Guitar

Trying to learn, after such a long time,
My hands like a newborns on those seemingly silver strings,
They hurt too soon, but I still try,
Pays off when that first real chord rings,
Getting accustomed to the same, yet different sound,
The steel sings, of new and strange things.

At first, it seemed impossible to hold,
An infant grappling with a too-big toy,
But curiously I played around,
Tapped,strummed, rapped, hummed as if
My voice was the tune, and the wires
My breath, seemingly endless, excited and
Never tireless.

While my touch hardened, and the tones
Which had once been painful to play, I
Thought I could forget easily, the teenager in me
Told me to move on to greater things, sprawling fingers
Made the threads fight me more than before,
Those copper coils which I wouldn't relinquish.

At what I guess was the midpoint, I kept
To simple strands, no need to show off
To anyone but myself, clean, clear, truthful
Melodies, woven around my palms, they perform
Themselves,

Too short, too swift, now they are ropes,
Threatening to tie me down, what was the gift
Of eternal ignorance, now chains of familiarity,
Aged in between the retired riffs,
Whatever newness was promised, forgotten in
Discord, or maybe my ears can't hear,
But now I'm chained to this saddle,
The horse that can't cross the bridge,
Riding towards the river,
But it too is lost,
Silenced by the seasons,
Smoothed over every ridge.

Evening

To think, or maybe to know,
You're resting your white hands,
On the grainy grey marble worktops,
Feet awkwardly standing on
The tiled floor,
The cavelike kitchen,
All inclusive, the frosted glass,
Shy in being all revealing,
As I recall, but I must detach
From the wretched room, or at least,
Half-room, the garden lights,
Probably solar, they blur through those
French doors, nocturnal bright eyes,
Me and feeling polar,
Maybe not there, my hands on yours,
But not not there, my hands on the ice panes,
But caught in the middle, the muted voice
In the vacuum of the in between, double
The hazing on either side, the almost-air
Walls of nothing, or maybe, the glazing--

SkySea

The cool night air, the interwoven
Leaves of ebony ink, fan the night
Through the window, and broken
Bits of the spoken blitz, rain down
Like invisible snow, flakes on my hand,
The slightest movement, and they're
Real no more.

Once in a while, the corner
Of my eye, it catches a star, and
Through the blades and bracts,
Some light, perhaps some glowing seed,
A new beginning, but the shell
Already cracked, and the
Dusky shades of black, backwards
Perhaps, have cast their sooty spell
Over my dreamy diamond, my chance
But these spectral scales, too dry
To shine in the night, their stance
Held by their own coal cry, a husky
Howl through the pitch, can't advance,
Held back by the shackling swarms,
None of which can be unchained,
Once one is aware the rest are woken,
Everything outside of and yet contained,
In this absolute obsidian of solidarity sustained.

Morning

The kettle screams a thousand names,
All of them and yet none of them yours,
I pour the water onto the floor,
Hope its hotness will burn away the ground,
Scald away the plastic laminate,
And the mixed and mashed
Wooden waste beneath.

Then there would be a space, a gap
An unknown tunnel perhaps,
A journey, a place with no map
Jump in and let the still-damp darkness
Swallow you in it's throat,
Words stuck there warped,
A burnt beginning takes me,
And maybe at the other end,
I'll  turn up in your kitchen,
The crisp crumby smell of wholemeal bread,
Half full jars of honey, jam, anything,
Perhaps some bourgeois butter, overpriced muesli,
An array of nutri-grain.
Organic milk, the lot,
Anything, everything, because I don't know
Anything, about your beginning.
But maybe, a cup of tea,
Waiting for maybe me,
On the table.

Waterway

On that night I'll think I can smell it,
That cleansing salt, in the crystal waters,
My eyes see in the lucid lake,
The likeness of what I've left behind me,
Sparkling in it's simple shimmer,
Brighter almost in the remake,
More shaky yet more defined.

