Forbidden to splash through puddles

Do you comprehend then?
This unreasonable levity, this contrived humour
This bitter bitter bitter mockery
Or are you fooled by the mastery
Over the morbid.
The laugh stumble stumble falls
And then bemused, unable to get up
Stills.

Come and be the silent circle then
Around the impromptu grave
And lay some flowers softly
In memory of the bright tone
That ascended in mirth in joy in love of a secret moment
In percussion in perfume in scenery in sauce
In yet remembered tantalising touch.
Pray.

Unsorrow

He is my dearest, most lucent memory
He is the urgency of foreplay
The funny story told after
He is searching lipped magic.

And when one day I am drooping broken
Against the crook of his yielding elbow melting
Into the dent of his imperious smile leaning
On the knob of his stainless spine;

I am drinking of his mouth revitalizing every
Beating node that tries unavailingly to stop replenishing every
Pulsing artery that spurts itself dry recruiting every
Errant organ back into obedience restoring every unhappy tear
Back into unsorrow and smiles.

It is not a cold, passionless century.

For my love, this-
Tears at parting, tremulous smile,
And unbounded courage,
And rinsed clean emails unstained with sorrow.

In days shorn of passion I look
In the pages of books in vain, and
Love I find there, and courage in battle, and unbridled passion, but
Nothing that equals the little walk into
The airport waiting lounge and
Nothing that equals the little wave in
Farewell.

He's going.

He's going
In my throat the blood thunders
He's going
In my temple it beats
He's going
In my wrist it fights
To come out.

And this thought thunders
He's going
And beats
He's going
And fights
He's going
And fights
To be untrued.

From what height to fall to shatter painlessly
He's going
To what chaos dive to drive sense away
He's going
Every sense is screaming, stamping like a child, weeping like a widow
He's going
Desolate like a soldier dying, marching
He's going
To the beat of
He's going
To the beat of
He's going
His absence.

To the gong of

He's gone.

Screw therapy, what if I like the twisted bowels of my brain she said

Simplicity be damned she said
Who is to say that I may feel this much
And no more.

Who is to say the scars I lick to sleep every night
May go only so deep
And no more.

They’ll be as deep as my fucking heart she said
If I please and you goddamn well stop saying
No more.

And other days that are rendered imperfect by the loss of you.

I wanted to describe this flickering night to you
The smell of this cool raining city
The dewdrop at the tip of that leaf under the sodium vapour lamp
Your camera would have loved that.

I wanted to describe the cheesecake to you
How does one communicate a taste from this distance?
It makes me think how we wasted those days when I could
Sit across a table from you and watch you eat from my plate.

The little path outside was paved with light
And I wanted to describe that as well
Along with the laughter and happiness
That you taught me before you left.

But my words are weak, anaemic things.
Merely aspirations, merely descriptions,
Merely makeshift bridges over days that are rendered
Imperfect by the loss of you.

The Politics of Forgetting

Hiccoughing on the heels
Of my escaping feet is my home. It
Sometimes sadly informs me that I am for a while
In exile. And if anyone could have helped me, it is you
Who are even further away than your memories, which are now
Fainting, choking on hasty slices of time. Infusions of poetry do not help.

It is probably for the best,
Forgetting you, I mean, because it
Tires me now, most of the time, to care.

Useless

We find
The condition quite
Deplorable;You see, she has hardened.
It will be difficult to cut her open
To perform an autopsy
And quite frankly
The task is
A thankless one.

We have a large resource pool and
From all accounts
She will be no great loss; she did not understand finance
And she wrote poetry
That did not rhyme or scan.
And she would quite unaccountably
Burst into tears
At meetings.

I held her close, but she faded in the night, like a poem I meant to write.

It was hot, and the fluorescent outline of the phone shimmered like
A radioactive tattoo on her bare shoulder. Both of them
Shallowly breathing. Nestled close
As though protecting
A hurt winged bird.

If hurt winged birds had parachutes or lifelines
They would reach for them
The way her hands
Reached for his.

The tenderness stung. She tried to shrug it off
And laughed a lot. In between
The tongues and tangled legs
She did not cry.

In the glowing point of the afterwards cigarette
She could already see him leaving, couched in the loss
That threatened her everyday, the way the loss of the moon
Threatens a child.