Without

All of that summer

I ached not for you but with you

(without you)

Waiting

Beneath the senseless heat

Reformed myself endlessly

All we are is particles

Inside each other forever

And nothing can compare

With you & I

On a settee

A million years ago

Straining to compete

Generation

Suddenly we saw
In the glimpses between things
A series of openings
Leading to nothing

There is no honour anymore
Nor anyone to do the honour to

Saying
“I hope you find yourself alone
Through a whole generation
And lose all hope.”

There is no honour anymore
Nor anyone to do the honour to

Suddenly we were not the people we'd been
Or I had thought we'd been
The well and badly loved / muddling along

I hope you've stopped taking your mother's advice.

Look Again

It was not your open face I failed to love
If it was not and then the rapture that
I failed to hold or compensate
What was the slipping point upon which
We tipped and repeated old mistakes again

If it is not your broken features now that
Keep attention at your feet or elsewhere
Always shifting attention never sleep
If it is not the failure of a love
never learned by heart to play then what

Look again Look and in that looking
Find your heart's opposite a stranger's love
A stranger love still secret secrete upon the heart
That's heavy then light without warning
An emphasis enboldened before early exit

No loss

House

In the open-mouthed pause
Of a new beginning, the held breath
Of hope. So many rooms to fill.

There, in silence, we learnt at last
To be lonely. And alive.
You stretched your mind and soul
Beyond previous estimations
And your heartbeat shooting.
Long nights of interruption
and your body swarmed with ache.
Possibility, connection, invention.
Goodbye squeezed in, boxed-up caution.
You made a home for a time out of time.
Made days out of futures already begun
And now being undone.
You made, made, made out of love, light, need
and the long dark night that held you.

Fragment

And when the hour came

The man I loved did not remember

Hurried whispers caught in time

A horse after its own tail

Timeless love

A late night journey through a foreign country

All language past

Maybe we will be together forever

Or else pass each other in the street

After the years

If and when anything finally happens
I'll find it's like the call I made to you
When you were all nonsense

I couldn't stand

Great stuff you say and I believe it
Because I want to, need to, feel it

I am nothing except the thing we were
Loss in the morning
2am and legs askew again

This is confusing

After the years of longing I know
The longest journey is yet to come

All night I'll wait for you and then some

Return to Sender

We knew they would come back some day,
turning up in the morning post,
all the things we gave away.

The day turned plain after a time and
we no longer noticed when night came
or the weather changed
or we ran out of things to say.

So many things remain unsaid.

We climbed into bed,
hunting for language like dreams,
or dreams that might speak,
and in the silence made love,
like a ladder through the clouds,
love in the spaces between us,
searching for heaven or somewhere
dark to hide which is like night
or love or somewhere we've never been.

I forgive you all the hours you were away
and promise to start again.