From the depths of a damp October you called me daily The auburn street outside so unfamiliar That new city didn’t yet feel like home
“I just called to hear your voice and ask when you’ll come to visit?” Muted tears falling on the university payphone And the scratch of coins loading asking if I missed you
And every day, I do of course, I do Every dusk into the winter our daily phone calls It was so hard to hear those secret tears
Two months crept by and now there are other voices I could hear you smiling and it’s so good to know you’re happy new friends surrounding fewer calls, less often
And every day, I do of course, I think of you Every iced spring morning I miss your phone calls it was good to hear you happy but sad to know you no longer needed me…
In the caverns of a King’s Cross bar I quietly compose an opening six months now, since our last meeting I catch sight of my reflection twisting in the half-full glass upon the bar What am I doing here set up for a disappointing sequel It’ll never be like it was at the start it’ll never feel like it did before
Festive cheers fill the bar as my mind slips back one year when my world was folding inward intoxicated with the excitement of chances taken and how I quietly spoke of my growing love for you in the blurry Christmas air I made foolish gestures at what I wanted slid my heart across the table waited with baited breath for your reciprocation and headed home empty handed…
Tonight is such a bittersweet evening a reminder of how much I love your company it hits me squarely, and for the first time, fully how much I’ve missed you But you’ve changed, grown up, matured somehow wisdom where once there was only spiked humour oh, as a friend you’ll always remain a favourite held out of reach by our history
It’s so bittersweet, our meeting our reflections melt and merge in the glasses that we drain I’m still beguiled by your luminous beauty and vindicated to know what I thought I’d felt was honest not pure circumstance, greed or opportunity our briefest spark lit my world so brightly in a way never bettered before or since It’ll never be like it was at the start it’ll never feel like it did before
Such a bittersweet evening lit in the primary colours of December you, grinning, purr ‘let’s do this again soon’ and of course I say ‘I hope we do’ When I cast my eyes across this year it’ll always be your face reflected back at me when I look back from some future distance your face will always be smiling back at me…
Picking you up to go driving I’d get there early to watch you get ready both seventeen and tangled in that unspoken thing between us Cruising the looping country lanes in those dim headlight beams That was our place, alone together at last Two teenagers, eyeing each other sideways and wondering who each of us would be would you always stay right there would you always be in the car with me Another mile, another mile in those endless times…
Thrumming rain upon the roof your fingers knitted in the glovebox light always asking me so many questions our laughter lingering and playful in the freezing depths of northern winter You’d push me to say who I liked at school watching so carefully I’d study the glowing dashboard for a full five minutes turn the tape over, change the conversation stealing so many glances at your perfect saucer eyes so smart and so alive Another mile, another mile in our early lives…
Somewhere along the journey we’d stop the car, snuff out the lights and in the backseat, without a word we’d learn a new geography You’d breathe your lessons into me the beguiling wonder of our story skirting the youthful boundaries of a near-love I’d forever treasure And afterwards you’d finger our initials on the foggy inside of the glass I always loved that, but so sad that those smears outlasted us Another mile, another mile in those simple, priceless, times
Twenty years of change sailed by suddenly, from the silence, you called me heard I’m in town, saying ‘we should talk again’ I say ‘how about a drive…?’ Eyeing me from the driver’s seat you say I’d ‘become all the things I used to pretend to be’ you said it was ‘a good thing’ and now you teach at our old college you’re not married but there’s a good man waiting and the baby, she already looks like you Who’d have thought those teenagers were headed here running country laps, in those dim headlight beams another mile, another mile in those precious lives, we had to leave behind
Another mile, another mile I’m so glad we got to share those times…
This melancholy fug burrows into my bones After delving back again into those memories recounted with such forensic clarity Comes a cold blue atmosphere a fragrant longing and precision-tooled regret
Those searingly stark lines old faces, wild flames lost friendships resurrected I’m dropped back into the thick of things Drifting through teenage streets old freedoms, vintage fantasies and all those confusions I could now straighten out so easily
The many story threads left dangling friendships brutally truncated as people moved away to university or were scattered as dandelion seeds whisked across the globe some blown beyond this life I’d love to call them up and chat for hours again
