Thursday Poem: Out of Touch

Out of Touch

Your hands could carve the shape of her
from empty air and memory
and take her back with you
to all those remembered places
to unmake all those mistakes you made.

She could grow from within this emptiness
into solidity, and you could walk together again.
Time and memory would no longer
hold you prisoner for another hollow day.

She would never take that path,
that journey away, you would never see
that train disappearing around that curve
away from your shared lives, going out,
far from your world to a new land
you cannot reach, you can never touch.

Thursday Poem: We Wear These Lives

We Wear These Lives

We are here, but this
is not what we want
and here is not the place.

You are not quite who
I was looking for,
and I am not what you want.

This place is not the place
we expected to be.
We wear these usual lives
while we wait for life to begin.

We wait, ready to shrug off
these lives and step
into a new world we know
is almost within reach,

yet just too far to touch.
We know we will know it
only when we see it.

Thursday Poem: The Shadows Unfold

The Shadows Unfold

Here everything you’ve ever known.
lies on the ground in front of you.
You cannot turn away and look
towards a new bright day out there.

We have seen all we have seen, yet
it throws its shadows dark across
the walls of all our minds, unable
to break these chains we forged, we watch
each memory unfolding here
before us, unable to turn away.

The day begins as everything
now starts again, while shadows grow
unfolding themselves here in front
of us, each watching them encroach.

But what else can we do except
let every shadow fall across
our days, while waiting here to feel
the warming light from this morning sun.

Thursday Poem: A New Promise

A New Promise

Do not be fooled
by this new promise.
I have made
such promises before.

And I know
I cannot be trusted.
See, I have
these shifty eyes

and the questionable motives
your mother, long ago,
warned you about.

I have no intention
of keeping my word.
Words to me
are just tools to use

to enable me
to achieve my desires
and you,
you are what I want,

even though
we both know
I do not need you
and you would be

better off without me
here to drag you
down into misery.

I am not
the sort of person
who will always
be there for you.

When you need me
I will always be
somewhere else, holding
some new one close
while your arms are empty.

Thursday Poem: The Promise of All We Desired

The Promise of All We Desired

In the darkness, hands reach out
for the safety of another’s warming skin.
The reassuring touch of breathing flesh
pressing back against tentative fingertips

To give comfort against the dark
and the lonely ticking of the clock
no-one can ever turn back
to those earlier days when life seemed

As though it could only grow beyond
into times that would turn and glow
with the promise of all we desired
waiting for us to come and take it all.

Now, though, the night seems long
even as the day is waiting,
ready to fall through the curtains
to reveal in its sharp light

How another day has arrived
ready to hasten us towards that time
when there will be no more lost days
and only a never-ending lonely night.

Thursday Poem: Within Constraints

Within Constraints

Formal arrangements are made, so we
Know of our place within them.
We do not have to step outside

What is required or what is expected.
We move within constraints
And only in acceptable ways

To do what is required, no more
Beyond what is deemed appropriate
For our station and situation.

Here is where we are appointed to
And this is where we shall remain
Until such a time as we are desired

To be somewhere else, or to become
Something other than what we are
As current circumstances may demand.

Thursday Poem: The Restless Wind

The Restless Wind

All that will remain will be dust
on the futile crying wind.
We will all turn to dust

as our words crack and dry
blown far from our thoughts
by the always restless wind.

All we have is the dry cracked heat
and the empty silence of wind-blown words
that say nothing, as nothing can be said

now that the days are empty of all
but the heat and the dry dead wind
that never stops blowing our restless dust

across these plains that were once
the hills and green raining valleys
where we knew our ordinary lives.

Thursday Poem: This Delicate World

This Delicate World

We go, just you and I, to look upon
this delicate bright world, bend close and peer
into all that is not so easily
described. We think it would be wrong to give
a name to what we see when it remains

as something like a mystery, not taken
so easily into the hand and held
but left to fly so far away and free
up to the topmost branches of the high
and furthest tree. A place where it can have

the world beneath it, waiting there for it
to take it all, then hold it safe, away
from reaching hands that stretch towards it all
each wanting to devour, destroy, to take
these precious moments all away from us.

Thursday Poem: The Space Between Words

The Space Between Words

Just some more words to fill up
the endless white emptiness
that spreads out from this page,
out into the infinite space
that lies between all our words.

The space between these words
we can fall through and go on
falling forever without ever reaching
a place we can land and turn

back to face what we have spoken,
what we have written and what
we meant to say, as the words
fell into silence and the emptiness
spread out across all our lives.

Thursday Poem: If Left Unnamed

If Left Unnamed

If left out there, unnamed, it can’t escape
Evade definitions and then return
Becoming something new and giving names
To that unnamed and hidden sense of dread
That turns all days to nights and nights to fears

Which haunt each dream, and grow from shadowed dark
To walk though memory and night and dreams.
So nightmare turns, becomes obsession. Dread
Itself becomes a fear of fear that grows
From days and nights which turn from dreams to fear.

And you are there and waiting for the day
To take your hand and take you on towards
A better form of life, away from here
And all it promised you, and failed to bring
Up to your open door you left ajar

And waiting for the day to come for you
To take you far from here to some unknown
And newer, further place not weighted down
So heavily with histories and tales
The stories, myths and legends all now told

Of golden days from long ago, and times
Before these days became the newest days
And suddenly it seemed as though forever
Was closer, ready now to grow and bloom
Into these moments you could never lose.

