Tuesday 28 June 2011

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?

Monday 27 June 2011

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.