Remnants

I will not force you to love me, 
yet, I will love you with such force. 
So much so, the world will tilt on its axis, 
climates will change, seasons will extend, 
and cities rise up out of derelict wastelands. 

A once barren and fruitless earth will now be green and pleasant. 
Orchards will overflow whilst birds sing high in clarion skies. 
Life will pump through these stuttering veins,
and capillaries will burst with burgundy hues. 

I will not force you to love me, 
yet, I will love you with such force. 
For my heart desires you, 
it is possessed with a beat.
It always has since those tiny feet carried you forward,
and brought you close. 
Those lips you pushed delicately against mine 
uttering beautiful refrains from the softest of mouths.
The throat I grasped full with both hands,
softly running my fingers down the soft arc of your breasts. 
Your curves and crevices that comforted my weary head when in need of rest.

In mind, in body and in soul. 
I offer no resistance to you leaving, 
I do not stand in front of the door
Or lower my head in shame.
Yet, my love for you will rise and grow in this distance.

Silence will be my weapon.
I will be still.
Quiet and calm in my assured devotion to this newly formed religion.
Barefooted, I will wait for you, palms open and flat. 

A silver chalice glistens,
sacrificial in its purpled content,
offering you, my love, respite from your journey.

I will not force you to love me, 
yet. I will love you with such force
that even if cities crumble and continents collide, my love will survive.

My love will remain, waiting for your return, my love.

Can We Run Away, Please?

Can we all please just run away, please?

Let’s leave this city far behind,  
so the lights
are distant embers of a fire we once nurtured. 
We'll pack a small bag of refreshments,
cigarettes
and a beer or two.
Then just walk where gravity pulls.
Let’s set up camp in a forest,
befriend wildlife
and celebrate the wilderness.
We’ll live off the land,
recharging our lungs on electrical trees that
stretch out from the ground. 
We’ll watch rhythmic clouds dance along the horizon and on occasions
I will make a cape of leaves
and a crown from branches and I will play king of the forest.
We'll etch our initials
into oak trees and bury
unopened letters in the ground. 

Let’s throw bottles filled with the memories of our day
into the forgiving sea and envelop under carrion stars.
We'll use the lucid blue sky as a blanket.
I'll tuck you in gently under the moonlight
whilst reading stories about animals that used to roam the earth
in a time before we fell in love.

Can we run away, please?

Please, can we all just run away?

A Serenade to The Ghost

I

This is just the beginning
and beginnings are beautiful…

II

We walked, hand-in-hand,
up the winding path,
to the unsighted cemetery.
The village steeple stretched towards Heaven.
Our hands clenched 
firmly,
gripped with emotion.
Inscription after inscription, dead lovers now dust,
remnants of what has always been.
Face-to-Face we etched kisses onto lips.
Fragrant petals cascaded down our cheeks as
we promised never to forget this moment.

Through shaded lanes and snaking veins,
sirens pulsated in a mirrored life.
Valleys of sound pounded rhythms.
The steady hammer of remembrance
rang out across the countryside.

I slipped a note into the folds of cloth and flesh
between earth and air.

‘Forever in my mind, our love will live between gravestones and carrion’

III
I am haunted by the space within
The gaps between our serenade
A ghost of you
empty and desolate walks
past

How have I come so far without this?

The hotel room quietens
as your soft
shaking palm
becomes still, your
pulse (beats)
whilst we lay upon other people’s
sheets

IV
Imagine my muse
stained by the fingers
of many men.
Their desire was ash that fell from the heavens.
Shooting stars
that made imprints and embedded
a soft form of remembrance through wishes and leaves.

Motioning towards a valley,
I cut a lone figure.
There is, of course, no one there.
Mauve embers light a runway.
Streaks of amber etch deep into the sky.
This solitude screams so loud.

We are just going through patterns
and changes.  
The lucid dawn of a new day breaks
If I whisper this ever so silently through water and valves,
in heart shaped movements, with cracked ribs and bruised cheeks
then capillaries will burst purple and impregnate the skin.

So I drown myself in grapes
with sour scents of longing
and reverse the order.
The ocean becomes gravity.
The moon pulls away, giving space to breath.
The seabed cleanses.
Water becomes Sulphur.
Air becomes Hydrogen.

