you're clutching, crumples as your grip tightens.
You feel cold and helpless fighting internally with the dark shadows making their way into your mind.
Your gasping breaths are abruptly stopped by the beat of rushed footsteps.

The swinging open of your door creates a wave of light that masks out the nothingness in your room.
Their arms wrapping tightly around your shaking body,
as you gurgle your fears out of your throat,
is that warmth you craved.
"You are not alone."

to the hometown i hate,
i miss seeing the october sunrise while taking the train to school every morning
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to wear uggs, hats and scarves already at the end of september,
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to buy 90 cent face masks and my favorite protein bars at the drugstore 10 minutes away from me
to the hometown i hate,
i miss seeing the porsches and mercedes c-classes parked on the curbes of our sidewalks
to the hometown i hate,
i miss the quietness of my area
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to speak a language i know fluently, not worrying about the anxiety i get if i get into a complicated situation
to the hometown i hate,
i miss running in the quiet, clean, green forest next to us
to the hometown i hate,
i miss sleeping in my own bed, in the room i did not like
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to go to my fully-equipped kitchen and bake whenever i want to, which i complained was too small until i moved into my dorm
to the hometown i hate,
i miss you

Travel alone in a moonless night is a bliss, for the stars lightened my journey.
Without the sun and the moon is easy, for not even a shadow could bother me.  
No noises, no judging eyes, no condemnation, just a mesmerising quietness.

stuck in a hollow room,
handfuls of pictures of
years, now simple past,
rain still bound, fallen,
the quietness of absence,
the eclipse of
your dissolute smile;

one day,
years ago,
I must have woken up,
and forgotten to stay in love,

or just realized,
I never really was.

A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden;
around that the forest.  Anashuya, the young priestess, kneelinq
within the temple.
Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering
corn.  --
O, may tranquillity walk by his elbow
When wandering in the forest, if he love
No other.  -- Hear, and may the indolent flocks
Be plentiful.  -- And if he love another,
May panthers end him.  -- Hear, and load our king
With wisdom hour by hour.  -- May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from the other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.
Vijaya [entering and throwing a lily at her]. Hail! hail, my
Anashuya.
Anashuya. No:  be still.
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
prayers for the land.
Vijaya.  I will wait here, Amrita.
Anashuya. By mighty Brahma's ever-rustling robe,
Who is Amrita? Sorrow of all sorrows!
Another fills your mind.
Vijaya. My mother's name.
Anashuya [sings, coming out of the temple].
A sad, sad thought went by me slowly:
Sigh, O you little stars.! O sigh and shake your blue
apparel.!
The sad, sad thought has gone from me now wholly:
Sing, O you little stars.! O sing and raise your rapturous
carol
To mighty Brahma, be who made you many as the sands,
And laid you on the gates of evening with his quiet hands.
(Sits down on the steps of the temple.)
Vijaya, I have brought my evening rice;
The sun has laid his chin on the grey wood,
Weary, with all his poppies gathered round him.
Vijaya. The hour when Kama, full of sleepy laughter,
Rises, and showers abroad his fragrant arrows,
Piercing the twilight with their murmuring barbs.
Anashuya. See-how the sacred old flamingoes come.
Painting with shadow all the marble steps:
Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perches
Within the temple, devious walking, made
To wander by their melancholy minds.
Yon tall one eyes my supper; chase him away,
Far, far away.  I named him after you.
He is a famous fisher; hour by hour
He ruffles with his bill the minnowed streams.
Ah! there he snaps my rice.  I told you so.
Now cuff him off.  He's off! A kiss for you,
Because you saved my rice.  Have you no thanks?
Vijaya [sings].  Sing you of her, O first few stars,
Whom Brahma, touching with his finger, praises, for you
hold
The van of wandering quiet; ere you be too calm and old,
Sing, turning in your cars,
Sing, till you raise your hands and sigh, and from your car-
heads peer,
With all your whirling hair, and drop many an azure tear.
Anashuya. What know the pilots of the stars of tears?
Vijaya. Their faces are all worn, and in their eyes
Flashes the fire of sadness, for they see
The icicles that famish all the North,
Where men lie frozen in the glimmering snow;
And in the flaming forests cower the lion
And lioness, with all their whimpering cubs;
And, ever pacing on the verge of things,
The phantom, Beauty, in a mist of tears;
While we alone have round us woven woods,
And feel the softness of each other's hand,
Amrita, while -- -
Anashuya [going away from him].
Ah me! you love another,
[Bursting into tears.]
And may some sudden dreadful ill befall her!
Vijaya.  I loved another; now I love no other.
Among the mouldering of ancient woods
You live, and on the village border she,
With her old father the blind wood-cutter;
I saw her standing in her door but now.
Anashuya. Vijaya, swear to love her never more.
Vijaya. Ay, ay.
Anashuya. Swear by the parents of the gods,
Dread oath, who dwell on sacred Himalay,
On the far Golden peak; enormous shapes,
Who still were old when the great sea was young;
On their vast faces mystery and dreams;
Their hair along the mountains rolled and filled
From year to year by the unnumbered nests
Of aweless birds, and round their stirless feet
The joyous flocks of deer and antelope,
Who never hear the unforgiving hound.
Swear!
Vijaya. By the parents of the gods, I swear.
Anashuya [sings]. I have forgiven, O new star!
Maybe you have not heard of us, you have come forth so
newly,
You hunter of the fields afar!
Ah, you will know my loved one by his hunter's arrows
truly,
Shoot on him shafts of quietness, that he may ever keep
A lonely laughter, and may kiss his hands to me in sleep.
Farewell, Vijaya.  Nay, no word, no word;
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
Prayers for the land.
[Vijaya goes.]
O Brahma, guard in sleep
The merry lambs and the complacent kine,
The flies below the leaves, and the young mice
In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks
Of red flamingoes; and my love, Vijaya;
And may no restless fay with fidget finger
Trouble his sleeping:  give him dreams of me.

