best laid

Oh I had such plans
but I'd drown them to have you -
not living, just carrying time
and the mix (of masturbation, and
the sob of tiny hands) your
calling once a week till
I have to go, quietened in the
light of glass ceilinged kitchens
where a coffee you had once is
still ringed (it's maybe moss now)
and your hair-dryer is tucked under my bed where
you snuck it that first week, the bold
first parley when I knew you little
and now, when you've someone to
talk to and your friends crawl back out
of the wood-work, blinking in singledom
with you (why do girls always break up in packs?)
that you say to me, you're okay...
and the gap, the dorsal leap flung back
is that when I go, you'll be fine
and (how) am I to take that...

she left
she leaves
and i've only patterns
the same way, the same words
as before
to find 'space' to find 'me'
('without you' but she won't say it)
the soft goodbye
as you slide out
from me

From the remarkable Paul Squires, his last post before he sadly passed away last year...

Gene Kelly Tattoo

July 16, 2010 at 8:01 pm |

that which you can see
coming
you already have

it is the unexpected
stumblings over (airborne joy with tumble roll)
which constitute the treasure

into outstretched
sunsets
merriment and dance



He will be truly missed.

a plain voice maybe?

2:47am awake even though I know I shouldn't be - even though my eyes ache and lashes stick together when I blink. I'm going back...home...I said it again today, and didn't mean here. I've mumbled that word to myself only a handful of times this past decade - on a Greyhound sliding in at dawn, glimpsing the CN Tower and now flying in a night and seeing the long twist of the Thames, the squat gold spike of Big Ben...this time round, back here, in Oz, I've felt a stranger - professionally, socially, deep down more foreign than I ever have miles and miles away and I don't know what that means...

it was oh yes

to fix you on this earth again;
unsex me, grail my heart
and bury it in a thousand
years of mysteries for
architects and polymaths to
goad each other over -
only then unleash me,
face-melting, replicant
wrath of that testament
god, fired over 40 nights
and you'll see, what I see,
her burning still, alive
dark, white skinned
peeling - lovely and terrifying
and all mine again