2 a.m.
the rain raps at
my window
reminding me
of your stones
of a warm
summer night
when we walked barefoot
through the pond reeds into
a cove
where you told me
you loved me
for the first time
2 a.m.
but I know better now
and keep my window
shut
Every morning
I check the post;
Your letters
never arrive.
Too long I’ve been
kowtowing to you
begging pardon for
the ways I don’t suit your mood
meet your expectations
or wear the right sort of panache.
Now you tell me I’ll never get up
and my eyes sting because
my knees creak, arthritic
when I try to stand.
I grunt and roll over
the asphalt a hot
slice
of anger
down
my
spine.
First things first:
You’re blocking my sun.
Get the fuck out.
I called out your name
Which fell and dashed
Along surf-struck coast
Silent falls the snow
And long your shadow casts
Blinding me to all others
The rigid goodbye —
Your back
You tell me you will change
but I am not allowed to.
If it comes to abandonment
then I shall cast you away first
and build myself up
again, from the first
handful of dust.
If I confessed that I missed you, it would be a betrayal of when I had vowed you’d stay with me always, a tincture in the blood, a rupture somewhere deep in the ventricles that clench shallowly, crippled by your presence or the absence of. In lamentations, my poor heart and me are such willing victims who bare their jugulars at your pleasure or mercy, tethered on life-support by your eye’s whimsy: a moment’s gleaming and passing.
Games of luck and games of chance
Flying a kite on a warm summer’s day
Are wonderful, stress-free pastimes
Those childhood modes of play.
But do not think to tinker with my heart
To take it apart and wait until I erect it again
Do not mistake an emphatic “NO” for a start
And resume those cruelest forms of trickery.
That façade that proclaims kindness is false
That smile only searches for a new toy to break
Like a self-deluded hero
You mistake a friend as a vampire to stake.
And though I loved you, and showed myself true
I love myself more, than to be treated so by you.
Perceptions shatter
When no longer viewed by the gaze of love
Rosy innocence severed by the paramour
Who seduced and abandons
An unchallenged dream
Sits like a gilded idol
Naïve of heartbreak
RED GLADIOLA 