Flesh Wound

I stare

at my phone

waiting for

more excuses

or an apology...

Neither comes.

Trying

just makes things worse;

you don't know why

we bothered,

I do.

Something to do with hope.

The simplest things

become too complicated

all because of a word

said too quickly

or not soon enough.

Frankly

It was strange that you sent a letter -

nobody sends letters anymore;

unless they're demanding money,

threatening you with something

or being melodramatic.

The spirit of such gravity

is what posessed you I suppose;

the overly formal scribbles of ink

like the mechanisms of a singularity,

turning everything into nothing.

Decompression

It started with a lie - (doesn't it always?)

Your eyes gave it away,

a flash of cold fire...

you were faking it, that smile.

The way you stood with him,

was posed, insincere, far too considered;

a catalogue photo of a feeling.

Who was it for? You? Him? - Everyone else?

The cipher was easily cracked:

ceraintly not a kiss that carried weight,

something planned, deliberate like

"liking" your own status updates.

Seven fractures for seven years

but it isn't my bad luck, seemingly

to "be" a thing is not to know it;

Love has no digital definition.

It is a millisecond or thousand years

or both at the same time and if it starts

with a lie, then a lie it will remain until

someone more photogenic comes along.

House Warming

From the ashes I pull

the butt of a joint, still

good for a toke or two;

you nod and pass a lighter

frame of mind with me.

The electric heater clicks -

elements erupt in a burst

of promises yet to be made,

kept and broken by the heart

of a new constellation.

You sip cider from a can and

I gag at the thought of the taste;

like drinking a hundred springs

you say, and I take your word for it

wondering how many we will see.

On the hour

Like tar from a diseased lung

time drips by, slowly at first

and then in steady torrents;

I force a breath and then another

and another until I lose count of

the moments I wish it would just stop.

Shell

Light flares off the rim

of a Carlsberg Export can,

as fag smoke curdles the air

the routine tapping of ash

drowns out the clock...almost.

Somewhere life goes on

but never here, always elsewhere;

in between breaths the only sound

is a second thought, doubt, worry

that the black dog waits in the dark.

The mirror doesn't reflect a man;

but a hollow, taped-up, broken thing

that dreams of no longer dreaming

of only making a contribution

by simply not being there.

Outside the trees trade secrets

and streetlights dabble in gossip,

always afraid of being alone

or worse of feeling nothing at all.

For what good is life, if you're not living?

Burden of Care

I watched the sunlight on your face,

listening to that song you'd always hum

wondering at such a conspiracy of chance

and if before you were even born

that you were being made for me.

But I don't believe in destiny or fate,

not anymore at least (how could I?)

when the thought of your smile

makes me weep at the shadows

that your absence casts.

A fortune cookie to told me that

I would be better off dead

(well, not in so many words) but

you have to have been alive

to ever really die.

Uutforsket

You get used to the cold, after a while

the bits and pieces of a life which

you refused to pick up, indicate

that there was always something

or someone else.

A rose by any other name...

another name is all it took to

suggest that you are – were mine,

but now belong to him or so

you've made him believe.

Cautious glances – preceed the

slamming shut of your soul when

you think of what could have been

if time had not intervened before the words

which meant everything but nothing anymore.

Would it be better if we were fogotten

rather than just gone? - perhaps then

we would not feel every moment

stratified, condensed and fragmented

(somehow) like a dozen first times at once.

You get used to the cold, after a while

a trick of the light is all you've become

or the last gasp of some other world,

at least that's what I tell myself

whenever I'm in the same room as you.