I have to express death with desire,
in fragments of love that has faded, and an
occasion to celebrate a renaissance.

I am nothing but it is my nothing.

V

There is stillness in my movements.
My hands,
my poor poor hands stretch out amidst sound waves.
My nails bitten down to their bitter ends.
An itch,
a scratch later and
my wrist is on fire.

There is a quietness in my house.
Of living alone,
of this idle existence.
My bird caged chest shares
rhythms that beat and start
pounding over this city,
along the seafront, to the pier, sinewy in its decay.

My eyelids draw over themselves.
Darkness engulfs and I think of her.
In the smallest of moments
I think of her.
Memorising form
and tracing lost structures.
The arc of her body, the curve of her back.
Hair dripping down spines whilst
entwined in porcelain sheets.
The moistness of the grove between her thighs.
This softness develops an aqueous womb inside.
I dowse myself in opiates to heal,
to forget.

Umbilical moments are ripped untimely from my belly.
I’m desolate and alone.
She sleeps with lost men lined up in military precision.
I’m left clutching at the night like carbon
reaching out in the only way I know how,
with awkward sentences and demands.

I circle my fingers around my thighs
touching myself with hardness.
My wrists drips crimson to the sheets as
I close my eyes to try and find a way home,
to seek the path that leads me into the night.

VI

I’ve stitched the moon
beneath her skin
just to let some light in.

I’ve planted broken stars
in her belly to
grow poems as beautiful
as meteors.

A trail of glitter streaks across this city, 

guiding me in,

guiding me home.

VII

Beyond winding corridors
under wooden floorboards
in strangled boxes
beauty grows.

Folded away
in a
coffin of creases
The dormant words of love
lay
sleeping

Delicate fingers
softly pull at worn edges
Faded letters
flap their wings and
soar into the night.

VIII

Dear Haunted,

I am floating above you now, spinning around the heavens,
I dance inertly with the stars.
I am argon,
I am oxygen,
I am lithium
I wasn’t always this way.
I was once part bone, part flesh
I remember being full of love for you.
Now I am part of the dust that floats innately around this world.
In moments you breathe me down to the pit of your stomach.
I feel your joy,
your pain.

I am the breeze but I wasn’t always this way,
I once was tied down by the weight of failure,
I once was Magnesium glowing bright, shining like a beacon before I burnt out too quickly

I was too fragile for this world

I once was alive, like you, but now I am a speck of dust in your eye,
molecules of space and time.
I am now the past,
my life now over.

The Ghost

IX

Naked. I crucify myself before this.
Exposed in purity,
in the still of night, I am still life.
A beasty crawls in the middle distance, a crow watches from attic beams.

My lover, I am humble before you.
The light here is softer than you think,
it is wistful wisteria climbing around this ribcage of mine.
It is the shifting pattern of rain against time. 
The sunset exposes flaws upon her cavity.

‘The cut…’ you say ‘…is light’
As crimson drip drip drips through floorboards
‘Answer me a question.
If you are an evil spirit, then why can only I hear it?’

X

These fingertips of mine
stretch
and reach out for The Ghost.
Wrinkled branches extend.
This decaying root
paints the night black.
Splintered nails grow rusty, twisting,
contorting in some kind of crazed trail
that leads outwards in.

How much time has passed since I last saw her?
Passages of moments,
of religious movements,
between clouds and sound.
The cold air burns the back of my throat.
My spine disintegrates as
The Ghost’s beauty strips breath from lungs

I smash rocks against my ribcage
to let this soft beating muscle out.

I pull at hair and try to peel skin from flesh.
I cleanse this dirtiness that has grown.

I cut valleys into my arms to alleviate,
to alleviate, to alleviate this pain

The constant reminder that
I am nothing and nothing is at least something without her.

XI

A spectre of light burst through attic beams.
Dusty boxes stacked,
choking on green twine.
The past buried within.
Rows of coffins,
relationships sleeping on mortuary slabs.
Tap. Tap. Tap…

A gust of wind forces a window
to smash.
Her reflection dissolves in time
as the glass shard pierces my heart.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

XII

The window crack lets the night in.
Blackness seeps through.
The cold dark room engulfs my being.

