I took a photograph of you
as you were turning round;
catching half your body solidly,
the other, blurred like sound.
Your ghostly arms were ashen grey,
their shape lost to the light;
a faded fey obscurity,
all mixed up with the night.
the door clicks shut
like a cocked gun
a threat
a black tonne
dropped lead
an ugly word
the colour red
a hang rope
one heavy tread
a death bed
deepest pitch
a stabbing clack
a real bitch
a cry, a smack
and I long for you
to come back
May we still think of them
all of the time
and tell them cool things
like what good films
just came out on Prime
or that there’s 26 bridges
over the Tyne –
same number of albums
in Bowie’s lifetime
May we remember them
whilst we’re apart
and tell them daft things
like how you can’t hear
real music in the charts
that there’s nowt bitterer
than the human heart
or that shiver is the
collective noun for sharks
May we fear them
at the end of it all
and tell them sad things
like the 52 Blue whale
and it’s lonesome call
that your brother begged
Santa to make him tall
and how sunlight passes
across your bedroom wall
Look at this, you said.
I saw a dozen grey torpedoes hung,
such monstrous baubles, in the depths
of the ocean, motionless
and unaltered by the heft
of water surrounding them.
Scattered indifferently,
their fleshy tonnes suspended
like great iron pendants, laid bare
to the perils of foe and flow
in a thalassic slumber.
We sat sipping tea in silent dread,
to think of such cryptic bed.
I’m drunker now than I ever was
before we saw this through
And I don’t know how to look in love
without looking at you
Because I find ways to put your name
anywhere I see a blank
I’ve touched the wood of hopefulness
each time my courage sank
And though nothing true is ever said
when lovers speak at night
We stay up late and laugh and sing
and to us that feels alright
I heard it first
when I was a little girl
before I understood
I looked down at my chest
fancied I could hear the whirring
of mechanisms
a cold release in every rest
the squeezebox rise and fall
of springs that sprung
from two iron lungs
wondered if my other organs
were built the same,
drew pictures of the biotech
a silver chest
beneath my dress
years passed, we had a laugh
at the way a child can think
how their open minds
paint a picture
without the need for ink
I see now how we are
too fragile to be composed
of anything but paper
and glass
bone and heart
a crack and tear, here and there
until we break apart
Nobody screamed
not even when blackness came
and small waves bounced upward,
obscuring the shoreline from sight:
biting at the sky
not even when their necks numbed
and boreal steel filled their pockets,
with weight like loss: the rush of
fear in a vacuum
Still, nobody screamed
instead, their throats made small alarms,
guttural from behind clamped jaws;
layers of yellowing silt shifting until
they all saw sky
instead, the march of steady breath
fell out of step with each arterial beat;
one by one they hissed like matches
softly dipped in water
Beyond weak, she
was now spelling it out
for him, like a mother –
holding the small
fat hand of her
first born, pushing
the stubborn fingers
around, as they
clutched a pencil
to shape the letters
of his own name.
His name.
How many times
had she said it now?
Could she count
how many times
she had laughed it,
asked it, stuttered
and moaned it
and even once –
in the vacancy of
quiet hours –
called for it, loudly
across an ocean
of silence.
I start with a wooden barrel
for a chest,
smoothing the planks down
with grit paper until
at long last
I put my cheek to it, to check
it feels right.
It does, so I then move on
to your arms – I strap on
thick ropes,
wrap them round,
and tie myself in
a knot that won’t break,
that holds tight.
For legs, I pile stones,
two towers,
unkickable as the sky –
straight and tall,
they hold
and do not sway or bend,
in their might.
A lamp for a head –
the light
of a mind that shines,
leaving no shadow
it throws
a yellow glow across me,
and burns bright.
Alas, for a heart, a blank.
Only space,
an emptiness,
as I have nothing
to take the place of
the thing that loved,
just for spite.
Now, when you burn,
you will burn right.
You probably already know about them:
where the group is from and how they banded,
what year their first EP came out,
if the lead guitarist is left or right handed.
Maybe you own a few of their albums,
perhaps you’ve known of them forever,
but this song reminded me of you
though we’ve never listened to it together.
We didn’t ever hear it in that place we like
where the barmen all wear pocket flowers,
and we never queued it on the juke box
that night we drank and laughed for hours.
And it wasn’t playing in your car
when you dropped me at central station,
but this song reminds me of you
and fills me with a blue elation.
So I reckon, several years from now,
needing something to get me through
I’ll play this song I’ve played so much
because it reminded me of you.
ataraxicat 