A blunder

A blunder
Staggering blindly
Falling over one's feet in haste to flee
Burning cheeks, tear stained eyes. Blind.
Quickened heart racing, aching.
Pain in your chest, a million sorry excuses
In your brain.
The flower, hand picked from rows of its contemporaries
The card, hand written lines of now tacky poetry
Both crushed, discarded.
At least the Chardonnay corked in green
Shall not go to waste
That and the others, conspiring to erase
That painful moment, to fill that awkward silence
As those words slip easily into the past.

By ten o'clock, you shall be merrily pissed
Eleven, abed but sleep won't be forthcoming
The chances of dreaming too strong
And the cracks in the ceiling form ideograms of loss
While playful fingers of rain and wind
Dance over the tin roof.
What once was sanctuary is now isolation,
Solitude, imprisonment.
Would have been easier to just forget, to have made
Excuses and denied.
Denial, the weapon of the hopeless, the shield
But it's too late
The blunder has been made
Time only goes forward, but memories remain,
To leap unbidden in those quiet moments
Haunting wraiths that force you again and again
And again
To watch the dagger fall

How soothing, then, the midnight hour
Wrestling insomnia
The rose, hand picked, now dashed to pieces,
The note and its hasty verse ashes in the hearth.
No more blunders you promise
Your heart now tucked securely in another layer of ice.

Until next time.

Secret Love

This is the end, I can tell
Lips moving fishlike around soundless words
Drowning in the air
Gulping as realisation, keen as sharpened swords
Cuts swathes through any form of reason

This is the end, this bitter silence
Recriminations dragged up from a past wished dead
Excuses applied with trowels
Those whispered disparaging voices in my head
All hell bent fury, laying claims of unjustified treason

What other wonders, I suppose
Am I to expect with this detachment?
Performed clinically, a veritable surgeon with a scalpel
Pulling apart pieces of our secret love
That saw no daylight

Who else could claim to be a witness
Of that we held but briefly
When even what we held now crumbles apart
This our secret love
At home only in the darkest night?

It's not fair that this is the end, this last barbed parry
The half full mug of coffee, the hole in the wall
Cold nights alone, the red hot mutters
The sense of going nowhere, of being stalled
But in love, naught is fair; out of love, fair is war
And in secret, the hurt, unconfided, is salt in open wounds

So, with nary a pause
I'll close the casket
On this
Our secret love

The Storm

Flashes of lightning split the sky
Tears from heaven, cold wind racing
We huddle around a dancing candle flame
The wavering light meagre protection
Yes, we will weather out this storm
And there will be tales to tell

Outside, the roar reaches a crescendo
The patter on the panes a million drumming fingers
Begging entrance, held off by thin slivers of glass
How the wind howls its anguish at our denial
But there is naught but evil intent on its mind
It wants to thrash out and extinguish our sanctuary

Eye to eye we sit, the wavering shadows dance across
Unsmiling faces. We each take turns spinning tales
Of haunted houses and things that in the dark... bump
Our pacing is terrible, the suspense, unbearable
Every fright made the more terrifying
When thunder punctuates lightning slashed exclamation points

Morning finds us entangled in our own private dreams
Sleeping bags and mattresses scattered on the floor
The shed skins of slumbering serpents
Where the night before, cocoons of safety and warmth
Brave now, in the morning light, we can guffaw
And deny that our hearts raced last night, primitive fear

Ah, how innocent and childlike we were that night
Held by the pall of riotous stormy weather
And captives of the dark broken by naught but a pillar of tiniest flame
In whose brilliance our trust was total
I cannot wonder, with the wild eyes of speculation
What fate might have befallen
Had the flame puttered into waxy smoke
And the fingers at the panes became tormenting fists
And drove with full fury into our tiny lives
Invading our sanctuary

Of course, such fancy is lost
In the golden rays of glorious sun
Forgotten, at least
Until next time

Square One

O, if not for the folly of past miss-steps

I could look forward

Without regret

And take that chance that beckons.

But nay, my glass heart, fragile

And ready to crack

Keeps me wary

Holds me back.

And lost, all I can do is stare

And wish for things that are not there,

And rather than enquire and seek the truth,

I merely sit back and await the proof.

Gentle, gently, o, wicked deceitful heart

Precious, precocious, you fiend, this art

A poet winding words, an actor struck dumb

And chances like sand through open fingers pour

If but a chance I could find, some way to get inside

But I am on the wrong side of this door.