I am carbon.

A chill flutters up my contorted spine
as The Ghost lights up these shadows.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

I move towards her centre.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

XIII

Tap. Tap. Tap…

I fell in love with The Ghost.
Her fingertips stain my body,
tattooing my skin forever.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

We caress each other with the slightest of movements as
the smell of love haunts the bedroom.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

XIV

Tap. Tap. Tap…

The sound of death drawing near.
Silent breaths.
The echoing noise reverberating through the night as it envelops into ash.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

The constant orbiting of sound that resonates.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

The Ghost drags her feet slowly across laminated floorboards;
her nails scrape against time, her skin crawls over mine.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

XV

Tap. Tap. Tap…

Static erupts in a corner of the room.
The Ghost creeps ever closer.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

I cover my ears as this white noise becomes deafening.
The persistence of memory weighs me down.

Tap.  Tap.  Tap…

I pull at the fabric of my skin and
tighten myself around my neck.
I have become haunted by the lost.
The Ghost fades into the distance, 
as I become ballast.

XVI

I exist in a world of could be.
Of maybes.  Of endless untouchable possibilities.
A fleeting glimpse of something unobtainable.
The Ghost I yearn disappears out of sight.

XVII

I summoned the spirit one last time,
to see her face and
feel her presence in my mouth.
Holding onto this weight
I accepted goodbye and realized
chasing ghosts leaves you haunted.

Closure permeated through the night and evaporated into stars.
I pulled my knees closer into my chest.  Held onto my centre for fear of losing myself.
I gnawed at my knuckles till they bled and pulled out clumps of hair. 
My teeth chattered as the temperature dropped. 

This was the end. 

The only comfort I have is that it will all pass,
that these emotions never existed before. 
Through this loss, I have gained.

I, at least, am still alive. 
I still feel. 
My skin shivers in the corner of a basement,
tears of wax form to survive these visions and the realization
that with all endings come new beginnings.

And beginnings are beautiful…

Carbon (Unstable)

This morning
I awoke as a series of cinnamon kisses
born upon wet eyelashes.
These simple cold hearted and
choked tears trail
youthful, baptized skin.
Stained pillows shroud me like a martyred Christ.
Stigmata takes hold
as crimson gravitates.
I have been medicating myself with time
and little drops of chemicals.

I move through the city and speak to a stranger.
He told me he'd forgotten how to fall in love,
that he remembered once how it felt
but it was now a faded memory.
I couldn't work out if he was the happiest
or saddest man I've ever met.

I had to get to the back to the sea.
I ran
as fast as my worn down legs could carry me,
across the bridge
where commuters flocked southwards.
I passed men throwing the news of the day's misdemeanors
into dry palms.
The train rocked back and forth
as newborn babies let out newborn screams
and newborn mothers
rocked back and forth
attempting to find newborn calm.
My asthmatic lung partially filled with oxygen,
crystal beads of sweat poured down my body of tweed.
I was running from and to someone at the same time.
My legs pound against concrete.
My legs pound so hard just to get to her.

I painted walls with rose tinted shades,
inserting myself into another just to get away.
I never let this body stop.
I will never let this body stop.

Ejected from the train I ran faster
through winding lanes
just to look at trespassed eyes.
I scooped up hope and swallowed hard.
The pit of my stomach rumbled with desire.

I am once again moving in fifths.
I am moving, always, in fifths.
The horizon beckoned and
I watched a man on the beach
trying to catch stars from the sky.
He was running around as if a tin roof
to a dilapidated house was leaking.
I noticed about 20 buckets placed
strategically
on the floor.
There was a crowd gathering behind,
all pointing, mocking and laughing.
He wore a tattered raincoat that was singed with burns
and 5 days of stubble was etched wearily on his face.
His eyes were full of planets and desire,
of orbit and moons.
Slowly,
I approached one of the buckets.
It was overflowing with diamond encrusted stars.
I was so overcome with emotion
that I picked up an empty bucket and joined in his mission.

Now, I’ve drained myself of crimson
I spend my evenings looking up to the heavens
Searching for little streaks of glitter
and in the middle of the night I dive quietly into ocean skies.