Nichts

I see you trying to recall,

but I always remember,

how time was on your side and

never bothered to point out mine.

The niche it abandoned me to carve

with nothing but my breath became

a world obese with silence,

gorged on emptiness.

When I am gone, or just

even less there than normal,

and all that I could have been

is yet even further reduced

to the touch of a shadow,

or the sound of light;

what breeze will walk you home,

what empty gesture say goodnight?

Plus One

A hipster couple, probably longterm

(if not it feels like it to both of them),

browse a market in impossible jeans.

They shimmy from one stall to the next

with excruciatingly practiced grins, but

it's the way she nibbles her little fingernails

and how he holds the back of his neck

that give them both away.

He doesn't like the way she scowls at his friends

or how she makes him wear "found" clothing,

and how every new thing she introduces him to

he has done too many times before.

She can't stand how much he thinks

about everything that isn't her and how

he doesn't drop her name in every sentence

on the rare occassion he's let off the leash.

Being seen together rather than alone

is exactly what makes them work,

even though they ignore the signs

that they've put up on their own walls

like how quickly words become prison cells

and naked bodies turn into burning bridges

or that time does not heal all wounds

it just replaces them with new ones.

Namenloser

The whale teeth prison bars of

upturned shopping trolleys give way

to the clip art factory rooves

of vandalised check-out stations.

From somewhere within a thicket

of fallen I-beams, voices beg for me

to take my items across a shingle beach

of soggy cigarettes and broken glass.

Cloudbursts bring a liquid light

like gouts of mercurial napalm

through holes made in the ceiling

by some tantrum-throwing god.

Shadow-snakes lurk in gurgling freezers,

emerging only to crawl amongst the

twisted roots of trees slurping at

the edges of a broth of rotting meat.

-x-

Although I curse the very day

I first heard your name upon my lips,

nothing else that I could ever say

would make me feel so blessed.

Routine

The kettle murmers under its breath

and the toaster hides insults with its coughs;

slow handclaps drip from the tap whilst

the letterbox gossips behind your back.

Watching the light creep round the curtains

feels like celebrating birthdays for the dead,

and ironing my uniform is forging my own chains

on yet another day that will seemingly never end.

What am I?

As the last arbiter of desperate men and

saviour of the lucky (or so they believe),

my presence inspires their greatest work

and my absence pushes them off of cliffs.

Trusted mainly by the foresaken because

they've convinced themselves to believe,

and the already glorified often pretend

I played no part in their uncanny success.

Anathema to misery and counterpoint to futility,

I'm a friend to every man but only the lonely need me;

I offer the promise of sweet whispers and

threaten you with the sound of your own tears.

More than all of the above though

I am a blessing and a curse,

the first thing to be abandoned

and the last to be unleashed.

What am I?