sip

Sometimes love
is like a mug of steaming coffee:
someone drew you with its heady scent
tempted you with its dizzy flavour
passed it to you, all generosity, and
watched you fall flat for it
(salivating)

but at the end of the day
there’s just you
sitting alone,
sipping it
savouring it
feeling its warmth steep into you
in your little corner
of the world.
(lover be damned.)

flower-press

I have seen you collect
those fragile weed-blossoms,
and, as you press them between
the leaves of a yellowing
book, I have laughed,
teasing you and your
never-ending sense of
romance,
that with a stroke of a finger on the page
weeds the cliché from that
pressed flower.

you respond, all seriousness,
that some day,
in a city or a little town,
far far from here and now
(and me, I add silently)
you will open your yellower book
and there will you find,
flattened by the embrace of
memory,
the then, the there, and
me.

There should be a word
for this
anticipatory nostalgia,
this dead flower that already
lives
a few steps ahead of us:
There should be
some other word than
romance.

fragments: old poems

~ Unknowingly ~

I say it with caution
but
I know you.
I know the face,
both within and without
and every mask that
slides, smoothly or painfully
over another.

I know the nakedness,
when smooth skin
and jagged mind are laid
bare:
You look away from ugliness,
when all I see is that
which is as distant from
beauty as you are from
me
(lost, entangled).

I know the puzzles,
and the answers
that puzzle me more,
I know the dreams,
know especially well
the ones
you fear to dream.

I know of the painful steps,
the minutes you want
to give up;
I know you are me
and I am you
just as much as we are
not each other:
I know the yous.

Now to un-know you.

Written 02/03/11

—-

~ rot ~

What once was
fluid and charming,
lived and grew,
ever-changing, ever-moving,
breathing silently
through you and
me
is now this–
a loud stench in the room,
a black, bloated
carcass
beloved only to
maggots
who celebrate our death.

Perhaps some day
the smooth ivory bones,
dry as ashes
and dust
will bare themselves to
beauty and
adorn my hair
or neck.

Written on 22/07/11

—

~moon-dream~

I dreamt of you
last  night, in black,
white and enchanting
greys:
Perhaps it was because I’d fallen asleep
on a little patch of moonlight
who was resting
upon my bed,
exhausted,
and dreamt upon the
silver strands of his chest;
and as he stroked my eyes
I found your lips,
inside his monochrome kiss.

Written on 07/02/2012

nerves

Pages have fluttered
past, and ages with them,
and my words
sigh
as they pass from
pen to dust,
motes dancing
for seconds
in mind and memory.

And now,
I lay out my nerves
(foryou)
end to screaming end,
twist them together
with shaky fingertips,
and try to shape
throbbing meaning from them...
but worry not, my
love,
no drop
of sweat-blood-tears
could smudge the
words they write
for you.

showered

The last rains fell
and set off a steam
that rose and
trailed its delicate
tendrils
over fever-dewed skin,
and wrapped itself
on restless limbs–
tenderly–
(while outside
the roots dug deeper
and harder
for life,
And the cold earth
too
clothed herself
in drifting mists)
and feathered breathlessly
across parted
furnace-lips.

And now the first rains
have embraced us
again,
(mango rains)
and I find myself
again;
in days that
slip-slide wetly,
through this
wildly thriving earth,
this humid, throbbing
fecundity.
I lie face-to-face with
you, open sky:
now dark with cloud, now
searing
me with sun,
now flowing, warm as tears,
into my eyes,
till blue, bluel, blue
is all I brim over
and burst with.

Only
rain
drops
break
the
silence.

firefly

Firefly,
If I wanted my dull little room
lit up,
I'd rather buy a candle
And search the forgotten corners
By its flickering light, for secrets
I buried away
With music and shadow:

Your radiance is not to
set them
aglow.

But as I stand at my doorway,
Leaning out to touch
And be touched
by your flickering warmth
I would rather watch
as you fly away,
and see the little spotlit patches
of night--
Shining briefly,
dressed in brevity's perfection--
as you pass through them.

And watching, brush fingers
still fluttering from your touch.

autumn

Tonight, a warm wind
and I
strayed into each other's path
and it reminded me
of love's birth and
tenderness.

To turn and find
your face
                   mirroring
my face;
hearing my mind
trip from your lips;
and to feel your heartbeat
fleetingly sqeeze mine
in a parting embrace,
reminds me:

The long season of
weeping sky and
patient earth is at an end;
and I turn (from you)
to kiss that changing wind.