Tag: separating

Our Home Cannot Be Here

I lit a fire on the beach
you were feeling beaten by the wind
no, we can’t hear anything in this weather
but the waves and the crackling wood
you don’t speak anyway
we have nothing we care to say

Our human silences amid nature’s screams
fill me with a loss so unforgettable
Our human silences amid nature’s screams
fill me with a void so inescapable

The sky goes dark and the sea slides away
time is huge and our movements tiny
I wrote my address on the back of your hand
but you reached into the water and it vanished
I can’t imagine a life not anchored here
as you turn slow to dive from me

The answers come only with soft punches
a milked stone, I lie folded and bruised
how could we ever know this lost romance
your whirlpool eyes cry tears of understanding
I dust the sand from my baked face and frown
there’s no warning of love’s swift decay

Our human silences amid nature’s screams
fill me with an ache so all consuming

Moon reveals the night’s black heart
you say you love me, as you leave me
you say you care for me, as you go down on him
there’s no favour you can grant me anymore
there’s no connection to the blood in my heart
just open your palms, expose our withered bonds

The rain rages fast and hard across the sand
we tussle as broken wings on some sick bird
finality comes to me, its decision absolute
your hand slips away and swings clear for all time
I fall back into the water, exhaling slowly
‘Our home cannot be here…’

[2010]

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I have a new book… ‘The Ship-wrecker’s Lamp: Selected Poems 2010 – 2020’ available now.

The Things We Lose

There can be no knowing
there can be no honest understanding
until you are standing there
empty-handed, broken-hearted
Suddenly, all too aware
of all the things we’ve lost

You can try to estimate the feeling
you can approximate a sense of things
The hollowness this ‘now’ rings in your bones
swallowing any beat of happy thought right up
every moment speaks only in shrieks
of all the things we’ve lost

Attempting a prediction will always miss
for the things that cut are too small to see
You never think to gauge
the imperceptible absences;
the smell of her hair, a contented sigh
This silent lack of fragrance screams
of all the things we’ve lost

Sitting there talking of this happening
neither of us could have comprehended
the way this withered world seems to laugh at us
the endless bleakness of glacial lonely nights
All the saddest songs we can find to play, singing
of all the things we’ve lost

You must expect the end to hurt
you much accept no one is spared
yet, there is simply no preparing for this moment
as things you’d never noticed capsize all around
squealing out the saddest sound
of all the things we’ve lost

The truest happiness we’d ever swum in
the deepest friendship we’ve ever known
the warmest love we’d ever felt
the greatest thing we’ve lost…

[2009]

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One of Us Was Right To Leave

One of us will lose our head
that’s what I always feared
and when the night finally broke
on us, as we clung to the road
it was obvious; the poetry of certainty
conclusive proof of our mortality
the water fell like some swelling sea
and I drowned in tears of deep disbelief

One of us was right to leave
though heaven knows which one it was
we pushed hard and for so long
when the rope, it broke, we didn’t see
just scuttled hard, to find our feet
a dance of letting go, a balancing act
that pushes us down separate tracks
some hollow lane, an unknown road
where derelict houses line the path

One of us will surely return
the pleading of my heart demands
but stubbornness and ignorance of will
prevent me from succumbing first
the angry air that now divides us
speaks of the fear that loneliness delivers
in words so thick and unrepentant
they recoil so quick, back down our throats
choking the chance to ever repeat

One of us was right to leave
I keep reminding my sad heart
the way these changes must play out
will always make retrospective sense
no matter how unfathomable they now seem
once time has passed, the answers come
the fog of clouded judgment thins
and a happiness so resolute and defined
reveals itself before us as a golden field

And whoever it was
who was right to leave
may they go in peace
and come back peaceable…

[2006]

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The Faintest Farewell

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…

[2021]

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The Window Box

Returning to that rented house
once we’d split our stuff
casting an eye over
the now barron landscape of our love
I brush away the mess we left
touch up the paint in the hallway

One thing we forgot to pack
one thing you forgot to take
that flower box outside the bedroom window
I bought for you while working away
you planted seeds and raised them up
gave them names with handwritten labels

Now, the pen has faded but
your writing remains so delicate
The soil is white, stems all withered
there’s no life left
Tossing the box into a bin bag
finally, it hits me, hard and winding

Just what is ending here
all those little moments we tended
all those precious things we shared
are done and dusted

Chucked into the big black bag of memory
that only I will really carry with me
my fat tears water those dead stems
so sure nothing will bloom like that again…

[2021]

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House On The Edge of Town

More and more
my thoughts turn to you
So aware
I’m now the age
that you were
when the pair of you parted
and you got that rented house
on the edge of town

We’d stay at weekends
watching winter’s tide sweep in
stand in the falling snow
garden and fields disappearing
said ‘throw another log on the fire’
said ‘dad, your house is cold’

At fifteen, I was nothing
lost in my own sea of nonsense
I didn’t ask you anything
I didn’t think to say a word
Where was my empathy
you let nothing show

Every other Saturday we’d gather
at your house on the edge of town
it all felt new to me
felt so exciting
a fresh world of fields to explore
of walks to take and fires to light
with or without you

So immature and lost
in my own mythology
I never really realised
you could be hurting
I didn’t stop to think
When maybe your son
could have been there for you

Living raw, living alone
twelve days at a time
the snow piling up around
your house
on the edge of town

While we still have some time
let’s talk openly
let’s talk now…

[2019]

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Beneath An Island Sky

Months, then years, flow in
like waves, they lap against our lives
washing ground up dreams along the shore
Dreams of all we had to leave
upon the shelf
So much darkened distance now
from certain past experiences
on which I, so longingly, need to draw
How I pine
for a single drop
of cob-webbed wisdom…

Day to day moments we share
they walk the blade-edge of pleasantness
I feel my nerves tingle with distaste
my head corrects me
says ‘love love love’
and I back down again, staring out of windows
but the anger, the impotence
where do they go
Sinking into the water-table of frustration
running beneath the surface
searching for an ocean

Perched upon the bonnet of a car
I’m watching the sun set through a heat-haze
rising from the tarmac all around me
the beauty is filling me, I don’t want to leave
Don’t want to return to that cage we’ve made
where you and I sit
in tortured silence for all time
thinking of things not to say
and things we’ll never do

And you say
‘I am blue
like the sea on winter days’
And I say
‘I am red
like the fire raging in the forest’
and we’re both green
like allotments, overgrown and wild

And yet
all the things we could have had
we could still have

Split the atoms
beneath an island sky
I’m so close to splitting atoms
beneath an island sky

O, how I pine
for a single drop
of cob-webbed wisdom…

[2009]

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