Break up

 

(First published in Studio)

 

1.  where have you been spending your nights?

No resurrection tricks this time old girl

Embalmed with your infidelity

Your indecency

The end of caring

You disappeared

 

The denial of years and memories

A box full of letters and words full of nevers

 

Who ends such long and tainted love on

Thursday afternoons in phone boxes?

I mean, Who but you dear?

 

- 2/11/2000

 

 

2.  metaphors

 

This is surgery and a battleground and a morgue

 

No anaesthetic this rusty knife my black guts exposed

These crows hovering above the trench as I grow thirsty

Paralysed I hear you zip the bodybag   laughing as you leave

 

I’m dying girl, dying!

 

How far can we take these metaphors

Before they turn on us - self destructing cliches -

And leave us with us the pain that poets won’t exhaust?

 

- 9/11/2000

 

 

3.  and in this moment i know loss

 

She comes to me, the second time since the sundering

Her earnest face more beautiful

Than I remember

 

The sad fullness Adults inhabit

His face and the terrible gnosis in her eyes -

I want to die, I want to die

 

-16/12/00