Leaves paper thin:
envelope of last year’s love
daguerreotype of ‘’might have been’’.
A ball gown in translucent green
silk so sheer it cleaves to skin
that ring of gold on wedding day
lost summer sunlight in your hair;
now autumn wind brings memories
forgotten things you promised me.

Leaves paper thin:
my make believe.
Reread the lines you wrote for me
and down through all these changing years
I kept a glimpse of what we’d been
like sun pressed flower our kisses skim
between these flakes of autumn leaves
regret that we will never be
quintessential poetry.

Outside leaves scatter golden
wrappers on my footpath
dried gems to be relit at sunset.
I visit lunar landscapes in the night,
waking from sleep as strangers bury me alive
there is numbness in my heart
I hear messages from the dead:
stars poke through tree’s hair
bald in the autumn dive to disappear.
Freckles on a face pinched from life
reaching up to draw me to you
shut my eyes, time swings way out of reach
down a pathway to the past
spliced with instant moments like so much litter.
I glimpse snapshots of dead hands
tomorrow still unused sings potions of revolution
I cling to the old,frozen by disuse
as if I’d snap under new movement.
Yet still I’m lighter than air sweeter than honey
have no idea more complicated than the sun.

Jets trace stretch marks across the eye of the sky
smoke on blue dome’s transparent light
splits curved cornea at atmospheric height

hurtles into space’s emptiness.

You are buried in earth’s numbing layers
turned towards the light, never understanding
why life escapes you.

We prowl around each other
intent on a dance we haven’t learnt
stolen from the wood’s thick moss

the cry of carrion bird unnerves me.

I’m ready for a midnight flight
fear makes it difficult to breathe
through a lifetime of another’s love and loss.

Jets stripe the candy blue crack of sky
I listen for the fall of a leaf
whisper my dreams to the wind

all of this makes more sense
than hand holding on a clear night
than loving one other.

You talk of oak forests,
uncharted regions of the mind

where we find ourselves.

You smell of citrus,
lemons on Spanish hillside

with a burst of dark blue Russian
strong vodka, burning inside.

Right shoulder dragon
left shoulder tiger:,

a Shaolin heritage carved in flesh.

You found me waiting
weary almost sleeping

the airport noise burgeoned
with small boys cries,

but here it is morning
our love is evolving

and beneath the window
a solitary bird glides by.

You hover on
cloud formations
you whisper around
the crown of my mind.

I catch you like
a moth in the wind
and when I’m near you
I have to fly away.

Sand so warm
as if it’s always waited
to contain me
clouds concertina.

Sky is fleeced with
angel hair and you float
like fish bubbles like sea snake
impossible to contain.

Wind, tunnels tornadoes
electric storms caress the desert,
silence is the best.

Whispers disappear
in the voice of every day,
I can’t hear your words,

I can’t hear them above the noise
of normality.

Sunday bells chime,
you call my name across sky scrapers,
empty beaches,oceans that go on for ever;

but I still can’t hear you.

Tree turns to gold leaf
another autumn rises and falls
I am somewhere beyond light

and surf.

Waiting for the cold,
from a cold seeping through
centuries of bone.

Shuffled from sanctuary
to sanctuary, defiled by
city street lights, not listening,

and I just don’t listen.

Morning windows,
sticky with night sweat I turn to you
and find empty space.

Listen to the sweet deep smell of you,
skinned through my window
grey cacophany of in flight entertainment
last longings of sun bronzed seekers
forty thousand feet above us,

mind configures stark landscapes
where toned Gods patrol outer limits
harangued by paper dragons.

Hunger spans newspaper headlines
time speeds up beyond relativity
mathematical impossibilities deny evolution
ten to the power of two hundred and fifty million
may mean there is a meaning.

You sleep cocoon’d in African logic
buttoned down for inevitability
the catcher has brought no dream variations ,
amethyst dulled by an English morning,
Californian fingers woven into the thread
a distant voice is remembered in the sharing.

Youth aches to fasten it’s claws to my shoulder
tattoo’s a beat to seduce blood
blindly demands acceptance
leaves magenta stains on the whiteness of the night
as I turn to watch dawn gyrate
with it’s Alpha tones.

As time passes
you fade into
orange London night
I return to my skin
grateful at finding myself.
It’s the way you slip
in, get underneath my
fingernails, inhabit the
space behind my eyes
two fishes unaligned
pulling in opposite directions.
It was a novel experiance
at the start and I still
crave it like heroin, but
heroin makes me itch
then vomit up your guts
and I become benumbed
in pink vapidity. While you
underwrite the intensity
of your intensity.
Maybe Boots would sell
a detoxifying solution,
I could spread it on the sky
and know you couldn’t find me,
but it’s the fear that overrides
oroboric warmth, collective suicide
where egoless we float
until the end of time.

Which brings me back to:

time passes.

Morning raises purple
bruises from the night
where the stars burst in my veins
you mutter your way through
my sleep, like an echo.

Clouds brood under a
rain soaked sky, heaven
can’t talk through crossed
lines, one to one doesn’t
seem to be available.

Time marches into serendipity
clicking its heels, salutes the
fly past, raising ribbons on
old defeats, forever running.

I meet myself at the corner
of the street, flee smooth faced
oestrogen babes white skin,
clutching at my one last egg:
flicker of recognition passes for love.

Spirits rise with the wind,
riding mythical beasts, course
through red blood keep light flowing.
It’s the light that’s noticeable,
rising around me like a ballgown.

Old women haunt me
their faces gnarled with
use, I teeter on the limit
diving from my spider’s
threads, trying not to dislocate.

Betrayals cut too deep
only clouds to talk to
birdsong in my hair
throwing runes for breakfast.

Rooted in Spirit

Day follows night
sky hides its scars,
you, over there:

and I’m a fossil
of your love,
beautifully petrified.

It’s the same old song
full throttle need,
love dances around corners

always out of reach.

Mornings somersault,
tide line on a beach
driftwood bravely stacked

in some lost winded corner,

and I’m a fragment
of your smile,
the corner where my tongue

impregnates your lips
to semaphore all of this
without speaking.

inhale, exhale,

but the night spins on to day
a whirlwind of lost time, and
beyond all thoughts of this,

just you and I.