Tonight I shall remember my ramshackle lovers,

Those who have forgotten me, who lie tonight

Free in some other lover's arms.

Tonight I shall remember their faithlessness

And curse them for their cruelty.

Tonight I shall remember ramshackle lovers;

All of whom would be forgiven

If only tonight they would remember me.

Half finished poems haunt the mornings

When I wake alone.

They hint at the memory of dreams,

Rewarding the flesh with a yawn,

Hiding my horror and fear

Of dawn's empty eyed hollowness.

In a childish dream, asleep on the Malvern Hills,

I walked alone over cloven clodded ground.

I saw a hart pulled down by the baying pack,

Saw the huntress spear his tongue and feed it to the hounds.

She left him speechless,

With soiled flanks and a broken back.

His blood wept into a stream,

Turned the water to crimson wine.

In the meadow by the brook

Two lovers bucked.

I saw the girl lying on the grass,

She grasped the man with her legs about his waist,

Her skirt rucked up, her body arched,

Eager for his daggering pleasure.

As the monarch died there rose up a sun

Shining candy red through the cleft lips of the sky.

A hawk stooped down to feed on his eyes

Whilst the lovers lay doused in sweat and sighs.

I woke, and turned towards a sudden sound

And saw the huntress and her hounds appear.

She passed me by with but a single glance,

Before, her hair flicked back across her shoulder,

She rode away from me and into the shadow of the hanging hawk,

Which stooped and slid down the face of the sky,

Leaving a terror in the air that scratched the cheek of my thought,

Chilling my dangerously mortal love torn soul.

This day may wake

With the moon tumbled from the sky

But once my pleasure was to wake

With the breath of my lover

Feint upon my neck.

Desire, like the sun,

Would step up the arch of morning

With the pace of our loving,

Soothing out the ache of sleep.

In dreams I have seen many sights,

I have stilled the violence of the sea,

Traveled far across the earth

And sailed the sky with home-made wings,

But it was in such waking hours

That I had the pleasure I desired.

It is from such half sleepy moments

That I send this poem out to curl up beside her,

Like a verbal form of under the bed clothes hug,

Like the last cuddle before we got up.

Where she is I do not know.

My Moon, my Sun, My Sky and Earth:

All have gone and followed her,

Leaving me alone with this morning,

Sprawled comfortless in an empty bed.

For the sake of the dream we shared

I am left lost in the mirrored hallway of the heart.

Here I pace through sleepless nights

Unable to find the door that would lead me out

To the scented garden where we first met.

You have kissed away my dreams

And sipped the spirit from my soul

Finding your own love

Whilst party drunk

Amongst those ape like thugs.

The grey and moodless sea,

In a silence of sullen apathy,

Lacks even that borrowed beauty

Lent to the stinking foreshore mud

By the early morning North Sea light.

Inland stand wheaten lakes of stricken stalks,

Curved by the wind into shivering waves,

Cut down in deep shadowed rifts

Before we could bring the harvest in.

Yet what glory for a man to stand here,

Free from thought and with burning eyes,

Baiting the violent beauty of the scythe edged storm.

Through the watery grey light

My eyes mark the length and span

Of oceans beyond their normal sight.

I cry out for you to come to me.

The sea listens to my human voice

With the easy ear of one who does not hear.

The words are returned by the tide,

The mud and splatter of a half-done existence.

My escape is in the space beyond memory

Which is not yet my own country,

But where I will one day come ashore.

This bleak eyed man,

Such it is that I have now become.

I was once a bright hero, like no other.

I have been aged a little beyond my years,

I can recall each syllable that traced

The path of this present fear of heart,

Each rasping breath that tolled out the minute's length.

Trooping my way through the country of the soul

I sang a lusty song, but now sing no more hymns to beauty.

I skulked and sulked and stalked through my disposable youth.

More tears than joy were mine

When you ignored my hasty scribbled notes.

Now that I am dry

You come back to me and complain:

I do not come alive

when enfolded in your arms.

I sleep when you would not.

So you, who once decried my hot love,

Find me now too hard a rock

And go elsewhere to sup.

Yet though now no beat of life will force my breath

Or make my blood to flow with passions pace,

As once it did at the very thought of you,

No other love will come to heal the wound

Where once my heart found its place of rest.

To the grave I shall cry, in all truth,

That never before or since

Did walk the earth another soul so good

As yours, that once and always I loved,

For I own it was

The very best of female kind and flesh.

Summer is too soon departed.

The seasons fall too quickly

Into another year recalled.

I want to keep them captive

In the heat of my young heart.

Yet when this drowsy hazy day is done and dead

We shall pay it no honour above the present hour.

Not, that is, until we have grown old

in our children's children's eyes,

And then, with our shadows

leaning long towards the grave,

Its memory will once more have plentiful tributes paid.

I would have written you a poem

But then I watched your dark eyes

Shining with love for me,

And I no longer cared

To share you with strangers.

I remember how

The wind stirred the heavy air.

I remember my hand

Rolling down the swell of your mound.

