Poem

Momento from the full moon

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For A

Once
I loved someone,
in the same way,
& for the same reason
I love the moon:

you don’t need to see it every day,
to know that you’ll see it again;
you can’t always see it, but
you know it’ll always be there…

…& then
months became years & those years
became the unnoticed mouldering kiss;
a distance turning stale,
old & cold as the
empty bed.

So lonely not knowing how to explain
until too late,
& strange to find how changed
the feeling is when found again;

the pain so far away

just like the Moon.

The River

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Everything moves in the river,
even the stones erode slowly &
disappear.

We are no exception.

If you try becoming a prisoner
in love with their guard, then maybe
existence wont be so hard
but

when you search for the spirit in the bone
be prepared for disappointment:

the sickness is indiscriminate &
it never goes away.

Everything moves through the river,
everything decays.

You are no exception.

Enough

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You have a favourite tree in this city,
& the one he hung himself from
is in the same public garden.

You took me there once:
                        2 am.,
we were drunk.

You climbed the trunk & sat on the branch
where he swung
for hours, years ago, until
the grounds-keeper found him in the morning.
& quit their job soon after.

He is always somewhere in your mind,
the memories you want desperately to survive
come flooding back to you sometimes
& the pain in your eyes is unbearable.

So much trauma.

Every year
you plant flowers at the base of the tree.
Every year
you despair as age reminds you again
just how young he was.

So much trauma.

I asked permission
& you let me sit on the branch with you.

Looking down on the ground,
every suicidal thought returned &
I realised I wasn't ready;

                        I wanted
to lay beneath a cherry tree
& bleed, buried beneath fallen blossoms:

no,
I wasn't ready then…

was your friend?

You asked me & the only answer
that I could find
was that some of us need more

than life can provide,
but we search
                    until the searching

becomes too much.

The present absence

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A present absence expands & contracts,
hollow at the core as
                    thin thoughts
convinced that words
can poison internal organs
                    collapse
into a pool of stagnant water
where no light survives.

The days
                    fold & fall away
leaving only the faintest trace
of what once
existed…

                grotesque
& never-ending,
a thing somehow still alive, like
                a zombie
convulsing on the floor
in a room
with an unlockable door;
the Will conflicted, torn
between hatred
of daylight & fear of the night
bringing tapeworms beneath the skin:

rip them out, one by one
until the arms are nothing more
than wet ribbons of red;
            tattered remains of flesh
draped across bone.

Then wake up
                    alone
without hope
that this will end the way it always does:

new meds, new promises

& the slow return of memories that always
break your fall;

                    the pale shimmer
of phosphorescent ghosts.

Dancing

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Insistent whispers from distant places,
tease & menace;

the hold is held*,
coils then melds, melts & is gone forever.

Solid & insubstantial, all objects
whole & partial
resist or yield,
or stubbornly reveal futility

to be both the cause & death of meaning:

every answer
a more graceful dancer than the question;

                            never ending
tension between existence & being.

It slips away,
                            eternally
within the reach,
of a grip that cannot keep what it holds:

grains of sand in the hands of a creature

who doesn't understand
either…

*Maurice Merleau-Ponty