Mum
Died at Christmas
If
you love me
Sadness
drops its crazed rain
To
beat me down again.
Your
trophied voice is caressed
In
memory
And
graduates
Into
poetry
Still
falls the rain
As
I leave your thoughts
Shuffled
recollections,
Hoping
to turn up the ace
As
the rain mingles with the joker’s tear
Perhaps,
When
night compels your solitude
And
you meet yourself once more
The
loaded hand of love
Will
beckon come closer
And
risk another look
Perhaps
when night compels my discourse
And
I meet the King once more
The
cards will reshuffle
And
the hand of order
Will
dry the tears
That
the rain beats out.
3/11/80
And
when the time came to speak
The
automatic voice continued
While
inside the angered screams grew louder,
Pitifully
confused by their silence,
Shedding
their knuckle-bruised cry
Around
prison walls
And
when the time came to stop
I
was saddened to ignore you
Through my self-perpetuated dishonesty,
knowing
your unconscious disapproval -
Should
the truth be known –
Of
being outside the walls.
And
come the time to leave,
Should
death have stood with me
It
would have found comfort
Within
this condemned cell,
Where
words can no longer be withheld
And
distance now makes truth tell
That
I love you.
12/7/81
Back
again…
To
the raised voices
And
tear-laden laughs,
High-rise
engines
With
spinning-wheel screams
Self-sexed
dimensions
And
punch-drunk city dreams.
Back
again…
To
the searching for riches
Beyond
the flesh-bared touch,
Beyond
the masquerade
Of
lepered hand in silken glove
To
the nail-torn life remade
In
the decadence of Your love.
And
as the tinselled world
Celebrated
its Christ in lavish ignorance –
We
walked together to that cliff-edge
Where
lovers depart in silence.
The
life-cord of mother and child,
Stretched
for its second parting
Carried
your remote eyes
Back
to the pains of birth.
And silence, brutalised in this contortion of events
Asked my hand to take yours
Until the edge was reached
When you walked on
Then
death at Christmas
Returned
the pains of birth
That
tinsel insulted
And
death alone brought meaning
Call
for the razor, the scalpel, the knife
The
sharpest of tools that can cut through my life
And
carve out your soul from my overblown heart
Until
I find what is mine
Until
I see who you are
Until
I trace how we fare when taken apart
Call
for the pastor, the poet, the priest
The
wisest of women, the learned deceased
To
sever my dreaming from your true delight
Until
I find what is mine
Until
I see who you are
Until
I know why the two of us fail to unite
Call
for the moment, the month and the year
The
distance of time that can stifle my tears
And
banish your ghost from this spiralling dance
Until
I find what is mine
Until
I see who you are
Until
I know what is real in this spell of romance
Call
for the reaper, the father of time
And
come put an end of this fierce dream of mine
By
snuffing you out of this lingering flame
Return
what is mine
From
the want of who you are
And
let me discover the light that remains
18/12/98
If
you love me
I
must wait
And
see what gifts
You
choose to bring to my door
Because
I have spent
Too
long
Giving
to others
Only
to discredit their gifts to me
As
reciprocal obligations
And
I must bear the silence
Without
assumption
And
allow the pregnancy of love
Chance
to grow its offspring
And
if you don’t love me
I
must wait
And
let the absence of gifts
Not
represent my lovelessness
Or
your distance
But
that love is rare
And
precious
And
I am still valuable
Without
your love
Only,
I
don’t know who I will be
Either
way round
Because
I am so lost
In
my abandon to you
And
so lost
In
the silence of these circumstances
That
I ache with the yearning
And
I grieve with the waiting
And
I die with the fearing.
So
dear love,
Save
me.
Because
I don’t want to save
Myself
From
this tragic journey
That
must be better
Than
the boredom
Of
my current
Safety.
18/10/98
This
empty page
Stands
fuller than my heart
More
complete than the shredded sinews
Left
by your stolen life
Lock
every hope away
Hold
every breath of life
Quieten
the eager birds of fancy
That
fly when attachment is gone
Sit
close now the ache of loss,
The
protracted absence that
Turns
its shock into the constant pummel
Of
the helpless heart
My
love is gone
The
world is dead
But
I live on.
24/10/03
Strange,
coarse sand-dunes
Where grey sea strikes lunar gravel-scape,
Here we come to scream at God
In the span of water and thrash of the tide
On harsh
stones,
Ground to insignificance by the merciless
Force of generations
We stand to fight,
But collapse in the futility
Of our useless screams,
Beaten dreams
The battered
shores of our short lives
Search for a plausible horizon
But hear only of death lightened
By the power to resist despair
Strange,
short life-span
Ground down in the flowering hopes of spring
And driven into winter's fierce tides
All gone, all gone
All drained into the shingle of this bastard beach
All dried of promise
All crushed
Overpowered
Silenced
And now
Washed up on a new landscape
I stand with these pictures -
Without you
17/12/03
That moment…
When you say their name
Over and over
Pulsing hands on pulseless skin…
Not daring to accept
The obvious -
They are gone.
Months
later
Heart still bent on
Waking the dead
Head still dead from
Waking alone.
No point
now in
Wanting the waking
Only the waking of
The living
Borne on the trail they leave:
The waking they brought
In you
The gift
of life
Now yours
To live
Awake
Awakened
More fully alive
Where they awakened the dead
In you.
8/1/04
He
does not deserve you -
Accept nothing less than being
Completely
Cherished.
I came
to her in the long grass
When summer bronze was all our memory
And skin grew more tender by day
For lazing in that pasture
And whispers'
echoed motion
Teased our love to boldness
'Til touch and heart found union
And sun flamed in our open veins...
Does
he so deserve you?
Accept nothing less than being
Completely
Cherished.
I held
you as you awoke
Roused from love's enduring dream
When bodies vanish, float and burn
Then wake entranced in love's return
And more
than awake but awakened we sat
With this gift, our gifted new being -
Then I gave you back to the green earth
Forever grown and gone
No more in need of my love song
Does
he, does he deserve you?
Accept nothing less than being
Completely
Cherished.
And release
nothing less than
Your own
Complete
Cherishing -
So find the
Homecoming
That kisses your future
With freedom.
22/1/04