The dawn played false again this year.
We dared and lost, now bad blood curdles us;
our hollow ‘mate’ hangs upside down,
a winner only for September…
Mired in the ash-end of our hopes,
we are conflicted to the core:
a win for pride would lessen us.
How did it come to this? Again.
But hey! The stadium is new and swish –
with decent beer, sometimes, and corporate
hosting – like some blank airport terminal.
The whited sepulchre of goals.
His eyes disquiet us.
Affectionate, devoted, eager
and intent, attempting to
ingratiate himself – or spring
But veiled with the suspicion
that would flare without warning
into defence, into attack, a flash
that bared those teeth in anger,
unprovoked; to bite the hand
that fed, that cared for him…
Blood and bruises, tetanus and shock.
The curtains draw a few more times,
drawn closed on tenterhooks and lies
by us who know, on him – oblivious –
who blindly licked and sprang. Or snapped.
Eyes wide. Days short. Disquieting.
A little, light and fragile thing,
but fierce, is coming to an end
I walked today for walking’s sake
along the former railway line –
heading out cross-country
away from house-backs crowding in,
past schools and smallholdings –
cut and banked, civils large:
a theatre of citizens ~
Some seemed intent, but most friendly:
the steppers, joggers, dog walkers,
pairs of red-faced cyclists,
that little girl on her first bike
hurtling to her mummy –
and just this once a man
with on his arm a hoodless hawk:
A gimlet glance from the absurd ~
Out facing the wind, then back, I
shook off a winter’s lethargy
between the cross-ways and the wye
I could die today.
I’ve thought that many times
since I was a troubled person
in my teenage years –
before the suicide attempt –
but less and less once I took my life
in hand,
to simplify and move it forward…
So it was a shock to realise in A&E
that it was your life that’s hanging
by a thread more slender than my own.
Don’t go. Not yet. Not yet a while….
I wore my shorts this one more time
in angsty hope, in optimism
that showing willing by my token
I might persuade the summer it should linger
one more day, even perhaps another hour
or two, before it flits away…
But it was over yesterday.
One is at a party on old streets in Amsterdam,
her face highlit in glitter mask;
rousing with her friends, the gloaming laced by lamps, their
glows like candles lit to joy
One is in those Wembley crowds – to celebrate
and sing, to roar our tribe’s return;
he shares a bond through harmony, an affirmation
of this autumn’s coming home
One is scouting puffins on the Orkneys’ outer rocks
where they built and reeled at festival; stepped back
since cycling down the Danube from its sources to the sea –
on their way to somewhere new
Move on up…
Filling touch with invitation ~
Filled with stomach-high anxiety.
Filled with desire, to sate the unmasked void
Filled by surrender of control
Filled with tightness; breached by lust
Overtopped and wanting more
Filled with passive-sub arousal
Filled with gasps and grind; Oh my!
Filled and shaken by emotions
Filled with lubricant and seed
Full, before the aftermath…
I saw a jerky film of me: b&w, slow frame rate;
out of context, out of time
I was hewing like an artisan:
iron-bound to closely-drawn detail
through handles grafted in my skin –
exercising agency…
as if that would decipher hell;
Staring, puzzled, across the dislocation
(How had I flown across it?)
To see beyond a darken-glass:
where webs of speculation crystallised
from 2, or maybe 3, firm points of data –
liminal, then clarified…
fine patterns filigree from air;
How had I flown across that gulf
not once but many times?
Far from home’s secure chimera
I walked into a room, reluctantly, to face cacophony
(comprised, however, largely of indifference);
imagining I’m branded otherwise
beside the marks of humdrum bourgeoisie –
Berghaus, Next, Levi’s – I wear as emblems day-to-day;
feeling as if the lines anxiety has scratched
around my eyes were welling blood
The time felt late. Eleven? 1:30? Or toward sunrise?
We’d travelled hours, together, gravitating.
She had an open face, mobile in expression
and quite strong around the jaw;
light brown hair, with no artifice of blonde.
~ Clear eyes who’d seen some compromise and hurt
in a life which didn’t ask for much,
that suffered what it must and learned
and still found gratitude for simple acts of kindness.
~ Someone I was protecting, seeing safely home,
as neither escort nor yet lover
but attentive to her needs as understood,
to the best of my abilities. Albeit sadly flawed.
Maintain the Advance! 