It’s a temporary sadness thin blue tendrils grip my heart As I mourn it all together the loss of those faces and that old way of living The people we once were they still exist in stasis trapped inside my dusty diary
My head swims through all the memories out of time, for a little while Arriving home, I’m calmed again warmed and thawed by the place I live A loving smile to greet me as the kitten mews for my attention the past is passed and left behind a stepping stone to the beauty of now…
Writing a character reference for a friend for someone I thought I knew to mitigate their crimes to ease them on their future journey humbled, kneecapped and sore Two thoughts spring to mind…
What good have they done and how can it be expressed Were they always the first to lend a hand were they always there for those in need Which of their actions should I recall and paint in colour How good a friend or person were they really
And if the tables were turned if I was desperately asking what would they or anyone have to say, have to list have to generously express about my character What have I done that was unequivocally right or just or generous beyond expectation
This simple favour asked leaves me questioning my future path I want the goodness to be writ large embossed into the soles of the footprints I leave behind…
Seven hours on the road chasing that fiery promise dripping from your whispered words Woozily hissed and kissed down a crackling telephone
This distance, a disgrace this distance, I furiously chase I’m a bullet down the strobing motorway a pinball through the unlit maze of winding lanes
The sun begins to drench the sky pink champagne sopping wet from cottonwool swabs My mind only contrives to dive into your whirlpool eyes only replays your fragrance from the deepest archives As your imagined shoulders nakedly graze my desperately inhaling nostrils The scent and wild seduction the nature of your existence
With tiredness devouring me exhaustion humming from every pore Those broken lines still shooting by fickle ghosts in my bloodstream and ten-tonne eyelids flickering to stay open
You are above me, then below me beside me, then over me I’m inside and outside of me I’m above, watching our rhythm Your body, your essence your sweetness, your longing your raging love, your wild desire your molten curves, your supernatural forcefields your sweat-soaked hair your breathless gooseflesh your religion, your every facet
I’m the current through every nerve of me other-worldly I watch you, explosively shattering I watch myself melting Ultimately, we’re both water splashing
We might not outlast this memory but it will always exist in us We might not outlast this memory but it’s ours to keep…
With the consistency of smoke eventually, our ghostly hands must let go of this life We may be thinning and fading or still strong but cut down However it’s done the knot must inevitably untie
The light travelled so far to dance upon our faces We’re alive, as nature is alive to be strange or just to be All that energy must return into the freezing depths of space
Every smile, every joke every tear, every scowl all of them evaporate with the un-cuffing of the soul Darting back into the endless soup Our bodies and our names dying twice and then we’re gone But for whom for whom did we exist…
We may never know the subtle ways we shaped another’s journey We must let our beauty spill as sunlight on the seas Splattering our magic as we go shooting by
For everyone and no one for you and for me for those who brought us into being and all we may encounter To learn and do, to make and share We touch the stars on our departure all these things are left behind
The poetry of existence is in the nature that all is fleeting the rhyme of dawn and dusk Entirely for you and purely for me I truly loved this life…
I see your face in puddles as I go splashing through How long have you been here now implicitly warm and loving touching the edges of my shape
There is something deeply complicated and it’s hard for me to admit Perhaps it’s a broken thing or mutated in its form uniquely hard to know
There’s a part of me that adores being haunted by you There’s a part of me that can’t bare to be without you
I hear your voice through heavy rain it washes my loneliness away How I long to reach and touch all those things you love to share from your place so many miles away
Why do I paint my world this shade why do I let the sadness in Why do I choose this dead-end pathway why do I continue, repeating Why do I keep flowering
There’s a part of me that needs it the rush of your sugar on my tongue There’s a hollow space in me that needs you to keep refilling
The rain comes down the petals all are lost again The rain comes down the petals, all lost again…
There you were again last night always dressed so well Exactly the clothes I’d choose for you exactly the right smile My dreams aren’t long enough the night shoots by, too soon
You come, you go I love it when you stay a while but you never stay for long Your wild mind, your hungry heart yawn and snarl then you’re gone again and I’m alone
You shuffle off back into the clouds If I call, you might respond but you rarely seek me out If I ask you, you’ll smile a while but you never gift one for free