1540

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

Instead of being charming,
You drown me to your quietness.
Your calmness bending my ticking-clock to stop,
expanding time to feel me the euphoria.
I like how you did everything,
every move you made drives me to satisfaction.
I didn't know the purpose of this feeling,
and didn't want to.

Afternoons that were once body clock mornings turned to early mornings
which became sweet evening bath time odes to rest;
they’re tests we all win at because the prize is quietness,
primary-school-hands-on-heads quietness,
so still it hurts to sleep because
comfort has wrapped every bone in
ill fitting armour making it, once moved,
difficult to find that point of paralysis once again.

Piano-flat black rooms are lit
by dark midnight suns, the bulbs
burning through, the taps in their place,
chairs thrown under tables away from the morning queue
yet to form for the day.

I love to share my soul with someone nice
I love to said the poems under my soul
I love to say to the grey sky
I love to see the grey clouds alone
I love to hear sounds of souls
I love to remember everything around me
I love to write poems to you
I love the sound of quietness
I love the memories in the mist place
I love the darkness in the ocean blue
I love to open eyes under the black sea
I love to close my eyes when I hear your soul.

My poems is slow dance with your words; My words is dancing in the blue moon under my soul.

With nothing to see and nowhere to be,
With no one to be and nowhere to go:
Empty, like the meaning of the spring dew
Dissipating, hundreds of pieces, scattered
Individual voids waiting upon a cue
To become what they embody, fettered.
A field of unquiet quietness, occasionally
interrupted by a single, awful tone.
What existence is this exigence?
Unknowable, unspeakable, unending:
Pain is what it is.

The dew knows not why it's stepped on,
Ending its momentary nature
Only to crop up tomorrow and be none
The foot becoming again its berater.
And so it goes until the summer,
with the cruel months behind it.
The skull becomes and beckons
Back into nihil.
But there's too many things to see, places to be
Too much to be and too many places to go
For to be one is to be many and the dew tires.

Lady night offers her generosity
as the stars twinkle in syncopation for me.
Shadow-clad silhouettes...
Their gaits mysterious.
The night lights trail into the depths of my eyes.
Burning away the seconds, so effortless.

The quietness...
Willing forth dishevelled reflections...
Of unkempt emotions.
Allowing a barrage...
Of thoughts and notions that span
over night and day.

