A soft blue light erases my memory,
Crosses the depths of space to reveal my suburban Elysium.
Our soft linen basin feels exquisitely isolated,
Like an undiscovered subterranean cavern, or a vast, billowing cloud,
Floating silently through the troposphere.
We talk of everything. And nothing.
Your kiss sends a surging current right through me.
I kiss you back and I drink in your beauty, as if this were my last
moment on Earth.
Relentlessly, but with little
real pay, the scholar peddles
wares of words and wisdom,
cites authorities, provides
primary sources, but is
ultimately little more than
an ibid.
Glassy almonds of many colours strewn about,
Massaged by frothy hands.
The ghosts of conflicts past scuttle giddily on abundant limbs.
Armed and ready, should opportunity knock a second time.
A grey-green genetic soup swells and heaves under Paleolithic gates.
To the South lies the North,
Its ashen hills and sleepy cimtières a proud hinterland.
The painful thrill of the icy current. The jagged rocks. The slimy,
choking weeds.
Elemental forces unburdened by the the lethal follies of man.
Blood is spilled under Blanc Nez, as it was decades ago.
But there is no razor wire now, no rusty barbs waiting to eviscerate
lumbering lions.
A baraque à frites sat stoically atop a wind-scorched ascent hails
the wounded,
Their cuts and scrapes glistening as they congeal under a lemon yellow
sun.
Feel your limbs, light, almost emancipated from your body,
Your face tautened by the healing saline breeze.
Blood courses flamingo pink through your youthful veins,
Breathing life into those crumbling Republican pillars.
You sense that this is it, that this is where you need to be.
So aux armes! Defend this blissful feeling lest it die here,
Anchor your spirit to the restless dunes and demand your droit du sol.
Through gritty, parched eyes I squint,
As hazy boulevards wind ceaselessly ahead.
The soupy June air weighs heavy on my shoulders,
A cruel curse befitting of a cruel hour.
I snarl and thrash and seethe.
I pray for a swift end.
Highgate lovers, swathed in crumpled bedsheets,
Gaze down from high windows in dreamy, post-coital nonchalance.
The soft light emanating from their cigarettes reminds me where I
should be,
Where I should have stayed.
Her cascading onyx locks and melting stare, so far from here,
Snatched away in a frenetic dusk.
In the murky, nocturnal depths of this Hadean Borough,
The thought of fusing my weary torso to the elegant curve in her back
is a blissful escape.
To sweetly kiss the nape of her neck,
And watch that sensual smile paint joyously across her sculpturesque
face
…for a brief, heavenly moment, I’m there.
But mine is the oppressive still of a North London night,
Where bountiful summer trees loom black and menacing over deserted
pavements.
But lo, wrapped in my internal struggle I have omitted another.
One who neither pines, nor laments, nor regrets.
A weightless astronaut, he skulks through the night air with a humble
grace.
His sinewy frame, that restless, twitching muzzle,
An opportunist cat burglar, thriving in his concrete woodland.
He slows as I approach. A cautious arc. His marble eyes reflecting the
street lights above.
What does he see?
We halt in unison, we share the stillness.
His keen nose analyses my scent, his pointed ears flinch at my
slightest movement.
Such devotion to the senses is something I’ve long forgotten.
Suddenly I feel my heavy feet beneath me, notice my short, agitated
breaths.
This wild animal has coaxed me out of my own head, made me living
again.
He watches intently as I find the strength to move forward. Down this
path I myself chose.
And as I glance back, I ponder his sentience…did he share in my
epiphany?
Succumbing to sleep I envy the fox. Long to dream his savage,
unquestioning existence.
He died of the lack
of care he gave himself.
He died of old age,
slumping.
He died of not learning
enough, not reading enough,
his mind said, No more.
We all die of something.
Sickly sweet
the swirl of today’s news
sitting on my empty
stomach. Syrupy
on my lips and on
the roof of my mouth.
An ideal that when tasted
does not blend so well,
overstaying its welcome.
Sucked through a straw,
then spat back out,
better left roadside alone.
Sorry to say, regretfully,
I am not the man I thought
I was, and neither (can I say) do you probably
think I am.
The bio is all wrong; sent
from the wrong file,
written with what seemed
(now does not seem)
a witty intent, scribbled
days or years ago when
all seemed to make sense.
Now the words do not line
up, I am not sure what I
meant, and (worst of all) I
never intended harm (but
then maybe the words are
as innocuous as I believed
them one day to be).
Sincerely,
or Respectfully.