Touching,

Touching again.

Remembering the touch.

Learning again

The tag game of lust.

I'm painting the hallway mauve,

Or it could be purple or lilac,

Because, as you know, men never know

The proper names for colours.

I'm painting the hallway as a gift,

A present for your unlikely return.

I love you,

But you know

I have never been good

At knowing, or wanting to know,

The proper meaning of words.

I'm painting over the cracks and the wounds,

The fights and the shouts.

This is a jumbled flat, an injured place,

Of awkward dimensions.

Bicycles and books, papers and letters

Are crowding me out.

It is time for a move, time to be gone.

I'm painting the hall, then I'm painting the walls.

I'll paint over the memories, I'll brighten the dull doors.

Death to the bland to magnolia and gardenia

Life is lilac.

Life is full and round.

There will come a time

When, all wasted out,

The skin will hang loose

Upon bones worthless to a dog.

Then, perhaps,

My anger shall subside

And slow to a proper pace

Across my numb and broken heart,

Unseasoned by a single jot

Of passion's once decent rage.

I consider Oedipus to have acted well

In the interests of his crown and state.

The man that has seen too much

Was better born blind

And saved the cost

Of purging memory.

Better the heart dark from birth

Than to have known a love

That clamps and binds the mind

With traitorous truth.

You cannot imagine what you have done to us,

The dispossessed, the lost souls,

The under fed,

The unburied dead.

You cannot bring a shrunken child back to life,

Bone thin in dead embrace

Of an arid teat.

Asleep

She is her own country and soul.

A stranger even to my most deep love,

Which, when she awakes, is a giant thing.

Asleep she is greater than our common life,

Replete in her own dreams.

When she sleeps

My heart makes a pulsing count

Of all her beauties and virtues,

Waiting for her to wake

To my quiet adoring grin and gaze.

Yet when the morning comes

To kiss my love awake

She thinks me a heartless man

That never gives her praise.

There are three reasons why

I would ever lie to you.

The first is to protect you,

The second is to protect myself,

And the third leads to a paradox.

The third is when I lie to protect the two of us,

From the dangers of my first and second lies.

How do you judge yourself ?

What comparison can you make

In considering your own worth ?

There are some things that I would defend to the death,

But not necessarily my own.

On the blackboard menu today

We have a compote of shredded emotions

On a tart bed of tattered hopes.

Followed by a substantial main course:

Home truths, on the bone,

Studded with piquant peccadilloes,

Lying in a spicy sauce, accompanied by

The season’s infidelities.

Dessert is a rather rich confection,

Which we think you will be lucky to finish.

Why not wash it all down with a bottle, or two,

We’ve got a decent cellar.

Contemplate your choice, but please keep in mind

Only the set menu is served before seven.

So don’t waste your time considering

Choices you haven’t the stomach to choose.