Maybe the music over my shoulder,
The sound fused into uncertainty,
Only the silent waves sway into my ear,
Beckon me closer into their clear call,
In their stirring thoughts I wonder,
I imagine their slow speech, so sincere,
Embraced in their rise and fall, so near.

But then I look down at it,
And that scent of sulphur diamonds,
Now just dirt for dirts sake.
Nothing at all reflected, just mud
And mire and muck, just my luck
That this river's actually opaque,
Leading nowhere, only to distrust.

Rush

I used to run for things sometimes,
Feet dancing between the pavement squares,
Laces in their tarantella,
My ever late maze spun unaware,
And later when I return,
I trip on the cobwebs I left there.

I used to run for things sometimes,
Hands hurling hold on hold on,
Anything in the interim breeze,
Superhuman speed I called on,
Now in retrospect too slow,
The hasty hope I stalled on.

I used to run for things sometimes,
Heart hammers the pattern into my skull,
Mind remembers it until it's time,
Or maybe not time, but eyes too full,
And I fall behind my running self,
Pushed back by the pull,
Of your name,
On my feet,
On my hands,
In my heart,
On my mind,
See it in my breath,
In the cold, cold air.

Metallic

Looking through cold bars,
My breath steams against the grey,
Slowly rusts the gleam away,
My face pressed up against the
Stubborn steel, adamantly robust.

The snake shackles upright, their smoky
Stone what my hands call home,
The corroded cracks under them,
Wholeness they have never known,
Almost as if touch itself tarnishes
That once brilliant chrome.

The wind wails through
These once lustrous pipes,
The once resonant roar,
Now empty and dry.

And in the spaces in between,
I can see things perhaps not so jaded,
Trees that must be green,
Though I can't tell, the colour's faded,
Roads I must have seen,
Or with my eyes invaded.

When I try to lean against
Such a once stable stake,
It crumbles to powder next to
My cheek, the air once so clear
Now opaque, the once dust of metal
Now the dust of stone,
Now a blighted petal,
Rotting on it's own.

Visual Eyes

Woke up to the dry summer rain,
Tapping his fingers impatiently
On my window, on my walls,
The storm which comes so quietly.
His hands push across the grey skies,
His arms the wreaths of dreary cloud,
They hold me in my dreams so close,
I can hear him howling winds out loud.
We dance across the floating ground,
The rainbow our path to the sun,
Glassy gifts under our feet,
Pull on my hand and we start to run.

Silver slope and silver rope,
Never could make a gold road,
Diamond salt and diamond soap,
Never clean  but they corrode,
Tangle my hair in his hope,
Lost in what we owed.

Maybe then fists into the air,
I wake again and can't decide,
His knocking on the the surface,
His striking heartbeat of which
I was unaware,
Both sides interlaced,
But in or outside?

May

As I sat facing away from the sun,
Hoping to hide, my face, shield my eyes,
My back burnt, I couldn't run
From the big bright ball in the sky.

I talk and I point and I laugh and I look
But when I reach out to it,
Throwing my invisible hook
Lie, and sink her into that seemingly
Orange skin, clinging on to the taste of hot,
Swallowing the seeds of doubt
And letting them grow into a fire-tree,
The leaves are steam when I water them,
The branches turn to ash as
Soon as they grow,
Held up, shaped, wire-free
By it's own heated cage, the soil
Turns to dust, trying to wrap it
In foil, hoping it's defeated rage
Will hurt itself, and not me.

It miss it's rough bark,
Scratching the back of my hands,
A cat call, slits in the dark,
My knuckles tingle with it's coarse course,
Almost like mountains across my wrist,
The soft sharp spikiness makes me chuckle,
But in all it's jagged charm, I could not
Resist, took my fist against the crags,
First that and then my arms;
In some strange embrace, me, and the rags
Of what perhaps was more hard than harsh,
And I could not get through, harm
Is what I thought it had intended to do.

After the second has passed,
I peel it all back, and I regret
Wanting to alight it all,
Now just a twisted silhouette,
I see it, and I stall.