So that they could...
Be conveyed through paper and screen.
So that I could...
Share with you what I intimately mean.
The unforgiving onslaught of ideas and feelings
I bravely conjured...
But too afraid to say.

when i'm sitting alone at night
     in the quietness of my large and aging house
i hear so many noises i'm oblivious to
     during the daylight

the clicks of the air conditioning
     switching on and off,
the creaking of the floors and walls,
     the subtle squeaking the fan makes
in the living room

it's as if my house is sighing
     it's sighing at me
disappointed in me
     he asks why i don't notice him
during the day
     why i only notice him late at night
when i'm lonely
     and there are no other noises
to entertain my ears

i tell him that i'll try to listen more closely
     in the morning, but then i fall asleep
and i wake up and i do not remember
     what i promised my sweet house
so he continues to sigh all day long
     hoping that at some point
even if it's late at night when i'm lonely
     and there is no other noises
to entertain my ears
     i will notice him again

if only for a little while

Written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion

A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling *****,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
Which now blooms most profusely: but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax,
When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh! ’tis a quiet spirit-healing nook!
Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
Knew just so much of folly as had made

His early manhood more securely wise!
Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o’er his frame;
And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of Nature!
And so, his senses gradually wrapped
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds!

My God! it is a melancholy thing
For such a man, who would full fain preserve
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all his human brethren—O my God!
It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
This way or that way o’er these silent hills—
Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
And all the crash of onset; fear and rage,
And undetermined conflict—even now,
Even now, perchance, and in his native isle:
Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun!
We have offended, Oh! my countrymen!
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!
The wretched plead against us; multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,
Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
All individual dignity and power
Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
Associations and Societies,
A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
Yet bartering freedom and the poor man’s life
For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o’er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade:
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
Oh! blasphemous! the Book of Life is made
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o’er the oaths we mean to break;
For all must swear—all and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court;
All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man and the young;
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler’s charm; and, bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, “Where is it?”

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all
Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! No guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
No speculation on contingency,
However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause; and forth,
(Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women, that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle, doing ****** deeds,
Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Of our fierce doings?

Spare us yet awhile,
Father and God! O, spare us yet awhile!
Oh! let not English women drag their flight
Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,
Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
Which grew up with you round the same fireside,
And all who ever heard the Sabbath-bells
Without the Infidel’s scorn, make yourselves pure!
Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of ******; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life’s amities, and cheat the heart
Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes,
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon the insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on its waves
As the vile seaweed, which some mountain-blast
Swept from our shores! And oh! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!

I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or fractious or mistimed;
For never can true courage dwell with them
Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,
Groaning with restless enmity, expect
All change from change of constituted power;
As if a Government had been a robe
On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
A radical causation to a few
Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
Who borrow all their hues and qualities
From our own folly and rank wickedness,
Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,
Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their country!

Such have I been deemed.—
But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits ot thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country! O divine
And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!—

May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:
The light has left the summit of the hill,
Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled
From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow, and pause
Startled! And after lonely sojourning
In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
And elmy fields, seems like society—
Conversing with the mind, and giving it
A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!
And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe’s mother dwell in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature’s quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

Her fourteen days $?..........&

And what? And I am losing
some attachments
And____
is this our way
We should say is this my end today
My salvation
(Losing) wed long train
of thought
(Religion)

One day before
She screams!!
Such finesse of refinement
We all fall down 
Like children
of the **** torment
Statues the transformation
so real
Carve the deal on the 13th

Like the Gal Friday
battle Tut
masked out the
Halloween taking
out their spleen

Statuette Tut of
the jurisdiction
The fourteen karat teen
gold doesn't put a hold on me

How our minds
became off-set

My blocks are the key
to his heart mindset
The trade of the marks
her freedom
Her lips
quite a
surgery can blow
those bricks
down like a bullet

How it out knocks singing
over again
we all fall down
like ashes remain

Oh! Gee  V for Victorious Glee

How he couldn't pass
this
opportunity
deliciousness,
divineness
because of me,
there I went to the silent hill
The tranquil of quietness
Her weapon
the bullet dress - --
The coffee in the
King Tut shape
The curvy glass

Like a desert storm fires
Going First class

Not a block party second in mind
          "He" King Glee
Behind her walls, he reconstructs
Cheers of joy bullets one of a kind
Like a setup ploy
Her body fine weight
of gold
Eyes almond he's my candy
Second chances of joy
Her third timeless so hot
Is "She"
He's trying to nourish her heart

"With Glee"

Those love instructions
Like a bullet for me?