Last Cigarette

He leans into the recessed doorway
Hand cupped to protect the flame
Guides the tip of his last cigarette into that dancing wraith
She doesn't like the habit
He doesn't like the sewer mouth after taste
But the ritual is enough to calm his nerves
As he ponders his next move
Rain fills the narrow vista
Beyond the oblong mouth of the recess
And the orange glow of a street light is a smear of lavish
Whore's make up in the puddles gathered along the gutters
He can't be too sure if he is weeping
The cold is like a punch in the nose
But the hot breath of cigarette smoke calms
As much as it clams
Sharpens his mind, he recalls
Her fading smile, the dimness of the light dying in her eyes
When she told him she no longer felt for him
The way he felt for her
He'd only just said those three words, thinking
That is what she wants to hear
But it's too intimate, this was a passing phase
And those words are a manacle, chaining her bony wrist to his
It was a promise she had no plan to keep
So he pounded the pavement, three blocks away
In the driving rain
Found the gap in the mason work to pitch this last flame
Blue grey cloud destroyed in the downpour
The last cigarette drawn down to the butt
Before with a deft flick, discarded;
Discarded like his heart
No doubt, she'll move on; they always do
They always have
And he will clutch his wounded heart tighter
Frozen it is with vehement ice
Cursing love, cursing life, his misbegotten need for poetry
Everything within his narrow grasp
At length, in despair, he wears instead of a coat
He will take that step from the plinth
Into the rain
Into his future
The last cigarette tossed like a coin into the wet
An augury, a machine of fate
Or simply a change of perspective
Tomorrow is just another day

Work

Sometimes life is a joke without a punch line
And we're left gasping for air
Clinging to the straws of normality, hoping
But mostly we live without a care
So long as this day and the next day and every day thereafter
Doesn't step outside the line

We work
Work, it's all we know

We are born to serve the common good

To eat the food and to burn the wood

To tread on the heads of the lowly and the weak

To govern our thoughts and what we speak

We were moulded to fit the production line

And given a certain amount of time

To make the best of what we’re given

To come out at the end forgiven

In ill and in health, for the commonwealth

We are the pawns in the game of life

We work
Work, it's all we know

We work

Work, harvest what we sow

From sunrise to sunset

Thinking life is complete

We return to our little patch of lawn

Home, sweet... our domain, our retreat

Holding precious onto possessions we've sold our souls to buy

Began the journey as lovers, grew apart, dissolved with no goodbye

Yet, we work

Work, it's all we know

We work

Work, afraid to disrupt the common flow

And in the end, that inevitable slide

A hole six feet deep and three feet wide

Onto our souls, one last hasty verse

We leave this plane, with no remorse

From all these pressures, we are divorced

Will there be somewhere thereafter to seek recourse

For that we leave behind, stays behind

The final insult, the contract binds

We beg our deity for our souls to be saved

But your conscience is all you can take to the grave

Scarecrow

Scarecrow

sits by himself in the field

listens to the bird on his shoulders

smells the smoke of the burning season

watches as the corn fields smoulder

never sleeps at night

under moonlight

you see he has no eyes to see

but he sees just as well as you or me

and the wind teases his arms in the apparition way

but his lips don’t move around the words he can’t say

he has been here before you know

in another disguise

this scarecrow strung up before your eyes

have you seen him before

have you seen him before

have you seen him before

I believe you have.

You watched him bleeding tears for you

You let him heal your fears for you

You even gave him bread and wine and a final place to dine

Before you nailed him to a tree…

Scarecrow

sits all alone in a field of barley

thinking thoughts of how it was that other time

when he held his hand out for the whip of another’s crime

and bore the pain with a tight-lipped grimace

painted on his head

and he got to thinking to himself

“I could have lived forever but I chose to die instead.”

A fool

A fool

A fool you say?

Thank you

Thank you

Go away?

he has been here before you know

in another disguise

this saviour strung up before your eyes

have you seen him before

have you seen him before

have you seen him before

you know you have

You watched him weeping blood for you

You gave him a crown to put on his head

And just when he was going to call you a friend

You watched the pagans nail him dead.

And only then did you weep

As he wept for you

Scarecrow

sits alone as the sun goes down

and the lights turn on around the town

his stuffed face of straw nods in a gentle breeze

and he wonders “What the fuck is wrong with me?

Why do I take what they dish me out to me?

Didn’t I learn my lesson the first time around?

Little ingrates will pin me to the ground

Before they’ll offer me their thanks

It’s just the same

It’s just the same

As last time

I died for nothing.

I died for nothing.”

I died for you!