Is

god is that

which is greater

than god.

Squeeze

I want to squeeze you

into me.

I wouldn’t stop

if you didn’t need to breathe.

Love hurts as much

as it heals

when unable to melt

you through me.

There’s hurt

in loneliness, yes,

but hurt

in knowing love

as well:

the former a cancer,

the latter an ache

that can’t be slain;

that could only numb

if somehow I squeezed

—melted—

you into me.

Little sparrow

Little sparrow in my heart:

seems as if we soon will part.

Stay inside for some time more

though your flutters make me sore.

Little sparrow: chant your tune.

Seems as if you’re leaving soon.

Break my heart just one more day

for the girl that’s gone away.

Little sparrow: when you leave,

taking with you all I grieve,

take the ache within my chest.

Wait before you take the rest.

Leave me with the thought of her

long enough to feel it stir.

Little sparrow: then you may

take it all and fly away.

Thirteen years

When I was seventeen,

I was obsessed with a girl

I dreamt would make me king.

My god,

the insanity of standing by her

in canteen queues—

the air between

erupting

against my shirt.

The shock and clarity

of stealing glimpses

in her eyes

meant speaking words to her

was flames against the roof of my mouth.

Sarah. Her name was Sarah

and I never gave up hope.

Thirteen years on,

she was a memory

made manifest in you.

I was seventeen again

in canteen lines

and restless behind the desks

of classrooms,

staring at the back of your head

and feeling the air erupt

in the wake of your dress.

But this time:

a look my way,

an opening

and victory.

Thirteen years on,

touching lips with you

meant making out with Sarah

by the lockers

when all the other kids

were stuck in class.

I was seventeen again

but a king

who’d never quit on hope.

There you were,

there she was,

in my arms at last

on a Friday after school.

No shooting blanks at life,

no weekend angst.

Just the girl,

the stirrups

and that wild run.

As graduation hits

for a second time,

I can’t tell

if I’m leaving as a ghost

from the scene of a crash

outside the gates of school

or

if we’re splitting

for you're moving away

for uni.

I hope the second.

I hope to see you again

in thirteen years.

That open door

I’ve been angry at you,

have not been able to cry it out

for some days

—a baron dam

dug out and

flipped over

but still

not a drip.

You’d implied

you loved me more

than he

but

still

you’d left.

I’ve been angry,

have refused to know

the human in you

—have thought that love is mere feed

for reptilian truths.

But this morning I woke to memories

of when I’d chosen anything else

—anything

from random sex to plane tix—

over love.

Perhaps you’d run

like I had run.

Perhaps the truth was

painfully

human.

Perhaps.

In any case,

any way I can call to mind the humanness,

any way I’m able to cry,

means a way to recall

that anger puts a broken heart to bed

but love

helps it to its feet,

helps it to its pants

and,

though painful it may be,

helps it hobble

to that open door.  

At the edge of the bathroom window

At the edge of the bathroom window,
a spider made its wretched home.

We drowned its toxic body
in toxic spray.
The devil left the thing
in a scream you could only see
then a crumpled ball of beaten flesh
plunged
down the sink
and back to hell.

But it left its kill
- some moth
that now had no one to recall
it was there.

Weeks went by.
We washed our hands
and scrubbed our teeth
but no one cared
to deal
with the miserable corpse
in that useless web.

You'd be forgiven for thinking
the moth had somehow won
- that though it had been caught
then killed,
at least it had survived
the final humiliation.

But what value is there
in being half-mummified?
Its great foe had been taken out
before the covenant was sealed
- the battlefield shamed.
The moth had failed to die with honour
and through no fault of its own.

Now, day after day,
it hangs there by the sink
like an idiot-corpse
as we splash ourselves awake
and carry on.

It just hangs there,
unwanted, ignored
- doomed, even in death,
to suffer life's greatest sting.

Here I am

Here I am:
a man of age
about to turn
another page.

What'll get written?
What'll get read?
Will it get opened
once I'm dead?