Summer

I remember
That you fell asleep as the jazz musicians played
Used my shoulder as your pillow
And floated off into dream-land behind your shades, askew.
I caught you just before you tipped
And bore your weight
Two drunks in love, but only just.

I remember
That we drove all day
You narrated, editing out my mood.
Feet up, cold coffee, warm buns and that landscape of fantasy
Your excitement more than enough for us two
You slunk out for cigarettes in newly too-baggy jeans
And my heart followed, stealthily, peeking around corners. Unseen.

I remember
That you and I walked across that city at night
Twice we disagreed, and the third time I was silent, dreaming of escape.
You explained a history only i had lived, teased me,
But at the door, caressed with such tender, tender words.
The stars were out, blinking lazily at us
Together alone.

I remember
That you promised to kidnap me and take me with you.
It was then that your shining armour seemed to fit. We
Spiralled dizzy into displays of public madness: my fingers in your trousers; your Freudian
confessions in my ears. We played tag-team against the world
And it’s nerveless wife.
And won.

Remembrances blossom
Like ink in water
Like bombs
And one sags awe-struck at the pure fact of being alive.
A simple sweetness unexpected

I do not remember
The end.
The arguments and tears and final endless silence.
That I do not remember.

Morning Scapes

I can smell Paris.
It has a smell.

I don’t want a home,
(experience has shown me).
I want places I can stay
awhile before travelling on.
I see Durham, too;
feel the things made known
around Durham boys.
An/ Their inaccessibility.

To stay in one place
is to herald a future of
depressing monotony.
Fifties sameness,
relieved only by a spot of cleaning,
a drop of gin.
I want to get up and go, and keep going.
Not stop.
To stop is to admit defeat
is to bow before age as adversity
is to welcome death.

I got Paris on my mind,
and Bible kings by extension.
Perfect days
I want to relive,
but don’t
as their perfection is only in their unrepeatable nature.

Paris – a blur of colours, metro-stops, journeys, graveyards, internet-cafés. And break-ups.
Of night walks along the Seine;
dancing on pavements outside art galleries;
apologies from the man who blocked his own shot; and
photos;
photos;
photos.

Oh, beautiful past! Come back to me!

Poem From A Hammer To Heidegger

I am
ready-to-unhand you.

REMEMBER THE KIKUYU 16

‘My son was due to be in college on Monday, but on Tuesday we buried him. He was a good boy, not violent, scared of violence.’ – Robert Miriha, retired schoolteacher, father of Patrick.

Dutch silence-offenders
giggle into their conversation;
not a flaxen hair
on their beautiful heads
out of place.

How can there be laughter too,
and you?

Seven Hours from Oslo

The train eases into motion
slow and unassuming
as a lover leaving softly with the dawn.
It is your kiss I never got
that I remember now.

A snow desert bright
so brighter than
light or faith that it should be warm.
The thought
to roll and
wrap myself in it
cannot be made illogical.

Each boy owning himself is you.

All faces stir a little
the throbbing
of a lost battle –
a slash of red
breasts perched like a mound of loose grapes
a simple, pointed look
and I can rise
as often as I must
on that crest of burning self-oblivion…

... Only to be left emptier
each time.
And bored.
The man opposite
prettier now than first imagined
would do. A certain
Nordic charm.
Instead, I think of you.

My first real loss of any value
it is only to clichés
I can turn for any truth.
To hate while loving on
without assurance of my ending
is a novel torture I permit myself to bear.
To dance, to laugh, to kiss
has never been so easy
with my heart
left just outside the door
to wile, to wait
to watch

for you.

Dreamworld

To think you can
prepare for grief,
such rawness of
eternal pain,
is folly.

It is a splinter,
crippling all in its path;
collapsing worlds in on themselves;
burning away
at what keeps us human
until we are not,
and,
like a woman scorned,
will not heal
will not fade away
will not be consoled.

Loss results,
not in mere tears,
but fear.
Paranoia, vulnerability, guilt –
a martyr’s store of emotion.
Emotions
so out-of-keeping
with the quotidian that they are
too real
to be felt.

Time may delude herself that
by passage alone
she salvages hearts, but,
sadly, is mistaken.
Humans were created not
for such protracted
suffering –
dealing only in the basic.
So we face
a simple matter of survival:
we let go, or
we wither.

Or we stumble

love-blindly

out of one day
and into the next
going in circles.

Going nowhere.

Ode to Xas

I feel trapped in the bell jar that Sylvia described.
My beauty an enemy of time.

The mirrors that surround
do nothing to reassure, but
compound a poor decision
with something worse.

I thought to shut myself off from the world.
To avoid unhappiness at all costs.
But I realise that
I am sad anyway.

I’ve found that
any emotion is better than none.
Even pain.

Death is twin to life:
if you are born, you must die;
if you are dead, you lived once.

All around me
I see remains of the life I did not live.
Of all the friends I did not make. Of all the money I did not spend.
Of all the love I let pass me by.

Thinking there would be time enough for all,
and now
there is time enough for none.

Except to smoke the cigarette that I abandoned here
before.