Snakes sting
wolves bite
hyenas hunt in packs
they dog the lion’s stride
but you slid between the light
erasing straight edged lines.

You taste like danger
fur my tongue with dark reflections
scar the clear cut certainty of mapped becoming
this drug that writhes within our veins
has no exits , no green escape clause.

There is no civilisation
just mythic tale that twists it’s own conclusion
we’re paralysed by fortunes wheel
trying to get a grip
clinging to a rail that dips beneath disintegrating fingers .

Snakes twine
wolves howl
hyenas hunt in packs to dog the lion’s stride
but you slid into my light
hung there like a Christ
begging for his Madonna .

There is no explanation
no solid slab of will or won’t
only mythic tale that twists it’s own conclusions
two raging Gods brought face to face
manacled to some far flung quest
straining against this cosmic leash

devouring their own tails .

Talking to you
is a frame of mind:
I rejoice,
you whisper prayers
in your ancient tongue,
nothing’s settled.
…………………………………………………………………………………………

Outside, periwinter. Trees flaking in a stiff breeze river ruffled by tide’s feathers. We come and go like travellers on a railway platform looking for the face in the crowd that’ll make all the difference. Maybe it’s time to begin something? I’ve had my winters snowed in with melancholy lying prone on a bed of no movement and I used to be afraid of silence but now it strokes me. The unattainable is a mineshaft; you are a figment of my imagination a palpable longing with no edges. To box you in would shear the mystery. Last night I dreamt of you, being cruel in the way only you know how to.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Listening to you
finds a beat
in the pulse
I always knew
existed.

……………………………………………………………………………………….

When we talk it’s as if our sentences are continuous beads of light on a spring morning where the wet grass’s dew soaks bare feet and the sun catches grey in the stubble of a beard. There may have been months of silence in-between, but our lines are sweet, flowing into each other with pregnant undulations, and it’s never what is said but the caresses of my dreams float underneath like a benediction. You’re always returning and returning to your theme but my Jewishness is dormant I don’t feel it, simply feel the empathy that’s always been locked in. Today the rain falls in grey rivulets you’ve gone to the New Forest, to ”find yourself” and that’s not a metaphor, I’ve said you couldn’t find yourself if you bumped into you, Next week we’ll eat mushrooms, drink red wine, talk our complications.
……………………………………………………………………………………….

Nothing’s settled
nothing matters
this is what we’re
due.

I fell for you,
like seed that seeks
earth’s moisture ;
I opened wide the tide of love
dammed these hungry years
in quiet backwater,
and I lit you with a flame
that singed your name
across sky’s screen,
but still you ran from me.

Your inbox is piled high
with silver sheeted sonnets,
illuminated verse that sings
with Eros’s curse of bright obsession,
I offered you my soul
to heal the blows that life had dealt you ,
and I feel you tried to glide the lucid ride
of ice through love’s volcano;

but the starkness of this light
plunged you deep into the night
of your transgressions .

I fell for you
like tournesol that follows sun
from dawn to dusk across sky’s meadow,
I opened wide this heart that’d died
from years in musty closets,
my body’s song rung beneath desire’s
hot tumbling tresses,
and should it only happen once
conuinctio of sun and moon
stirred with the breath of heaven ,

you’ll always stay sharp memory
the first and last expression ,
that primal key
which lifted me
gave me back my potency
with your clean and clear cut treasure ;
of how love should be .

I’m being asked to say goodbye
wipe you from my dreams,
and though I know you died
watched you scattered out to sea
your body stays a part of me
clinging like an unborn child
wrapped in skeins of moonbeam’s thread
your waft and weft I can’t express.

I have to tell you ”no”
drop you from beatific heights
meet the flesh and blood with bone
bury underground this web
that stops me being whole.

Your fantasy, my memory
your beauty,my enchantment;
the loving eyes of three year old
who begged you not to go.

You come between
you interfere,
confuse my right intentions
they say it’s time to leave you here

but loss is a crescendo
tearing up this child’s soul

to set the woman free.

The high impelling whine
of your dog eared
slap me around a little more
this time,
and the wine pours so sweetly
in the broken glass
and you hold me so nearly
but there’s nothing more of mention
between the two of us.

My head’s banging rosaries
over the coffee and the empty
eggshells scatterd
by a thousand years
of crawling from my knees
to stand erect;
with my bronze helmet
closely packed
and my shattered mind
singing in the empty breeze.

For the rain is never coming,
and this drought that holds us
in its brittle grip
is snapping at my fingers
with the dry litany of the empty ark
where Noah sleeps.

We are never coming
two by two,
this split is irreversible
and I notice the way
I felt for you
has scattered the dust
across the fallow ground
where only irritation is
holding us together
until the promised deluge.

Small spaces of light
that lead us from the outside in,
frames dripping condensation.

Still the harsh frost claws the land,
crisping the pliable,
transforming elements.

Myopic dreams of troubled seas,
reclaiming land and structure::
the universe exists before and after,

we are but evolutionary modules
struggling to understand,
windows into our own definition of the past.

“Quick said the bird”
children rustling in the rose garden,

through window panes
where the sky changing light
always implacably watches.

When I wake
blurred from scent of fresh squeezed pineapple
aroma of eastern sun on purple orchid
spray of salt from coral ocean
the cry of gold winged eagle
high on skin smooth palm,
I know you’ve been,

surfing nonchalant through my dreams .

Memory cuts
like broken glass hid deep beneath
that sun bronzed sand
although I’ve tried to pumice deadened cells
forget , obedient as you’ve begged me to,
I can’t .

When I wake
London’s greyness collars me
I retie blistered skeins of sleep
recapture tone of voice , warmth of well loved body’s heat
angle of your down kissed cheek
steady breath you gave to me ;

other lovers come and go
bring comfort existentially
enrapture second hand your touch and tone ,
dupe this fool of body , calm the longing of my soul .

When I wake
reliving air conditioning’s drone
simple slap of rope thonged feet
steam of fresh tossed prawns
that sunlit path through mangrove trees,
why gift me this then turn to leave

when my heart had found it’s home ?

Here I lie
wrapped in tangled truth stained sheets ,
your pillow crisp , each pleat complete
as if you’d never been :
my crescent moon in unguent sea
the hand that fit too perfectly ;

now all the future holds for me
through the untwined rope of eternity
is my nightly game of hide and seek
to catch you surfing through my dreams . .

You still return,
open mouthed,
trying to find a hole
to fit tongue in.

I’ve moved beyond the space
you placed me in,
melted into stream,
clear bubbles on brown stone.

You’re hungry for a piece of
harlequin of tastes;
a noon day feast of colour
to coat your darkness.

Nothing left to pay,
we bend and stretch away
remember whisper of wind
on rain squalled beach,

the lonely shadow of a kiss

tide swept.