darling, are there
nights enough to kiss you/miss you?
it’s midnight and I might never sleep
without you snaked around me.
only so many
nights in the world/minutes in which to kiss
as such, I think there aren’t enough.
so kiss me double when I next see you,
fill my mind till I can feel you
‘stop embarrassing yourself’
I tell myself and
shelve the flowers, hide them,
powdered face and hands,
I stand on one foot staring
intensely at the bubbles – green,
encased in neon – feeling
strange and unaccustomed
to human contact, much less
with the eyes.
consulted oracle, historical being
for me to live up to & suck through my teeth
all the words I’d like to say, like ‘Hey,
let’s just be friends’ and ‘when did you first
try me beyond belief?’ and
will this ever end?
and no, I think not, my lot
is to always find fault.
with the consulted oracle, referenced love-being
all things lovely & all being well, I smell
her affected oddities and teasing, torture
humming off her like a flustered ‘please’: please
be with me, love me, hug me
suffocate me
bait me
break me
>
>
>
>
>
by god I want you far too much and such a yen for looking couldn’t be enough though love, you are lovely to look at and that look you get when you’ve met a clever idea in your head or said something to make yourself laugh and pass me that glint in your eye or sigh into my arm isn’t quite the half of it.
you know I’ve said I can’t express
in lines, what shuttles up inside
and why, I couldn’t say although
it’s true I thrive on pain
and know that if you wanted it,
I’d write three times as much
as this, a poem every day:
three hundred failed attempts
to say how much I love you
and if it should transpire that
I never could inspire all that
awful glowing feeling back
it matters just as much as this –
a glitch, but it exists
well maybe now we both are faded, grown
grey in our downtrodden troughs
and say we won’t burn quite as brightly
as we did when we first fell in love
(in separate pasts, in separate months)
but hey, we both are drawn to night skies
filled with lights and signs and promise,
and say, we’re both drawn to each other
maybe ‘cos we saw another light like us
that’s hushed and snuffed?
but stuff that screwed us up’s not worth
thought more than this.
And This is all I want to say:
come away with me
and stay forever under all those starlit signs
I’ll always want you more than ever
after all, this – you and I.
(I’m scared,
oh boy, I’m more than terrified
that everything I say or do has no effect
and no,
that’s not what I’m trying to say)
I’m scared of the day when
I reduce you to less than you are,
I trivialise, deride you, play your
weaknesses and faults
against you, say you
were no more or less than any other
to cover up my tracks
and dowse myself in lines
and wine
and sleep as if I’d never slept:
awake and lie all day in bed,
saying thinking nothing.
and now I’m almost thinking
I’d be better off to skip this –
stop, just lose your lovely
faultlessness –
confess it’d all been a charm,
a dream or something, nothing
(a spin in a cynical light)
If I could’ve only
done one thing
then it would be enough for me.
To free your mind of malice
I’d take you up
like a challenge in my arms
and plant a thousand
imprints of my lips
to sip the sadness from you
& when you’re lying on the sofa,
dogged by thoughts and shunning sleep,
I’ll wrap the ghost of me around you
keep you all inside,
contain you,
stop your soul from slipping out
& feeling incomplete
circa mid Nov
create
is exactly what I’m going to do,
fabricate it in my mind:
All colours fancy – neon, glowing,
posing like you know what you’re doing,
glowing inside-out from all that
trapped-up sexual tension.
bent on finding out
what reconciliation feels like
– tight –
and we couldn’t be any closer than this,
right on the mark with your timing,
finding me helpless
to resist those eyes, those lines.
They must have watched me spying you,
imploring you to pry yourself
away and into my path.
And there is still no point denying you
my heart.
I’m going to be straightforward:
I love him more than words can say.
what can I make, or do
to act as finite proof?
what words will serve
to love him better
than I can
with my lips or hands?
downaphiltrum 