The King Oh! Gee

The Queen you
had to see
Like the golf clubs to putter set
The ball whole cup
The whole process stayed put
She was so enticed by his
bungee climbing
Seeing his first shot shooting
wasn't a star

The bricks to the end of the war
Judy the Star was Garland found
a different  time of Era la boom
reborn lady Liza Minnelli

The Empire of the Tut
(Bali Island Hut)
Her best to the
last stone paver layers
Like a Tut mortal dreamers
On her deck Golden Egg cards
King on top of the Queen
blocks bam the bomb ticks
The Joker having his last laugh
The war of fidelity like a plaque
of immortals
"And Please God' let it be over

You're my lucky star
No matter where you are
The ancient portal sip of wine
"All Glee" smile to trust
Come attached with loads of funds
His attache case modernly- eyes dim
Cashed into her twilight blank stare
Head over heels digging underneath her
gold - heavy heart and mind spins
into a migraine

His prayers are working
constructing a force
Something is emerging
racing for hearts
Engaging the space of valuable
objects of time

  We heard of the
one-day creation
the mysterious temple
Kinksters my heroes our fellowman
To the hipbone, those hipsters stick
  together to hustle

She is trying harder to please him
The gold to be seized
Thousand times over
to build
a form of loves the golden touch

The building could collapse
Heart together can relapse
If her love doesn't stand tall
The darkness can come to her eyes
The death of cards handed
like her corpse flying bullets

Such a massive stone block
She loved to be entertained
Let me make you walk my path
Solid as a rock

Like the Sun Gods map like the
Egyptian cat tongue
The strange pharaohs ancient
stolen identity
Layers and layers
Trumpet tower Presidential
Her bullet racer tulips
Lips bloom with gravity
900 feet getting a grip confidential

The ruins the strange existence
every time will there be next time
The new technology reveals
more secrets one bullet at a time
A silver bullet doesn't
compare to her myths Antionette


Her Anniversary all in gold,
to be or not to be
The silver award bullets
His mighty treasure
for poems of the sonnet

The largest space to build
in Egypt
Look up its a plane
King Tut bird
Super bullet giant beams
Going once or twice
70 Ladybird feet
Pharaoh timeline
so many wives

The column layering
checkerboard
She the sweeter cake
Had life sliced itself

Her layers the feed
of his smorgasbord
The name Ramesses 11
To reveal the evidence
stolen identities this
wasn't the (Providence)
Laying bricks in
my stone bed
Like a heart of stone

Building a gold his
mind like a block-freeze
It will take lifetimes
Marlon "Brando"
The commando of the waterfront
try to be upfront
It felt like a hard cement

Two bricks intellectual speaking
The goldrush her heart racing the
bullet of time
So thick-headed 
The Queen just sit
beheaded

The golden bond have
  guns will travel I Glee I pads
  The speed of bullets meet
my heroes what lads
The kingdom was
holding women
Joy to the
tacky glue magnet

Not the carnival of
cotton candy soft gold
The King got his ladies like
The Funhouse King Tut
no detention to have
Like the speed of lightning
never to hold
More love to build intermission
The kings only private
Gold VIP Theatre

All smiles the build-up
   Another mysterious setup palace
Those bricks of brown
warmth orange-reds of fire leaves
Falling over her milestone of
Mink hair
the fairytale of
Rumpelstiltskin
 Are we in to know
  what really clicks

More layer and layers of her
goldilocks of hair 
 stronger than any bricks

I had that recurring dream again last night.
Awakening with a start.
Perspiration was
Pouring down my face.
The car, the children,
Molly my wife.

