To Have and to Hold

To peel the orange segments

of your lips

and sheave your leaves with paperclips.

Bronze is not bronze nor bold,

if I’ve not you to have and to hold.

Your starry eyes pull an eclipse

over my planet as it dips.

Your sun is warm and would not scold:

I long for fire and gold, sweet embers

of your fire and gold,

to have and to hold.

Your back arches across my night,

its milk like milk beyond milk-white,

and I fear you’ll leave my sight,

to never have nor hold.

And down the river I’ll be sold,

the stars for ever far and cold,

and the rouge cup, at which I’ll never drink;

neither had nor held, but proud to sink.

To peel the orange segments

of your lips,

and sheave your leaves with paperclips.

The truth by angels’ brass shall be foretold:

will you be mine, my love, to have and to hold?

You're Perfect

Your friends encourage you

to bronze yourself like a statue,

the fakery on your hips

and your lips.

Your legs are now like

two curtain rails

drawing you wide:

you’re on show,

and can’t hide.

Your nakedness now

is a scar

to hide beneath

glossy veneer –

something unbidden, in bad taste,

like some angel bent double

in sneer.

And, all along, all wrong,

your friends have led you,

bled you

of your colour,

when, all the while, all you needed

was the loving ‘you’re perfect as you are’

of another.

My Love

I could imagine you in the arms of another,

one whom is in every way

wrong, but

perhaps that is because

I am but a passionate observer,

and my pain, the sinews of my heart torn,

increases my resolve,

smoothes me out,

drowns me deeper in hopelessness.

But I will tell you one thing:

I would suffuse back into you

all I had caused to fall away,

and much more

and much more.

Helen

Helen dressed in white

came visiting tonight,

linen billowing like sails

on a deathly train at night.

But then I saw that she was black,

that everything was black,

except the white caves of her bones,

and I’m the only one that knows.

Childish Heart

When I think about you,

I realise how much I like you.

I took a shine to you.

In fact, I took so much of a shine to you

that I can still see my reflection on you,

see my breath on you,

and I occasionally run into

just the thought of you,

and still that surface feels

more solid than fantasy.

Postcard from the Moon

I once saw a piece of moon in a box.

The pocked face hardly rocked –

it leant perchance to mock

the humans, brave as gods,

in filthy diesel machines,

filthy carbon-spitting machines,

as soft as hard dreams,

pirouetting down with ease.

And this chunk of rock,

squat, benign in box,

was like a postcard from heaven,

‘wish you were here’ at the bottom –

but no name.

A Leaf Said

If you really have all the time

in the world,

then why do you check your watch?

Only trees have that,

and they don’t care.

But, then again,

they don’t do any harm, do they?

If you were born green behind the ear

and you’ve more bark than bite

than a clockface make you might.