Lonely convulsions
A beating heart
Beaten fast
At home in the stars
Above the troubles
Of life and love
Above the casualties
Of causality
Isolation dreaming
Bound by vice
Held in thrall
By the deprivation
Of a beaten heart
Her laughter fell around me
like rain in crystal goblets.
‘How much do you want it?’
‘Enough,’ I lied. ‘What is it to you?’
‘Nothing,’ and I knew that it was true.
She had no vested interest
but for a fleeting fascination
with the machinations of my mind.
I often asked her for the truth
in those dying days of ours
though she would only smile,
rankling my spine with her indifference.
He looked at me and shook his head.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘you don’t think right and it bothers me.’
If only I’d fallen further from the tree.
I search the bough and dig the roots,
footing loose under leaf cascade
I strip the bark and count the rings to find a gauge.
Kicking rubble clear of recesses I have mined,
I find kindnesses kept in corners, and dust them clean.
Dirty, lean, forlorn faded scenes,
moments rendered in muted pastel mosaic.
Sic transit gloria.
Such brief euphoria
A cobbled collection of passed injustice,
weakened bliss and cracked smiles
draped over miles of life and lot
and lessons since forgot.
She smells of bubblegum and sage
and walks the way that fine wines age.
A soft soled, hard wood, susurrus
of slinky surreptitious steps.
She sits in gypsy splendour
under lights like shredded silk,
Promethean eyes afire
a deity of desire.
Thunder storms throughout the house
leaving empty threats upon each pillow.
Willow thin, the librarian stood atop the stair,
casting her name into the darkness
like some unsheathed syllabic talisman
brandished in the air.
Thunder raged, followed lightning
whipping ragged ropes into the ground
in lashing jagged, whittle thin irradiance,
dispensing wicked shadow clones
upon whitewash mortar canvasses.
The librarian took measure with a breath,
hung his head, denied respite,
sighed resigned and retired.
Let the shadows play, he said
and put away his bellows.
At a loss with loss,
I lose myself to longing.
At the end of dreaming,
when reality slinks back
to reclaim its place
at my heel,
a dislocation follows
as I realize
I am me
and nothing more.
The hourglass exhausts itself and I turn it on its head. I watch the sand rerun, the grains tumbling over each other, erratically uniform, building a mountain out of moments from the past.
I can hear music.
Supine, Marion tells me, it’s supposed to be hot.
I watch the time drain away.
She lifts her arm into the air, palm up as though cupping a ball. ‘We should go to the beach,’ she says.
I tell her the salt sticks to my skin, that I feel granular.
Insular on the couch, Marion is silent, flexing her fingers around the ball.
I count the grains a second at a time.
‘Only, when it’s hot,’ she offers, ‘you should be somewhere that feels hot.’
I tell her that it should feel hot in hell, that she’ll be comfortable there, and watch the ball explode between her fingers.
How many grains in an hour, I say
Marion drops her arm over the back of the couch and pulls herself up. There’s a crease running down the side of her face from the way she was lying. I don’t say anything. She looks at me and scowls, the crease unyielding.
‘Science,’ she says, as though that were the end of it. The scowl slides away and she fits a smile in its place. ‘Take me out.’
Like a hitman, I say, and the smile doesn’t fit anymore.
She disconnects her arm and lets herself fall back. I hear her sigh float up to the ceiling. ‘Are you bored?’ she asks me.
I tell her no, I can’t think of a better way to pass time.
A stale piece of popcorn launches itself over the couch’s fabric ramparts. It misses me and lands on the table. I look from the popcorn to the hourglass. Grains.
‘I want to see the sun,’ the couch tells me. ‘I want to lie in the sun.’
We’ll never get you out, I say.
‘If you don’t take me,’ she says with the cadence of a threat but none of the potency, ‘I’ll take myself.’
I get up and stand behind the couch, looking down at Marion.
Why don’t you move?
I love you most while you’re asleep,
tangled through the sheets,
a skin and linen swap meet,
sprawled there in threadbare clothes,
regal in repose, with hands thrown
open to palms and level headed,
stirring, mumbled proclamations
of dream nation doctrine,
confident in somnambulant
though prone, to whispers of the willing
flesh through fabric copse
in effervescent glimmers
imposing porcelain instances
upon my defenses, wearing me
down into the governance of sleep.
We sleep together
and it’s beautiful,
and sweet,
and strangely illicit,
breaking, as we are,
the rules of our own agreement.
She guides me in with soft hands
while I whisper, ‘are you sure?’
‘No,’ she sighs, but doesn’t stop.
Slowly, in stages,
I find myself deeper inside her.
I don’t want to press too hard,
I don’t want it to hurt,
but it’s as though
I can feel every piece of her
through her skin,
and I feel so much at once
I could almost burst.
Our rhythms match
and our lips meet.
My hands seek her out,
roaming her skin
and we come together
as one.
Buoyant orange sunset floating slowly to the ground,
The last disciple rays shooting vagrant from the clouds.
A blanket worth of blackness slowly coats the winter sky,
A mourning for the day just passed as it begins to die.
The moon’s encroaching presence, shoos away the light,
leeching life out of the sun to illuminate the night.
The promise lost within the day now held within the dark.
Envy of the dark for the secrets it might hold,
wishing on a solemn star to take me to its fold.
Shadows cast in dusk’s bleak light
once shying from the day,
come out and serenade the night
to romp and leap and play
The day will come again my friend
don’t mourn its passing yet,
take the time, enjoy its end,
the glory of sunset.
Some days I feel so disheveled, bedeviled,
ineligible and unintelligible.
I feel coarse, like my blood
were peppered with sand,
more bloody, grating,
abrading and degrading than necessary.
It makes me wary, on edge,
precipice precious like a man on a ledge.
Contentious and conscious of every little thing,
every bite, scratch and sting, and petty injustice.
While all that disgusts us, is bludgeoned in
again and again, without relent.
But some days, some days I feel content
I sleep better when I’m with you.
The inescapable tirades of my mind
seem so distant, so silent,
in your embrace,
with your arm across my chest
and your leg over my waist,
I’m comfortable in a way
that eludes me through the day.
I’m restless now, alone in bed,
my mind’s alive,
you’re in my head
and my fingers clutch
at memories of you
but find emptiness instead.
There’s no room left to think,
I’m spatially constrained
in the most mundane of ways.
I lose my equilibrium,
knocked against the pedestrian buffet
I find myself slipping
inwards, all the time
and such steep slopes to climb,
that my fingers,
worn already to nubs,
are blooded, twisted things,
scraping away my sanity
like mausoleum silt.
My mind wanders
and my thoughts confuse.
I catch myself
at times reflected
and touch my face
to feel how valid the truth might be,
though I fear I am not much better
than the calloused ramblings of an old soul.
I write stories I never send you,
little vignettes
like storyboards in my mind
that shape and colour
and seek to define
the thoughts that cue
behind my eyes
like Tetris blocks I can’t align.
Like shuffled papers, ruffled, worn,
flung in disarray, discarded scars
upon the surface, order marred
non-tangential sequence, scattered
meaning in clumps and clots,
drawing lots for space,
paragraphs displaced, cliques
dismembered in disjunction,
serving form a function,
braying punctuation, straying
hither, yon and thither meaning
less with each missed step,
a full-stop disconnect, dot to dot
discarded plot, anarchy’s favour
the flavour of chaos upon my desk.
A Few Short Words 