The heavy truck spinning in front
on the icy new York   freeway.
Explosions so loud they deafened me.
Then the silence the total quietness
as they drifted away.
And i was left alone.

I moved out of the tiny inner-city cottage.
Is was now over  two years ago
but I just left it the way it was.
The kid's toys strewn on the floor.
Bread and cookies on the table.
I would never return there,  never.
Not even to get my beloved alto sax.
the key for me to making a living.

I followed the cop every day?
The one that pulled me from the wreck.
I did not know why i did this,
Sure she was pretty enough.
But that was not it.

I was once told that if you save
Someone's life they belong to you.
Well, she could have his life.
He did not want it anymore.

She entered the bank
He saw the robbery before she did.
The robber lifted his weapon before
She had time to move.
Without fear or forethought,I jumped
in front of her
and took a bullet for her.

It was in the arm straight in and out.
She put three in the perp,
dropping him dead.
before he could fire another shot.

I fell down she held me in her arms.
As I was bleeding out.
Why did you do that, she said
I would have been killed.
That's why
I whispered.

She visited me in hospital
Brought me grapes
I hate ******* grapes.

She had no idea who I was
When the car wreck happened
I was covered in blood and EMS
Ran me to the hospital.
Names don't stay with people
Only faces.

When I got out of the hospital.
She appeared at my rented room door.
With a coffee and doughnuts
I don't talk much since…..well just since.
Who the **** are you she asked
A God ******  Angel.
I said I don't think God dams his angels.

She seemed to like me.
**** knows why
I wasn't nice to her.
She started looking for me on her shift.
Grabbing a coffee and suggesting dates.
I told her no offense lady
don't arrest me.
But I don't date anymore.

But she was a New York cop.
and a woman,
******* relentless.
She said she would make life hell for me
If I didn't take her for a date.
******* women.

I gave in and said I would join her
At the blues club nearby.
We got there at 10 pm after her shift
She looked ******* hot.
Not like a ******* cop anymore.
The blues were playing
I heard the alto sax wailing
It cried tears
like my soul was feeling.
But my souls eyes were dry.

She saw the tears welling in my eyes
And held me to her soft breast.
Tell me what it is
Is it me she asked?
I was just silent.

The owner of the club saw me.
He said, Tony
where the ******* been man.
It's been two years since you came here.
We miss your sax wailing boy.
He said where's your sax?
Don't you have it anymore?
I shook my head it was a lie
But I had my reasons.

He grabbed the alto sax
from the band playing.
Make it weep Tony.
My heart needs to hear you play man.
I moved quietly to the stage.
And the room went silent.
Just as if the Angel Gabriel
was going to wail his horn.

They remembered me they stood up
and clapped for five minutes.
Blues people don't change.
They just get ******* older.

I said nothing.
But played nature boy.

Peggy got up and took the mike
She wept the words as I played.
Tears falling down
her old sad blackface.

……..There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered
very far, very far
Overland and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he…….

My cop was crying too.
She said I don't cry ever see.
I am a cop I see ****.
Who the **** are you she said?
But I let the sax wail for my words.
It poured my sadness into the night.

She got my full name from Peggy.
She says that boy needs a woman.
But then a woman is Peggy's
answer to all men's problems.

She run the info though the computers
at the precinct.
those ******* things
Know every leak you ever take.

She saw the car wreck
the body bags.
Me, covered in blood.
She knew it all.
I was exposed.

She even found my mother in law's place.
And went there.
She said he's heartsick honey.
He won't go home.
Won't let anyone in.
He blames himself.
He's never cried once
It's eating him inside.

She said I can't find him
Do you know where he is?
He's over at the cemetery.

She missed her shift change over.
And went to the Park Lawn
I  was kneeling by a family
grave talking to my kids.

She went to me and slipped
Her arm around me
,I turned my head
Into her breast.
she kissed my head.
and I wept and wept.
I sobbed like my alto sax wailed.

She kissed my eyes.
Let it out, honey
Let it all go
Don't stop let it go
.
She drove us to my house
The mess was on the floor.
The stale food stank.
It was in a mess a disaster.
The kid's toys spread everywhere.
My sax on the hall table.
saying nothing
she started cleaning it up.

