want
Wolf throws back her head
Cries out in the infinite lack
The sound goes
Over and over against mountains
Comes back unchanged
No wolf no thing answers
Not even the north wind
For who can answer that ?
There won’t be an answer:
Everything we need to know
Is written on that first sound
That strange vowel of want
Offered and swallowed time and times over
By night
Which sits forever
Black and flung about with tears
say it
Fact:
I want to get with you.
I’ve wanted it my whole entire life.
Which is why I spend my days looking to bump into you
My nights planning my days
And the places inbetween so restless
I’m delirious.
You’re so fucking elusive
I never find you on facebook
Or outside: don’t you like fresh air ?
You are like no one
And so refined
I’m wondering if you passed through a sieve – professional grade double zero – more than once.
I’ve never met anyone who makes me laugh as much
Infact you’re dazzling
I don’t know how you do it
Or how I can be more available than this
Writing it
And sticking it up here naked:
Together
We could make
A
Whole
New
World
Wow. I said it.
So how do I (stop laughing) get with you ?
All. The. Time.
that gate
The girl who’s making my coffee tells the other girl
The French one with the same earrings as me (£5.99 from the shop on the high street)
‘George met a girl’
‘Oh no’ (the French one, laughing as in: we all know what that means)
‘Yeah’ (my one) ‘and then she died’.
The French girl’s head swings round the earrings jingle her jaw drops leaving her mouth like that open.
‘Yeah’ my one tasting something bitter, ‘she died the next day’.
‘That’s awful’.
Then the French girl asks, quickly-quietly like it might not be ok, ‘Did he like her?’
My girl, bent to swirl a pattern in the milk, frowning nods her ‘yeah’.
So this love and death.
And this is how they come and go mostly when we’re not expecting.
What I want to know is about the girl.
The one who died.
I want to know whether she liked George.
And I want to say: Yes.
I don’t know too much about death – or love – but as far as death goes, it would be nice to think there can be sweetness at that gate.
the odds
Ducklings came today
New as pins
Fast as gold
And good as ping pong balls
Zipping out all over the river
I watched one bounce a foot
And land its legs splayed wide apart
Spinning in delight
Of feather and flesh and spirit
All combusting for the first time here
And I thought
Fuck the odds
The snapping turtles
The snooping dogs
The chance of death
Most won’t survive so what?
Perhaps it’s not about survival
Perhaps it never was:
There’s only now
And here I am
So watch me jump
happy
I came past a cherry tree all out pink in flower
It smelled so delicate, so fleeting sweet
It reminded me of happiness
And for a second I was happy.
It got me thinking
How could I be always happy?
The answer came:
If that cherry tree was mine
And stood all day outside my window
That’s how I’d be happy.
A cloud came then:
The tree would have to blossom 24/7
I felt like crying:
I’ll never be happy and yet
I’m always happy
And the tree has nothing to do with it.
It’s just day in day out a cherry tree busy doing its own generous and ecstatic cherry thing.
blind
Last night
I saw trees
Standing over rooftops against the blue bright night
Still like card
Yet so completely jazzing
I was stunned
Then I saw the moon
How is it I had never seen the moon
Except through borrowed eyes ?
I saw houses
Each brick burned
Laid one on top by hands from years ago for other lives:
I saw them moving in and moving out and sofas stuck in every doorway.
And it was against all this jumping blazing fire-in-every-atom life
I saw that every thought I’ve ever had
Every sadness
Every plan
Even all that thinking mapping furrowed so hard making sense
Has been so out of place
So entirely ridiculous
That I am blind.