Let it all fall away

a river to the sea

my skin not now my own

my eyes belong to years

passed by, & my salt heart’s lost

in the storm of this

relentless.

Let it all become known:

time shape shifts body

from dust to bone to stone,

we are immaterial

we’re atoms bursting into light

for one Spring second

radiant.

You who are flown

like a Summer’s day

short, sweet. I’ve borne

the yoke of it, my sadness

is divisive, it fills

the room with clouds

bursting.

Let it all fall away.

I wash my hands of you,

watch the water swirl

the last warm part of me:

tide sweeps in again & again

whispering your name

without mercy.

As time passes

you fade into orange

London night: I return

to my skin, joyful 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 experience

at the start ‘n I still crave it

like heroin, but heroin makes

me sick vomit up my life

benumbed in pink light

It’s the way you slip

in, get underneath my

fingernails inhabit the

space behind my eyes

you, so intent on intensity

I pop like a glass bulb.

It takes about a week

for the symptoms to

dissipate, I smile again

at old ladies, at grey

commuter faces.

Maybe ‘Boots’ could sell

a detoxifying lotion:

I could spread it on the sky

& hope you couldn’t

find me.

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…………

I didn’t know you were

solid green with shades of

cowslip in-between, grey stone

plied from river bed

three razors immaculately left

bleeding on the bleached bench.

Your garden’s styled in ‘Hampton Court’

trees round and pruned with purple Iris

peeping through the glove of soil.

I’m stung with the eloquence

of each perfect detail immaculately

placed: a life defined by art

your home a holy grail of story.

I hear the drips of opened wounds

the stripped pine shows scars

of stolen lives.  Two torches stand

next to sunglasses the umbrella sentinel

as clocks chime their’ white rabbit’ rant

every fifteen minutes.

Morning wakes gently here

creeping from the marsh

illuminating yellow paint:

your cottage rests like a

worn thumb beside its other digits

coloured walls a totem to the past

cricket on the lawn

long summer suppers with

freshly squeezed lemonade

sticky to the tongue

with a tart aftertaste:

like love.