She said quietly.
Did I not save your life right?
I  said yes you did.
And you saved mine right
I said yes I did.
She said
Unless we both say  that
we're even stevens.
You know what it means.

He nodded
Yeah...I know.
It means
We belong to each other now.
You got it straight McGraw she quipped.

Two years later
Tony came back from his gig
at the blues club.
He had a recording contract in his pocket.
The money would come in real handy
What with their second baby
coming in a few months.
Kids were pricey little buggers.

The dull public ruckus of the afternoon train filled the gaps between us.
We could have been part of it,
Drowned so deep in a conversation we could gladly call our own.
But our past selves have already taken invisible
B
R
O
K
E
N
Steps away from each other.
And tucked ourselves in the tight pockets of this companionable silence
As dangerous as the trigger handled by my emotions,
A gift for your forehead.
I will shove all my pain into your being
And watch my reflection crumble to her knees with a familiar cry of agony.
Mauled into frayed flesh in a crimson rose bush
That we had woven friendship wraths from.
And yet, my rasp throat still delivered smoothly.
“How are you today?”

Your usually anticipative eyes
Watched the scenery outside,
Disappearing just as fast as it came.
Did you think of the first day of school?
When we first approached with awkward greetings?
And from a wave and a smile
You start to attach them with questions
Questions that you should be asking me now
Things like
“Do you think we will end up in the same sec 3 class?”
“Do you want to go to ORA with me?”
“Can you save your game? We already hardly bond in class.”
“Are you even listening?”
I was.
I answered every last one,
From the beginning when we stepped into homeroom.
Even the ones you’ve never even asked me.
But now that I come running to you with my stained envelope
Are you still there at your seat?
To tell me
“You know what you need? A good cup of frozen yogurt.”


Now every glance that met
Will be snapped apart like a crisp twig.
Every walk down the corridor past each other,
Will be like two freshmen models on their first runway.
Every move, breath, laughter,
I will always be aware.
Perhaps because your voice
Will always make up for your height in the crowd,
Audible from the opposite side of the hall.
And its only until I let the quietness sink in,
When I have decided to treasure listening to the way you delivered my name,
Leaving your loud mouth like some exotic font.
That till today I still cannot decipher.

What was my height in your crowd?
164cm tall with probably less than half an inch, I guess.
You never noticed how my eyes would wander unconsciously.
Just to wonder
If you still remember I existed,
Somewhere in the pages of your scrapbook,
In the crowd,
Still searching, listening attentively.

Do you understand now?
We are standing at the extreme ends of Newton’s pendulum
Spiked from the illness of our broken bonds.
And I would swing an end so hard I would skewer you
And then the pain will come
Flying back
Stabbing me just as gruesomely.
But it’s so much better
Than disobeying the laws of reciprocation.
My friend, its unfair to be the only one.
Why not requite this one heaven of a pain?

People have pet the conflicted pain like dust off me,
And ignore the bruises that I have willingly punched myself upon.
They taught me
That the heart is a 2-room residence.
Happiness
Sadness
And if you are too happy
Don’t celebrate too loudly
Because you’ll wake the neighbor.

But could it really be helped?
This 1-year worth of what you have given me
You have left 2 party animals as clueless tenants.
Did you understand?
The fact that no matter what silly things we’ve done,
You will always be welcomed home.
And we would continue to drink
Till we are tipsy enough
To walk on the edge of the bridge we have built,
And fall into the hungry rivers
Into the places darker than black
Drowning the air out of our lungs.
But what reason should I be scared,
When you have always been the best swimmer I’ve ever known?
Forever a winner to me,
No matter how many competitions you have paddled out of the pool in disappointment.
It has always been you,
Who would slip over a note to my table,
My hair spilling over its surface in defeat.
Telling me that everything’s ok.
It’s you
Who understood that I was more of a listening person.
Your missing piece to fit your outspoken personality.
You,
The one who could even challenge me to a dance-off just to have the loser ask for the ketchup.
You,
Who could go on forever about a guy you obviously like,
But only say you ‘don’t stand a chance’.
I
The diplomatic one who would arrange you,
Like files in an office drawer.
You
The one who tried to hold us together till the end.
I,
Who failed to treasure your efforts, and share this burden.

