Dismantled

Here I sit, dismantled:

ice cold lips

where sweet whispers

once were.

Sealed in spite.

Published in Napalm and Novocain

Fine as Wine

So you really are gone.

Anyone there?

The flight of steps

leads to a dark-lit

wasteland of

humid bedsheets.

The room where

I died is where

you exposed me.

Cold, cold bed…

Thinking of Langston Hughes.

Life is fine,

Fine as wine…

Hey, Langston,

just for me:

sprout a

symphony of colours

out of the sound

of blue.

Published in Napalm and Novocain

Grief

Dumbstruck.

I was blind.

(...)

Grief.

Anger.

Pain.

Silence.

You've gone.

Next to us,

an old man

reads a newspaper.

Alone:

English boys

don't show

their feelings.

I'm cold, in August.

Grief.

Words have

been emptied

from my brain.

Fear.

Published in Napalm and Novocain

Sunshine

One more day, I awake to sadness

In our ghostly room

Because you’re gone

I walk to the kitchen,

Through the empty corridor

That was ours.

And I make myself coffee

That I pour into your cup.

I go for my morning shower,

Your toothbrush has left,

And your towel has disappeared –

Only mine are there now.

I have a lonely breakfast

Looking out the same window we used to;

I watch the news channel

And wonder where you are now.

Then I grab my coat;

My wallet,

My keys,

Go out into the day.

And realise why I called you sunshine.

Published in Red River Review

Gun Vomit

Meditations in an emergency/tragedy: Guns don’t kill people/people kill people but people with guns do it faster/psychotics do it because they can/Ben Hur you should have kissed Massala instead of dealing in death/twenty and seven fireflies extinguished forever.

Useless, words linger/but for now: silence.

Published in Visceral Uterus

My very own body electric

1.
Morning in crimson,
slow-seeming awkwardness:
awaking,
not to reality,
but
to a dream.

2.
I sleep in my bed
the way you leave it;
Feeling thinking your
presence in the
morning leftovers
of nightly starry
comforting warmth.
A comfortable place
for sense and
non sense.

3.
Murmur exiled
from the soul;
Working its way
through
neural networks
and blind faith. Down
sinuous
pathways known only
to the hand:
motions on a blank
page: from pen into ink.

4.
Back into eyes.
Purest form,
brought forth;
A poetry of place.
Should I sleep to wake?
Or take
my sleeping
slow?
Light.
A faintest gift
to eternity.

Published in Emerge Literary Journal

Loss – Elegy for my grandmother

In loving memory, France Farmer (1918-2012)

I like it best in the morning,

when the cool air still

has something new to say

about the day to come.

Yet a little lamp has gone out

in my home today.

I have known it all my life,

and it has grown dark

all of a sudden.

But light comes,

as usual,

dawn is there,

as usual.

And soon everything

is humming and buzzing

as it should.

There is drilling in my street,

like yesterday;

Planes are taking off for

faraway destinations

– Alexandria maybe –

like the day before;

Subway cars are stopping

at their stops and

mothers are shopping

in their shops;

Children, restless,

are bored in school.

Like tomorrow, no doubt;

While you, dearest,

have gone gently

into that good night.

Words for the time being,

have lost all meaning.

All salt. All savour.

Yet listen well:

a murmur – a deep-rooted

feeling;

A whisper of a friendly wind,

murmurs of a stranger

to stranger yet than she;

say:

‘nothing again

will ever be

the way it was –

because you were:

and so are we.’

So go gently.

Go gently, please,

go gently

and rest,

into that good
morning light.