A small collection of poems, with original artwork, is now available to buy here:
https://wordsforghosts.com/book/
All money raised will be donated to Spirit of the Rainbow Heron.
A small collection of poems, with original artwork, is now available to buy here:
https://wordsforghosts.com/book/
All money raised will be donated to Spirit of the Rainbow Heron.
After these two years I have learnt
how to follow every step down the hall
every right angle of every wall,
to walk toward the shower/shitter
in darkness: I could make the walk
with my eyes closed.
Two years ago – February
14th – such a lovely Valentine gift! –
I moved in to this house of unloved things
& became one of them.
Until gold & blue colours, like
bright sunlight meeting an ocean,
appeared at my door.
Soon, every week we broke the law,
as society locked-down I crossed town
so we could spend days & nights
drinking together, fucking each other
as if there would be no tomorrow
& not caring if there would be.
Then the weeks
became months; the winter
crawled through spring & became summer.
All the while I pined for another: my
wildflower amour, my amante, the one
who sent me into exile & into
this house with its smell of neglect,
self-pity & cigarette smoke. Until
one day they returned offering
to satiate the longing for
sweet nostalgia.
So began the slow destruction
of the peace I’d found within
ocean eyes: I betrayed & followed
the path back to my life before exile
but of course, it couldn’t last:
it was doomed from the start & that
is when I met the raven with the soul
of a van Gough landscape,
but by then it was too late & escape
was all I craved…
Until raven hair, red rose lips,
delicate fingertips & such forgiving eyes
fell to find release
in a blue so ugly compared to
the sky in which she used to fly…
For the one I hardly knew. Forgive me, I don’t know what else to do…
Today I read the last words you ever wrote:
it was a diary of your feelings
& the last page your last poem…
You wrote so beautifully about the sky between
sentences expressing a tiredness so deep
you just wanted to die.
Knowing I failed to help you lift your head
more often; to help ease your burden;
to love you as you deserved to be.
Now there is no way to say sorry
& stay with you in that other world
you wrote of in that final poem.
One you wrote for me…
I’m just some stupid fucking drunk,
an idiot, rare & wild only to you,
yet even I could see with these
eyes of “ever changing colour”
how delicately, intricately woven you were
before you untied the threads
& left.
I tried smiling at your funeral,
to avoid the choking weeds of grief.
Breathing trees
no longer naked,
their limbs veiling then revealing
a diamond-clear sky,
stood beside the road leading
to the building where your family was mourning.
(When she asked me where you’d gone,
I told your daughter you had
become one with nature;
every flower,
the lambent limbs of sunlight
& all those dignified trees,
believing
you would like that answer.
I hope I wasn’t wrong.)
A vodka (double vodka) before
the eulogy,
& another
(& another) after
it was over.
Then, outside: cold bright sunlight,
dreaming of you dancing;
the prosody of your body,
singing,
your lips the colour of exoctic fruit,
as roses red & white
flowed from your hips,
replacing the weeds &
loosening their grip,
just long enough to bring
some small relief
from the reality of your absence.
Yet there was nothing except
the brutal eloquence
of silence.
& the memories surfaced like
smoke from a furnace;
up from the chest & through the throat
to find a home behind the eyes..
When our hands have searched & found
the feelings we wish to drown;
when our dreams creep & crawl along the night
into the darkest corners where
creatures hide;
when
the words become sounds unbound
from meaning & only vague feeling
remains:
then, maybe
we can finally become free.
There are words written by
two women I used to know
& shamefully I must admit
that I did not give
either the true gift of attention:
they knew me but I could not see
beyond the boundary of my affliction;
a selfish sadness
destroying everything..
From Saint Christopher
to Blue John Stones,
they gave me everything
& with that grace, with those
prayers I drank & laughed
& let each future be
consumed by the past.