And now that you’ve turned down the volume,
And walked out of the door without a goodbye
How am I supposed to handle the next morning, when being sober is an absolute nightmare?
Left alone to wonder what I have done
While we’re drunk, carefree and
Crumbling at the seams.

My dearest friend,
Have I ever told you,
How the number 1
Has always been our own funny little number?
Now if you just take ONE step closer…
Yes, I promise this time I’ll keep my earphones away.
I would point at the signboard above the door
And muse over how your stop,
Is ONE stop before mine.
How your birthday,
ONE day after mine.
Yeah… just like how we are ONE world apart in personality.
Isn’t that why we became like this?
SHUT UP I KNOW I’M A TERRIBLE CONVERSATION HOLDER.
I CAN NEVER PUT MY WORDS INTO THE APPROPRIATE CONTEXT.
BUT YOU KNEW THAT.
You knew.
Now go ahead.
Laugh.
Like how you always do, with that wide grin that reflected nothing but forgiveness,
Stripped down to reveal absolutely no grudges.
Because I deserve it, don’t I?
Because it was my fault,
I was the one, who willingly caused this silent war,
Fraying this thread that I mistook for a hiker’s rope.
There can only be ONE survivor in this meaningless game.
Scold me,
Because there was never such a rule.
I have decided who would be standing alone,
Long ago.
The loser,
The flower that will never find its way back from its ashes.
A.
B
R
O
K
E
N.

M
E.


(hi there. Look I tried ;w;)

My bathroom,
the bedroom,
my living room and
the kitchen are all
spying on me daily,
seen my nakedness,
more than enough
to describe every
bit of me,
records my every
moment and daily visits,
day and night.
I'm not ashamed to display
my nakedness even
**** without decorum.
My bathroom mirror is the
first to see the show of
my new dance steps,
and i allowed it to see and
record the secret of my life.
So shamelessly I displayed
my secret acts in my bedroom,
doing all sorts of stuff,
things my mouth cannot
freely talk about.
In there in the closet
of my beloved bedroom
I committed all sorts of
crimes that even you will
be ashamed to watch if
you know what I mean.
In the privacy of my bedroom
no holes barred.
What do I say about my kitchen.
I became an alchemist
and a herbalist taught,
groomed and approve
by my mother.
On the cauldron as
a herbalist I mixed up
all kinds of herbs and spices
and come up with my alchemical concoction to help entertain
my family and friends and also
to feed and condition my body.
My living room now turned
into a theatre where I became
an actor to everyone who cared
to watch me display my prowess.
All these I do in quietness of
my small enclave where
my bathroom and Kitchen,
the bedroom and living room
witnessed and spy on my follies.
Did I tell you about Palomar the parrot and Kelly the German Shepard.
They can tell you my story if you
asked them.
©2018,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.

Can't sleep.
Bathroom.
Fill it up.
Bubble it up.
Get in.
Intrusive thought.

*

You'd be surprised.
Used to the purpose of cleaning
And pleasured times.

And I fantasize about suicide.
The sense of quietness and structure,
What most of us ambitions in life.

...

it will be, you know


1.
small bird
shivering

kind hand
covering

warmth
spreading

destined
for life


2.
her well-trained cats
at the door
         ants *always spared (!)
         on sill
         with sugared saucer
poultry in the yard
collecting deep-yolked eggs
         making gooseberry jam
and sweet, strong tea
with hot milk
just for me

she taught me inner grace
and the real meaning
of quietness
        just birds chattering away
        whistling wondrous
        in fig trees
laden with heavy fruit
awaiting her deft hands

how I loved her so

accounting exams
interrupted
in sixth grade
sorry
she's gone, dear
dumbstruck silence
          they ask
          why I'm not crying?


3.
kismet peeps in
to embrace you
and kiss your brow

you try to sidestep
and stub a toe
knock your head


in the end:
full-circle prayer


que sera...sera




S T, 28 June 2013