Poems

The sea crept in against the night,
Against the wind, like time itself or like
The ebb and flow of your heart.
A red and black scarf discarded on the back seat of my car.
And my hand wrapped up in masking tape.
I was walking along the beach, the
Moon light was half hearted, like a dream
Of something manic and wild observed in third person,
like a handful of broken glass
You just let fall to the floor.
With or without you or me or anyone who could even understand
What we were, the sea comes in and goes out
And I'm driving home with my car half
Full of your stuff. And I keep asking myself
these questions as if they where rhetorical:
Did I really love you, or just the idea of you?
The ugly dark green sea, the sand blown up in my face...
But if I sat in my drive way, listening for the first signs of rain,
If I could make time go backwards
What difference could it make?

 

I'm not a poetry person.

But I'd like to this thread take off.

 

Glad you kept writing SF.
I had some thought about your poems being inside-out pearls - the rough grit wrapping beauty - but it drifted like dreams do, and smoke.
Thanks.

 

Standing on a brick wall, not much more than 5 feet up,
And yet feeling like I was balanced
on the edge of infinity
Dark shapes flitted amongst the upper
branches of the poplar tree's in the distance.
The air was pleasant with bonfires
Nearby but out of sight.
The sky was such a beautiful, turkish delight, shade
of red. A swarm of midges just to be right.
I can't help but feel that even back then
I must have felt some echo of the loss I would feel now,
Holding that image in my head. Maybe more than a half a lifetime in,
And always spinning somehow further away
From any kind of sense of home.

Slumped on damaged a bed, three quarters drunk
My heart beating out of rythym, the ghosts of old murderers
Shuffle back and forth down the alleyway
They peer into the bathroom window, eyes shocked but unspeaking
Unsmiling, viscous, mouths.
I keep telling myself, I'm not afraid, that
If I clench my fists and my jaw, and stare at the point just
Below his chin, he wont dare kick in my door.
And the damp and neglect and bitten down rage
Roil around in my head, as I drift off to sleep.
I couldnt care less if I die in my sleep
But I'm so scared of nothingness
At the same time.

I was walking three steps behind a girl who was older than me
My trainers sodden with dew, carrying my left leg
Slightly, but just for affect.
To our left ran a mere, and a bank of great yews, the
Air felt brittle, timeless, neither hot or cold but somehow
Thin, expectant, passive; I wrapped my right arm in her's
Self consciously and tried not to shiver.
I talked on and on, she laughed and moved closer, I thought about the last time
We'd been to bed together, and I felt that kind of
Overt self awareness you get when your half drunk too early
In the day, and you have to go out; I felt
I ought to be happier, and I thought how I would never
Be a father. The great old house loomed before us, another kind of life
I couldnt imagine for myself. She wanted to see the Folly.
The way the sun shined through those tree's, gilding them with silver, put my in mind
of my childhood, the loss of what was, and was not replaced.
I hated my father. Maybe I wont ever love anyone.

I was sat at a desk, an old office chair, a ream
of computer paper unfolded in front of
Me, drawing out magic spells and football games.
But they never worked.
You can't stop what's been started, you can only divert
Yourself, or your life, or chose the things you wrap around
It. All I ever wanted
Was everything.