Supine, I watch the weeks elapse

Poems written in July, August of 2024

Untether me

I gravitate towards a distant horizon

Alluring, unknowable; I want to be

Where my others are strangers,

Sights and structures, unfamiliar,

The air, alien.

Night flights

Oh, how I long to follow you

Into that pale blue night:

The swallows soaring overhead

The figures side by side;

Where summer's breath sets clock hands still

And languid moments last until

The city's cries subside

But walking in your wake, I'd be

Swimming against the tide;

With every stroke seeing me kept,

A week longer, inside

Yet summer's fumes instil in me

Delusions of autonomy

And in their lies, I hide.

Out of road

When do you conclude that

There is nowhere left to go?

Your eyes lock with mine,

Bright and loveless

Coagulation

Words unspoken

Recollections flying past -

The smile you wore in bygone days -

When do you conclude that

There is nowhere left to go?

Where to store in memory

The faces you may cease to see?

Finding your person

Residing in mine

Remnant in my speech,

My movements

And yet, you're gone.

Too tired to care,

I leave the dust to do its thing,

Collect, encase, damned near erase,

And wait until the phone rings

And I hear a voice entirely new.

Dustbin people

Peeking from behind the blinds

Stepping wobblingly back

Clothing of the unseen kind

Skin about the face, gone slack.

Yours is not a passing pain

Dustbin people, all the same.

Withering - a fallen leaf

Forced to watch the next come through

Witnessing, from underneath, them

Shining just like you used to.

Self-harm with your own refrain:

Dustbin people, all the same.

Your claws dig into my skin

Bundled up between my knees

I've never known something to be

So precious, and yet here you are.

In exhaled breaths I hear you purr,

Content as you drift off into

Those dreams I'll never understand

That leave you twitching to no end

Until your eyes meet mine again

And, stretching wide, you smile.

Cards

I used to glance down at his hand

And wish that it was mine;

I dreamt we'd swap our decks of cards

And I'd learn what it's like

To wake without anger,

Dress without sadness,

Fuck with no second thought; no catch

To lie in bed and feel relaxed

To look into the mirror -

No need to squint to see the beauty.

The Fletchers

With Father Thomas on his way -

Off to read some old dear's last rites -

The interment was done. We stood,

Gazes fixated on the flowers,

The gravestone of a man long gone,

A picture of one gone too soon,

And thought of her, now below ground,

Forever silent, ever blind.

Her eightieth birthday meal, that endless table

Gathering together her lineage in full,

Was but a memory, the chasm groaning in the pub

Reminded us. Dancing around the obvious,

We sought refuge in the casual: How's things?

When's the holiday? Look at his little face!

I felt the warmth leave my coffee with each utterance:

Eyes always returning to that beckoning door.

Us all in one room, not wanting to flee

A prospect consigned to history.

Somnambulant purgatory

The white glare of morning

Commands me to rise

Head bound to the pillow,

I don't meet its eyes

But listlessly watch as

The walls fade to black

And I helplessly see myself

Slip through the crack

Where the days pass like minutes

Exhaustion, infinite

I drown in the sound

Of life without me in it -

The chorus sings sweetly, confirming my fear:

"You are no longer required to be here."

Back

Back into the red again -

Into those crimson arms, spread wide,

I find myself once more.

Every day, from rope to rope,

Just like the walks we used to take:

The ending, always worth the ache

And now, in this crushing embrace

I feel it all

Dissipate

Never to have what they have had

Futile though it is to think

Of how things could have been

Had I been dealt a fairer hand,

On blue nights I begin:

Biology, as meant to be

That fundamental clarity

The boy they were supposed to see

The boy I was supposed to be

Carefree in discovery

Unbridled in ecstasy

Just like him; he, like me

Running 'til it hurts to breathe

On the grass

We hold hands

Or perhaps just

Share a glance:

One possessing all the words that we had yet to learn.

The fog-hidden horizon

The card tells me what's coming

I don't know if it's true:

This blockade of fog makes it hard to discern

What exactly I'm moving towards. Maybe

A many-pillared, many-peopled campus;

Maybe my childhood home.

You tell me not to wonder, but they make me,

The pallid spectres, their eyes

Piercing through the white;

Ragged figures haunting my horizon.

Only they know what it is I can't see -

Only they know if I'm moving at all