Oh let me be your breakfast pastry
I’m slightly salt yet sweet, so tasty
I’ll be the froth upon your coffee
Your doughnut nibbled softly
Spread me jamly on your brioche
Or your plain bread if you’re not that posh
Let me be there, your strong builder’s tea,
As you start another day, with tea, and you, and me.
Poetry?
We can lie
We can lie together
and tell each other the truth
Honey moon
You looked into my face
but the moon
through the window
behind you
caught my gaze.
You saw my focus soften
and looked too.
Our honey moon.
Turn
I feel the autumn breeze
on my heart.
It slows me.
But your spring
is budding
is beckoning to shine.
The world turns.
Lives turn.
Your turn.
September plums
In summer
red gold plum skins are paper thin.
They split when touched.
Later
you nip thick black September skin
with your teeth
suck out green flesh
and with skill
and luck
leave the stone inside.
The distances between us
The summer. The summer it all started
when I first saw your colour, hard against rocks bleached grey in the sun,
the far side of too far of water, clear water green in the light-slanted light.
The rocks tipped down to the edge and below; their shadows hid emptiness.
I thought once of swimming, of diving deep down and strong re-emerging,
hauling myself, bleeding hands and torn muscles,
hauling myself through the force of my shoulders,
hauling myself up to where you stood watching.
The thought cut my skin to the bone so, so well that I knew me,
I raised a weak hand and then covered my eyes.
But somehow it happened. By Ferragosto I knew you.
And then with the swifts you were gone.
The distance. Distance in the tele-world today has no meaning
they tell us. The kilometres between us we filled up with words.
My words described you blank pictures, wide sweeps of a charcoal,
no hatching, no shading, no colouring in.
You told me you tasted, you rolled my words on your tongue,
you felt their soft flavour, their texture, my thought.
They excite you at distance.
I sweated the words as I carefully planned them,
then wiped them away at a stroke
except the ones with the salt of the sea,
with the salt of the earth and of blood.
And somehow again the light from the lighthouse,
the light from the lighthouse that catches the stars,
across the dark sea you caught sight of a message.
And you came.
The last distance of all is the worst distance, of nearness.
Though we live in same rooms, on parallel planes
our lives slide like our thoughts.
Grey eyes show your mind elsewhere than where I am,
your life you remember and your life you imagine
have more meaning than ours.
But still, and remember, in our closeness there has to be hope.
Remembering rocks and remembering lighthouse,
I will wait here in silence. Ready to speak.
First published in itch: THE CREATIVE JOURNAL Issue 15 http://www.itch.co.za/home
Football love (part 1)
If you were like my football team
I’d wave my scarf all round your ground.
I’d toot my vuvuzuela
till the neighbours came around.
I’d wait for you forever
like Bobby Greyfriars his bone
and the words you know I’d long to hear?
Now you’re coming home.
I felt sad
I felt sad but in a good way
in a hug way
in a soft warm blanket way
In a holding way
in a closed eye way
in a your arms around me way
I felt sad
but then that did not matter
At first
At first, then, everything was good.
You know how it is.
After the first doubtful unsureness
The awakening the unfolding
The relaxing and allowing.
You know how it feels.
But then later, perhaps one morning or night,
One weekend or absence, something happened
Or was felt to have been.
You know what it could be.
You remember.
Was it one or the other?
It does not matter you know.
The hairline crack of the heart never heals.
What? Time heals?
No, no it does not.
Time covers.
Time covers.
From force of habit
Even on a sunny day, from force of habit
I stand in the bus shelter,
safe below its roof.
I could say it’s just like
holding on to your hand for too long
or sitting closer than is comfortable
for you.
But similar pale comparisons are easy enough
for you to make up for yourself
so I’ll just stand here quietly in the bus shelter,
looking out at the sun.