Our limbs gripping softly as we kissed

Damply in the shaded hollow.

How you licked my finger

Until the sugar

Sweetened your mouth,

Let my finger tips

Dance along your lips,

Pampering the fig once more

As they did then,

Before we had even kissed.

I wipe words

From the corner of your mouth

You suck me dry

You leave me dry

Let angels sing

Let the seed be sown

And the plough turn the turf

As I lie here

Listening to the birds

Wipe the tears from my eyes

Before they fall

And I will wipe your mouth dry

Of all words but one word.

Choice syllables

Aesthetic morsels

And yet

and yet

The heart is not stirred

All fear of loss now gone

A new fear takes hold.

A doubt that's fed by reasoned thought.

How old will this love grow, how stale the look

Which currently stirs may yet become and chide

With pity where once it made the blood to run ?

I still recall your eye glance killing

Of our common trembling bond,

That first speck of coldness

Hinting at the lovers who will intervene

Until we have forgotten each other.

I heard you talk in your dreaming sleep,

And although I shared your bed,

I wondered which lover it was

That had the gift off your goodnight kiss.

I stitch silent words you do not hear

In the velvet cushion of your heart.

The firestream of conception

Once swamped this poem

To plead my case before you.

This was the poem you should have loved me for,

But watching you dance with someone else

The glory of my words is crumpled on the floor.

My love and I went shopping

Down the length of Corporation Street.

We stared in at the pretty mannequins.

My love she has a crafty kind of eye,

And on the sly she kept on watching

The many men who passed the window by.

My love alone went window shopping,

And found the time to stop and buy.

The absence you have left behind

To companion me through life

Talks softly of our life together,

And when I watch a pretty girl walk by

It reminds me how you padded to the shower.

Who will be the heirs of my passing Summer ?

Surely I will find strangers before my door,

Inside my house shall serpents slide

Embracing in graceless knotted copulation.

I am spotted with the shameful blood

That virgins spill when the snake has entrance in.

My house shall burn, the snake will bake,

His skins shall split and flake.

This is the cost put upon my mad churning lust,

It shall not be avoided by dodge or bluff,

Or be confused by the weft and warp

Of my loosely treaded pornographic verse.

This must stop, this worship of outspread thighs.

But how, when it is all that makes

The blood pump to my foolish brain ?

The day before she left me

She cut away my curls.

The next day I looked

Into a mirror

and said

It is not me that cries

but some other fool.

I hate the tales that women spread

Of how badly they have fared

At the hands of men and fate.

Yet they only seem to smile

In the company of brutes.

This is all the truth to be found

In the fickle female mind,

Yet this I'll grant ;

Loves still love

However false may seem the plot

You two remind me too much

Of how I have so often loved and lost.

The three of us were heroes together.

The nights we shared,

Spilling out our laughter with our beer !

We talked away the hours of youth.

There was a pity of it when you lost your way,

A shame beyond sense when such lovers and saints,

As you are, beneath the skin , seemed set

To waste out your days in lesser lives and loves

Than this one love worthy of the blood

That warmed so many bitter tears.

But now you lie together

In an eloquent embrace,

Banded round in the strength of his arms,

And nevermore shall I have cause to say

You two remind me too much

Of how I had so often loved and lost,

But only of how I have so often wished to love.

I am writing poems against my will.

I have promised myself a thousand times

That I would let my tongue and pen be still,

That I would end this ceaseless trade of rhymes.

I have no wish to write, no right to wish.

The weeks grow long and I grow old

Staring out at insignificance's of stance.

I cannot hope nor wonder with my childhood's eye,

Nor dream of cities of light jeweled beneath the sky.

There are no insights left to chase about the page,

No sensualities to be plucked form the dish,

And no more than half a jot remains

Of my once decent ranting rage.

I still live for you love,

And hope one night

to wake and hear

Your softly soothing voice.

I stitch only weak words

In the velvet cushion of your heart

When we should be tied by stronger thread.

The sea should rise and rant and storm

In the passion of our love, and chains

Should keep us in our first ecstasy.

There is such strength in your tenderness,

And I lie here knowing myself blessed

To have found an angel come to ground,

Who now rests her head upon my breast,

Above my heart that holds her alone so dear.

These words are not enough,

They have no power to show my wonder

That one like you had ever

Any thought of love for me.

Women despise men

Who are foolish enough

To write poems about them.

I gifted my love

With verse

That dressed her beauty,

But the verse was spun

Too easy from my hand.

A bad bargain has been struck

If ever my words should take the place

That is so truly her's.

Poems,

she said,

shouldn't be said,

only quietly read.

And poets,

she said,

should not be allowed

to go anywhere near

the poems they rear.

She needn't have feared,

this poet preferred

listening to her,

thinking it absurd

how she turned

into a poem he'd heard.

When we are married,

You said to me,

We must make love

On the boards of a boat

Afloat on a starlit sea.

Now I am alone

I long to be rocked by that sea.

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Last updated 6 February © James Finister 1998 finister@msn.com

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