Tag Archives: out

heat is in me

heat is in me,
humidity clawing out:
torrential,
silent,
gushing;
the promise of london rain unspoken.

birds fail to chirp outside your window,
heat stifles life
and i
take up the whole of your bed;
and time.

88. soon, soon

yes, you are right, i should like to hide my head in the sand and pretend all that darkness is nothing but light shining through a filter tinted the colour of night. i should pretend last night never happened, i should pretend i am content here by your side in the leafy undergrowth of life where all i see are roots uprooted, dying in the sun. and would you blame me?

i could not sleep last night, thinking of the shining lights enveloping you, pillow over my head to drown out hurt. i wondered if i ought to watch a film, but that would be defeat. no, i would lay here and count your wrongs, my wrongs, the cracks in the ceiling of our hearts, thoughts, lives.
soon, soon, the artery would rupture and drown out the pain.
soon, soon.

i knew i couldn’t cut myself. what with? a knife? i could almost hear you saying don’t be silly in that tone of yours. and pills, what good would it do? only that i may die without salvation, without the knowledge of how to cling to love by the skin of your fingertips. or maybe i know that already.

and i can’t live with all that poison, not even just for tonight. i would fight but my limbs have gone to sleep and i am faced with a picture of you in the club, music pounding, drinks flowing, girls dancing.
and i realise i can’t say that there is anything missing. there is not.

87. my two plus two

we change. why do we do that? tell me truthfully and without needless words.
i spoke to you in a language you did not understand, in hope that your eyes would tell me what your lips couldn’t. in the end, your hands spoke, holding my flesh as if it were a vessel brimming with the very water of life.

i wonder how and why we have come to this river where the past merges with the future and washes over the present. more importantly, how did i leave Y behind with all his unread letters; and how did you find me amongst all the other grains of sand?

i’ve listened to too many sad songs, heard too many excuses and i spoke to Y on friday. 
completion.
he came out with a gem when i told him that really, i had never lied to him, never told him i’ll be yours forever. he told me that he never lied either. a lie is something that is said with the intention of deceit. clever boy. pah!
i stick to my two plus two: all my past hurt equals you. and i’m thankful.

and between the lapses in translation i’m convinced that nothing matters but me and you and your hands. they will find me all over again.

this field

you can have the whole of me in this field:
i pressed my soul into its loins
and beads of sweat still glisten
on the body learning to tango
in the outpour of rain.

i will surrender only here
so take care not to move even a strand of hair
from beneath the tree where i will lay through my whole life,
as if dying prematurely,
for this is home and i forbid you.

a day will come when spring will open me enough
for sun to shine
into the roots of the old cambridge tree
and open up
the rest of me.

—————————————————————-

i’ve been writing this poem for a while now and it feels forever unfinished. maybe that’s just me, always a word out, a syllable in. and then i give up and start something else. at the end of the day, however, i always come back to this. and the oldest tree in cambridge.

83. write me a letter

 will anybody tell me if i’m missing out on life?

will anyone write me a letter just so i know?

and everybody seems to be making a film, a compilation of their thoughts right here, right now. irony is, i’m wasting my words on the wind, across the telephone wires that stretch inside my head. and when i am brave enough to speak my words out, they are spoken to you alone. what about the rest of the world? how will they ever know? 

you made a film with your friends. i guess that’s what you do in youth.
me? i used to leave my colouring books blank for fear of spoiling them. funny me.
and whenever creativity came to me, i wrote the words, drew the pictures on scraps of paper. i still have some of them. little pieces of my mind written in quickhand.

and though none of them relate to you, all that i remember of X is there: they are silent exultations, utterances of pain and dreams. they are free. 

sometimes, i still wish i coloured those pictures in.
and sometimes i know there’s no use wishing: it’s all too late now. i’ve sketched my life out in this morning sunshine. whatever happens now was always meant to be.