Beds, Hearts and Books

In these surprising years beyond expiry
forty and not failing
the journey remains largely painless
and brightly lit
wrapped up in love
in beds
hearts and books

Pull this feeling tight around me
another year of moving on
from all that didn’t seem to fit
closer to who I want to be
tangled up in love
in beds
hearts and books

All these lines, I can’t help but keep weaving
on the loom of all my longing
happily in awe of the ever-expanding story
forty and still dreaming
swaddled by love
in beds
hearts and books

There’s a deep and lingering kiss
waiting in the other room
the co-author of all my future stories
if I put down this pen, move to that place
we’re smothered in love
Hunkering down
in beds
hearts and books…

[2021]

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Give your eyes a break and listen to some poems

All The Forgotten Novels

I watched you
wrangling those sensations
turning your heart
upside out, inside down
And dipped in ink
kissed the page
I heard your words fall
articulate fictions collected
spelling out the world
filtered through your eyes…

I sat, awe-struck
at those flippant phrasings
pouring from your pen
Truest lies, the lying truths
splattered accurate
clinging to the pages
I believed the textures
you carved in open air
the spoken honey of your prose
a world seen through dark eyes…

All gone and gone
time laughing at us
It’s all forgotten
time mocking us
all for nothing
like rain at sea
Those sparkling lines
those beauties bound
all forgotten
like rain at sea
like rain at sea…

[2013]

Thanks for reading. I have no memory of writing this one but I quite like a couple of the lines so thought I’d share.

Dawn

Dawn is naked and alive
pirouetting in the street outside
she is a broad grey sky, endless above

It’s not rain…
just some foggy spray licking windows
a coat the building wears
a metaphor I cannot interpret
All irony is groggily lost on me
yawning with my whole body
struggling with the load of memory
I shoulder daily

Maybe I should stay indoors
get the fire going, the kettle boiling
That armchair won’t sit in itself
those books won’t read themselves…

How easily these stories are told to me
voices pitched and plot unfolding systematically
inspiration distilled onto the pages
the bittersweet feeling as I turn them
with story presenting; story nears its ending
time growls and time swells across all things
I read ‘the doorbell is ringing’
So, I leave the room
to check for the uninvited

There’s no one there
and I return to find…

The kettle has melted on the stove
the fire has spilled onto the carpet
the armchair roars in flames
those flames are toying with the curtains
All my books are burning
the whole house an inferno now
the house is burning down

Standing, cursing, in the sooty street
‘O Dawn! What have you done to me?
you have killed all of the trinkets
that I felt expressed my personality
you have released
all of the memories anchored to them
now they are free
and floating ghostly in the morning air

Oh Dawn, you have stripped me bare of all I carried
I’m no longer tethered to anything here
Oh Dawn, I am free to start a new journey
I’ll have to leave in the clothes I’m wearing
Oh Dawn, what have you done to me?
you have set me free to start again…’

[2014]

Photo Credit: https://www.instagram.com/nightwalkermagazine/

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