Poem

The Myth

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

In the beginning
                there were two Lovers & one Mother.

The Lovers believed in her dreams & she
believed that memory hides like
                                shadows in light,
like death in life.

The Lovers soon decided that
they wanted pretty lies
                                &,
equating beauty with simplicity,
demanded a story explaining everything.

So the Mother told them
that songbirds never remain in cages
without dreams of escaping;

                                that agape love
is a concept only a virgin could conceive of,
because rejection is integral
to all romance;

                                that others
must be sacrificed to indifference
or love means nothing; fabric stretched too thin
always tears apart at the seams.

The Lovers rejected this:
                                they wanted comforting,
to believe in their selflessness
& inherent goodness.

So they ignored the Mother, searched
for a new teacher & found the Father.

The Father took the little songbirds &
plucked out all their feathers;
broke their necks
to make them
appreciate
                                the sky,

& refused to answer any questions

including “why?”.

I remember…

/ wordsforghosts / 1 Comment

For S

I can still taste the memory of those cold
December mornings,
when all I ever wanted
was to stay with the warmth of your body.

Or the Summer evenings when
you would rise, like a feline, from the bed
to describe the most perfect lines,
just by stretching your limbs,

& how the sunlight would slip
from a halo to fingertips
brushing against your skin.

Lovers & Liars

/ wordsforghosts / 2 Comments

"All lovers become liars in the end."
                                    I said,
as we lay there, naked in the bed.

They refused to believe me,

& in that sweet moment of post-fuck repose,
I looked into their eyes
& realised they were right:

only some lovers become liars.

I just can't decide
if the lie will be theirs or mine.

Multitudes stand in my mind*

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

Behind the eyes,
                where multitudes abide,
a mind decides to obey strange instructions:

                thoughts
bloom like fruit & fall, one
by one;
                    some
return to the earth & become new life
while others, for reasons unknown,
decay slowly
& grow into nothing but waste;

warped
        their shape & sound contort
as they fall
onto a dark forest floor &
        grow thorns:

will beauty persist
when feelings no longer exist?

If I say you have misunderstood me
will you say you know what I mean?

& why write a poem

                    no one will read?

*Credo – Robinson Jeffers

Writing

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

You want to put the barrel of the gun in their mouth,
to stop the noise drowning the music out;

in thrall to the curvatures described by birds in flight
& feelings inscribed in nameless street lights.

You want a language defiant of time:

                                    indelible lines,
chords of memory
                                    transcendental & sublime,

the contingencies of life unified
into one
        single

                song.

You want what you cannot have:

an abstract/visceral expression of all that

unknowable,
                                    ephemeral

sound enclosed within bones
where the brain sits
& compels you to this
                                    futile release:

the fading gaze of a caged beast,

never the same as its first raw moment
of existence.