The Love Lie

With eyes of jade you made that fatal offer
As we lay low, close clung
And strung out by complexities.
I shouldn’t have believed, but you flashed true, clear,
There in our hunkered bunker underground,
And out of sight, and out of thought, and out of time.
Our embers burned to whitest hottest ash,
I had to go, and knew that the things I would miss
Were the things I’d not guessed and the ways you’d said yes,
And the violent crush of your kiss.

The room was shiny clean as silent steel
As we lay single finger stroking mutual skin
And so still
While sad rain glanced on glass, behind the which
The bored big city grumbled for the end
Of temporary, far too lovely things.
Chromed, mirror-glassed, gloss black was this place
And the long while we sat in that alkaline flat
I never stopped loving your face.

Stupified and quite serene was I, while
The anthracite sky and the greasy tarmacadam stretched to Walsall
And beyond. The evening threatened to occur, and
I knew nothing then, except that I knew nothing
The metal kettle boiled another cup, this one the last
It was a long journey home
And I was glad to realise that life’s lessons are false gods
The floods will come, I mumbled, and autumn’s eternity
I love you, you said
And my eyes were a fog, and the thoughts in my head
Were the long meadow grass and the bed.

The howl of silence
Shreds September, burning frayed days’ edges
Spent burdened with pure-joyed tears,
Loving the aches, and the high stakes,
And the pain
I caught reflections in your eyes our summer while
Which flashed a fantasy, that now I stare to try and see
In mirrors, train windows and still water.
I think I see it sometimes
Sometimes I think I need to lose some weight
But then I catch my reflection in chromium plate
And I am child again