Grief

…

/ wordsforghosts / 2 Comments

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

& 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 you last poem,


one you wrote for me…

despite being only another 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 your threads

fell away.

on the wind

 

Heart Rat

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

Your heart rat escaped the ribcage

                                                        trap

too late to save its brain:

 

they peeled back the skin, broke the skull beneath

to search for what cannot be found.

 

Line after line we try

to shed our shroud of lies.

I aim too high,

                            afraid

not of hights but the oubliette

where words forget to hide our fear,

 

& then the poem disappears

                                                         when

you tell me how you held her in your hands

as she died.

 

Your heart rat was one of the lucky ones:

 

She was loved,

not experimented on.

 

If only

              we could all be so lucky…

 

 

The Eyes of Death*

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

For my father.

So that you wouldn't die so undignified,
I wanted to force a black rose
down your throat, so
                    that the thorns
would pierce your larynx
                            & silence
the animal noises;

a language
capable of expressing
only pain & existence,
            both
belonging to you alone.

Your cells were in rebellion:

First, they conquered your lungs,
before taking your liver
                        & then,
traversing your spine,
they laid siege to your brain:

dead pixels in your irises,
made me
think of machinery, but
technology
            doesn't feel pain.

Hours dragged past like sandpaper against glass.

I held your hand, sat by the bedside as
                                        you died,
until suddenly, what remained of you
sat upright
& pulled me close enough to hear
your last words…

& that's when I saw it, in the final moment
of your lucidity:

            the eyes of death

            staring back at me.

*The Eyes of Death – Off With Their Heads

Mourning & Modern Knowledge

/ wordsforghosts / Leave a comment

Permutations of motion though matter;
the ecstatic union of void & fire;
    mutation arrayed
        in differential display:

                                is this
use of language the only way
for the feeling to fade
        & finally escape
from my bones?

Can't I ever
go beyond what is here in front of me
& reach the place
        I want to be?

No.

Escaping the maze
is not an option,
so I remain trapped
in oxymoronic structures;
the point
where concept concedes to content;
    when precision
                  & all measurement
reach their limitation,
but grammar still remains needed
for practical reasons.

Without language there is
no way to express
this sense
of frustration & unease
        echoing through me,
as I witness
                unbounded expansions
ripple & sway
when thrown stones

disturb the surface of a lake,
reverberate
    in brief undulations,
        & sink
            slowly
until they can be seen
no longer:

nothing ever
disappears completely…

but you're too far away
for me to care.

Even if absences linger within
                every presence,
there's nothing comforting
in that knowledge:

what remains of the lost
    
is not enough.