Artificial Days

This winter sun has left us,
The sky is tinged with blue and yellow.
The trees begin their silhouetted dance,
Strained eyes inside begin to focus.

The grass underfoot is burning
In the passionate fire of our heavy hearts.
I can see it, on the horizon,
That line of red beneath the deepening blue.

Lamps flood the room around us,
Light your candles on the stove.
Ignore the seduction of the night,
Bend your will to press on
In artificial days.

Sky! I sigh, please not tonight,
Night sky, your dark skin may be perfect
Your face transformed, sweet breath
And come to bed eyes,
But circumstance separates
Our tear-strewn cheeks.

Adult Haircuts

We are children of the winter
Early evening, reborn into the dark.
Streetlights are almost close enough to touch -
The stars come down to hold our hands.

A clock tower disappears
Into the freezing mist
That embraces us all
As if in a dream I half remember.

Its fingers curling underneath our scarves
These adult haircuts leaving us numb.
The cold makes us weep
As we rejoice in this gift of temperature.

-

I was a child
Reborn into an unfamiliar night.
In your car window, I think,
Those strange reflections glowed.

My eyelids were slowly drooping;
It may just have been a dream,
For I could scarcely believe I was alive.

Colours In The Sky

I thought it was a sunrise
Whose slender fingers
Tousled my newborn's hair.
I thought it was a morning
Whose breath danced upon my lips.

The fingers shorten,
Breath dies, light fades.
Woken briefly for that beauty
Before it is lost.

I thought you were a sunrise
When you walked into my life,
Your soul skipped blissfully through mine.
So beautiful, but setting,
It meant the same to me.

Aquarius

I was born to carry

Water with me

Collect the drops

That fall upon my head.

I carry every moment,

Your face upon my hand.

I carry them in my heart

Until it gets heavy.

You let them flow as tears,

Your hand upon my face.

I carry them in my heart

Until it breaks.

To Occupy My Time

Every little prop of my life
Has taken a short vacation
Believing me to be in the care of the others.

So for now, in the absence
Of, amongst others, my bath
This cake and I
Shall ponder the mysteries of love.

There is a sensuality
To coffee that is slightly too hot.
Whorish lips roll over its silk
And hold onto this, if nothing else.

An empty lacquer box of treasures
Lies waiting in front of me.
Open, the perfect model of acceptance,
It waits for my props to return.

You like your coffee with milk
And a worrying amount of sugar.

Waking

In a universe where nothing is lost or gained,

Where joy and pain are relative

And exist because of one another,

Where all things end with nothing quite yet different,

I must find myself on one side of a line.

This line, so beautiful, so bleak

That separates freedom from abandonment

Is made of simple strings

And the idle dreams of people before.

I digress.

Some days the ground seems flat,

And what we see is the limit of existence.

The feeling of freedom

Drifts peacefully in the air.

My voice reads a closing chapter,

Though we are clearly less than halfway.

What makes that close go on and on

Is the knowledge that, for all the distance run

All things end with nothing quite the same.

Dreams

I dreamt of a life
That went around in circles.
Each day the same, serene,
With the architect of these days
Imprinted on my mind and on my skin.

Now we drink cups of tea,
While the same songs play
In the corner of a different kitchen.
But we are back to where we were,
And nothing you can say to make it change.

My water is bitter,
With saltwater on my cheeks.
We used to cry as we sat
Halfway up the stairs.

That, my friend, was a dream ago.
Now it seems I dream of a life
And in that life I walk around in circles.