Viscous to liquid, now dissipating
into nothing;
colours fading from the imposing painting
of the future now no longer
still in progress.
No more changes, no new creations
only the repetition of all that
always leaves you back where you began, yet
if the colours begin to brighten again
as always they have
eventually;
when the flames flare & the embers turn
to a fire fierce & dangerous,
perhaps
the painting will be beautiful again;
perhaps
you will change…
“…poetry makes nothing happen: it survives” -W.H. Auden
For J
The wish to kiss your eyelids &
lift
that heavy weight of images
living beneath,
forever haunting you.
You’re no Princess & I’m
no Knight:
I cannot rescue you &
you can’t rescue me.
Yet,
I still so madly want to believe
“I am with you / and know how it is”*.
I know nothing of your suffering,
only
that yours leaves scars & so do mine.
I’ve nothing left to write about, except
the dream
that will not leave me:
a Guillotine quick & clean,
the blade
glistening
in the most golden
morning light we’ve ever seen in our lives,
leaving only beauty behind,
even
the beauty of suffering.
Until all that remains are the memories
that help you to
perservere.
All Gods die a quiet death.
Only silence survives when nothing is left.
In the struggle of existence,
even the winners have to lose.
The odds are always against us,
no matter which side of the line we choose.
Martyrs mistake dreams for pretence,
but nothing exists that makes any sense:
Just pretty pictures to paint over & protect.
The frayed remains of two daydream decades
listlessly slides glass beads across
an abacus
one
by
one,
some
are so delicate that they break
upon contact
& the shards are lost to the permanence of
forgetting:
the day walks away toward the West as
each sunset colour elides the other,
leaving behind
a blue creeping twilight
& shrouded moon
like
a widower leaves flowers
at the grave of a secret lover.
Ignorant of all but their game,
the frayed remains
see nothing but the broken glass,
trapped
in a present moment
empty of all content:
a skeleton
with hollow bones.
Dragging behind you every decision
& memory:
a ragged procession
of skeletal marionettes;
decaying bones hanging limp from
myriad strings,
they dance the maudlin, shambolic
parade of your existence:
the weak blue
deep blue
hollow
fallow
moment
after
moment.
Words for Ghosts 