Thursday Poem: The Light of another Dawn

The Light of another Dawn

The elements of memory,
The barest traces left
In the rocks of time,
Geology heaps the present
Over times long past
Burying it in the layers
Of forgetfulness

We learn to dig much deeper
To uncover the traces
Discover who we once were,
Before it all fell down
Deep into the loss of history.

Still we do not know
What happened here.
We can only guess
How all these days ended
In smoke, flame and fear

As the walls came tumbling down
Around our heads
As we held the young ones close,
Fearing they would never see
The light of another dawn
And all our times would end too soon.

Thursday Poem: Regal

Regal

Her fingers grip this world so carelessly,
a day is lost as easily as her word
all left to fall to the dirt or grass,
or float away down gutter and drains.

On she dances through all her days
towards the possibility of all her
elaborate dreams and those fairy tales
she knows are bound to come true.

So she constructs castles and towers
high above the roofs of the town
that she sees as little more than
a dark shadow across her faraway eyes.

She ignores the men calling out to her
promising her something far less
than her visions of romance can give her
as her due, and the smiles she bestows

on their every awkward gesture or phrase
are not the promises they think they are,
but the indulgent whims of a princess
for the crude obsequiousness of her subjects.

Thursday Poem: Roads, Routes and Maps

Roads, Routes and Maps

This road, the distance, and you and I here
with all those roads we travelled, standing still
we do not know now all we need to know
to find which way to turn, and stumbling on
towards another crossroads up ahead.

It’s hard to tell, and hard to say just why
we both should not have taken this one route.
We stand apart now, here and either side
of our old half-torn map, both looking off
away down different new turning roads
that lead away from this last point we share.

And shall I stand and watch you walk away,
with half-torn map in hand, as you go down
that road, until it turns you out of sight?
Or, shall I strike off down another road?
My torn half-share of our outworn old map

held ever tighter in my clutching hand
as I go striding onward without pause
or turning to look back, to see a glimpse
of you, when changes in the landscape turn
our twisting routes towards each other’s path
to bring us one day back to meet again.

Thursday Poem: Walking into Walls

Walking into Walls

Only knowledge lifts us up
from this slow fading dream
to a world we can walk through

stepping away, through these ghosts
and walking into walls that hold us
apart from those sudden moments

that make us wonder what is real
and how each day can fall around us
leaving nothing but memory and loss,

when distance grows longer as time
takes us away from all we once
thought so certain and so right.

Here we are now, and waiting
for those ghosts of memory
to slip through these solid walls

and reach out across the years
with hands we will never hold
and voices we no longer hear.

Thursday Poem: A Summer Beach

A Summer Beach

If all of this were no more than the grains
of sand you trickled through your fingers that
particular long summer afternoon,

while staring out at that distant far tanker
on the horizon, seeing gulls go turning
on scraps of breeze, before you turn to me

while smiling that one smile of yours that says
it will all be all right, I think it would
be quite enough for me to turn to face

the rest of my day knowing you are there
beside me, waiting for whatever the day
will bring. Not letting either fall or stumble

while making our way back, away from here
returning from the shore to that small cottage
which now encloses all our lives around

each other every morning as we lie
together in its far too narrow bed.

Thursday Poem: Without Walls

Without Walls

The darkness grows around her life
she reaches out with stretched taut fingers
hoping for the reassurance
that walls can give to her. She lingers

behind the shadows, lost and still
afraid to fall into the light
and movement while her safety turns
between the open space and fright.

A step away from walls is far
from the security she needs
into falling down for ever more.
In silence she bargains and pleads

for walls to keep her safe from harm
while stepping out, away from them
into the open possible
and unconstrained that will condemn

her, taking all refuge away
to leave her falling through the air
into empty space, to fall into
a freedom leaving her nowhere.

Thursday Poem: Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt

It could be so precious
radiant with captured sunlight.

It could be so dark
that light turns away defeated.

It could be some delicate jewellery
just made for your poised neck.

It could be anything at all
and I could be the one

who discovers it, then carries it
carefully back home to you.

Thursday Poem: The Shape of Words

The Shape of Words

I learn the shape of words and how they make
these things become so real by making shapes
and giving edges that will form a break.

The space between the words and things they name
are silences we fall through to the world
that spreads around us. Nowhere is the same

as where we stand between the sound unfurled
across the possible, that makes it real
apart from which unreality swirled

becoming like a ghost of thought we see
as shaping form around a space unnamed
and out of reach, beyond both you and me.

Thursday Poem: Days Slip Through

Days Slip Through

Days are like that, piling up one after another
and another, until the morning you wake

to find a whole week of days
has slipped beyond your grasp

before you could even manage
to reach towards a single day.

They slip through the hand like water,
like grains of sand running through fingers

no matter how tight you hold them
the days evade and slip away from you

leaving you here, sitting alone
wondering where your time has gone.

Thursday Poem: A Small Significant Box

A Small Significant Box

I could have found a gift
something precious, beautiful,
in a small significant box
wrapped with a neat tight bow

to show that I do understand
and I know how the wind
blows your life away from mine
and how the rain falls down

as you stare from windows
searching for a rain-beaten road
that will take you away from here
and on to that longed for life
you wish you'd had the heart to take

that would lead you down that street
to that steamy small café where I wait
with a small significant box
wrapped with a neat tight bow
here on the table in front of me.