Growing Away (From You)

The slow drip of the tap stops,
the clock drops its arms to its feet,
my humble mind allows itself a space
where once endless cloud resided.

Tough steps taken to remove
the tap tap tap of memory,
of old cinema reel reeling
old doom-like tones, cruelly.

Slow movements threaded with thought enact
in the glassy sky above opaque as heaven,
brain malfunctioned and pressed it's case
for reform, setting about restructuring
its internal caves, forcing me to obey.

As the thunder of the past died away
and the residue dried in the sunlight,
I found myself analysing scientifically,
to make modifications to that past failure,
to attempt to change my brush-strokes
on the canvass we create for ourselves.

In my dying twilight haunted years alone
I hope to finally erase your face
that abiding proof of my disgrace
mistakes unknown to me alone
how I lost your beauty forever
and curled away into my cave
of degeneration, then rehabilitation.

The drug of repentance having hit
the tip of consciousness, the pain at root,
the rituals I would go through did resolve
and salve the aching wounds made by you
as I made a truce with my errors,
high-fived myself for the boldness
of this intent, crawling out from the loneliness
that self-pitying brings, and instead accepting

that half a man I had become,
unbolted from your body, never to return
to its rightful dock, and as darkness deepens
I retreat to my work, hide in its boughs,
though at sea I am here in language,
as the squall of my mind leaps higher,
wave upon wave naturally refreshes,
so that every pain is laid to waste,
and remembrance of our last embrace brings thankfulness.

Now the Fates have torn the four corners,
tilted the seascape, and the storm eddied
the vessel, so that never again
will it return to its original point of origin,
your golden hair a mirage, your body
and its contours merged with the self
that I have become, along with the other spurned loves
drowned in my existence, quenched in the heat
of passion, the furnace of our bed stoked
finally by splashes of self-repair, drowning me.