Back on the road again back into the cloud of memory I love the dreams we share I guess they’ll have to sustain me I feel so lost and I look for you I feel so lost under this Cypress Moon…
Lit monochrome by the moon we dance across silver sands The waves scrawl like these scribbled lines written by my yearning hand tonight
All this turbulent energy flung into the swirling air Conducted by my pulsing heart This fool, who thinks he has control of all you do to me
A wanton wind whips up the spray and all I want to do is turn the beat inside my chest into sentences shot through with this fervent ache for you
Then you gather up your skirt twist the water from that hem pull it over those bare shoulders letting it dampen your cheek tonight
An eyelash breadth between us holds for a moment as we drink each other in then the circuit quickly closes
And as we kiss the lighthouse bulb explodes the scattered sparks singe the clouds above A swollen tongue of sea rushes the cliffs spills its spit across parched earth O, and I can’t breathe as this unquiet longing swells its flame inside of me The earth moves on these midnight dunes
This unquiet longing has me completely You have me completely…
For those who hold the door and those who make mistakes For those we pass on a rainy day with no umbrella Keep a smile close to hand
For the motorists who try to run you over And those cyclists who don’t know what they are Keep a smile close to hand
For the early morning shoppers whose manners are still asleep For the harried single-parent families rushing between drop-offs Keep a smile close to hand
For the bus driver or train conductor for the scaffolding erectors For the crossing attendant or the joggers rushing by Keep a smile close to hand
Keep a smile close to hand and when the time is right shoot it straight into their hearts…
Pale fluorescent lighting paints the scene ears still ring hollow with such an effortless ‘goodbye’ All breathing paused as she rations out that smile all too aware of exactly what it does to me
Allowing a single kiss to parachute upon her cheek I thank her for the madness of all those past encounters But she has nothing more for me just empty eyes and vague replies
One foot follows the other as she minds that endless gap All confusion quickly thins a bullet hits me, there’s no feeling no reverence for the weight of all that’s crumbling
That wild force once warped us distorted the very shape of our existence but now in its withdrawal it has no effect on her My eyes are filled with moon hers rewind blue movies
Between our kisses I’d sketched great journeys on a napkin which she now takes and rips tucks the scraps in my top pocket In the glass of the parting doors I watch myself get torn in two
So much remains unsaid her thinning smile waves me on as the sterile platform claims her deep into its caverns Every strand of thought hangs unresolved and billowing
I know our show is over our passion moot and spare without a care The faintest farewell so fitting, so real So what…
I do it to blur the edges vignette the haze of night I do it to shave the edge off it’s always my round There’s wonder in the bottle another glass, another glass This ship can never sink can never skim its hull can never drown will never go down
And that’s the lie the lie that I’ve been living by for so long
Shattered streetlight reflections scatter in the puddles backlit house windows neatly arranged on hillsides it’s a painterly view through squinted eyes so cinematic through mottled glass Headphones up high the music video life It’s fifteen years now but I could stop at any time
And that’s the lie the lie that I’ve been swearing by for so long
I folded myself so carefully shoved down the narrow neck such safety in the numbness watching all of life’s weather from the confines, from the inside Pull on my strings sails raised and bellowing my course will soon stop circling and I never hurt anyone but my pickled self
And that’s the lie the lie that I’ve been telling myself for so long
The tides that I am carried on move too slowly to truly show themselves but this morning I caught sight of my reflection red eyes in tears for what they saw it’s so obvious I need to change my course and would you help me if I ask help break me out of this
I can’t afford to buy into this lie I’ve not enough time to buy into this lie anymore…
The wings of our undoing they hum, out on the runway and wait to shuffle you back into the deck to lose me this ace I craved
The tiled floor spans nightmare lengths as an angel ascends a ravenous escalator The symphony of our story swollen to such a shrill crescendo
But if you must believe in something put your faith in this We danced, O, we danced along the cusp of love An imprinting I would never shake off…
What penance now, each of us must pay the nights are knarled by fits of ‘what ifs’ How can either one find our peace all those pretty threads severed and dangling still
Our story was fully formed and set the pieces in such perfect alignment Then a jolt of reality set alight to us our picture charred to sooty embers in a basin
But if you must believe in something put your faith in this O, we danced, we danced along the cusp of love An imprinting we could never shake off…
The Lighthouse 