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Tag Archives: loss

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12 may

the leaving of one
makes a heartbreak, a hole.
a space so them-shaped
but not empty;
it has electric borders,
charged with
all they made, and left.

it is not a black thing
not a hollowed trench,
waiting for a new inhabitant.
clear new curtains draw,
but they do not block us out
or shut them in.
they only preserve.

they are not now a thing to
be held in a hand,
and that opening and closing palm
leaves a stain, irremovable.
but the rest stays.
all the rest, it stays
in a living network of roots

some we see,
some invisible, but no
less real than the scar of a lightning bolt
or the crashing of a wave.
they live inside laughter belonging to
the ones we love,
the ones that we still can touch.

those roots cannot move on,
cannot go gently, or loudly,
into that good night.
they are too imbued with spirit
they connect us far too well.
the touch of a hand is sorely missed
but all that meaning lives alive forever. 

within

I am of him,
that’s for sure
this stubbornness
so ingrained, it must be
woven into my genes
somewhere near the ones
that gave me
eyes the size of saucers.
as I become who
I always needed to be,
I let him drift out
to the ocean to rest,
finally releasing the corpse
I’ve been carrying
on my back for so long –
I find a new set of
superpowers in my heart.
it beats like his now
and always should have,
really.
I was not to know,
but now I do.
and his spirit weighs nothing
no more than a breath

I let it burst

from within,

to taste freedom for

the first time in

twenty two years.

castles

as she is lowered
into
the swaying
undulating heat
of the underground cavern
she breathes deeply
the smell of hot metal
and foot soldiers,
and asks
is this
my home?

she asks
is this my home?
where is my home?
does it matter
at all?
is home some
abstract feeling
of childhood safety nets
that dissipate into
nothing, with age?
we lose our homes
and gain
weathered lines,
crow’s feet at the eyes?

she stands by
the quiet beggar
with his whispered
pleas for help
and change
perhaps
he knows where home
could be.
perhaps one so
much more lost than her,
could share the secret.

she cries
out in the night
for that great thing.
home is nowhere
for anyone
she realises,
a thought of comfort.
home is inside
their hearts,
not their things or their castles.
she knows this,
she knows this.

and so her mother says
best
get to work
on your little heart,
my girl.

ashes

year after year
I drop
cigarette ashes
and salt water
on your portrait.

is this not
a potent enough
concoction?
is this not
the spell
that will work?

my arms are dirty
with the
tea stains
you left behind,
no
vanishing solution
to clear them.

my lungs
and heart
they perished
along
with your
yellow skin.

but mine
emptied of
organs,
travels onward
despite complaint.

there was
no need
to breathe in.
no need to
beat.

the lesson
was learned
then,
in a hot room
of lilies
and machines.

the fifteen holes
in organs
rotten from suffering
tighten into
scar tissue.

they are
you
as I am
you.

I will
visit again
soon.

mud

grief makes
your heart
sick
not sick
enough to stop beating and
kill you,
just sick
enough to suffer

grief makes
the veins collapse
makes them sticky,
so they
punish you
lest you forget
what you have
loved most
and lost

lest you forget,
as if you could
when you feel your
blood choking you
again
and you wonder
why you
are sentenced to die
so slowly.

vitiligo

beautiful boy
you are gone
but I will not
let you die.

the sickness of death
so heavy
the black rain winds
that so many others have written

would be easy
to concentrate on.

my friend,
you were not sickness
but for a tarnished
group of moments.

the pain of your absence,
leaves us open-surgery hearts.
but the steadfastness
of your soul

pumps scarlet blood
to each fingertip.

still you sit
underneath my window,
your breathing turned to droplets
laughing so hard

the cigarettes fell out
of our mouths.
still we dance
for hours and hours

to average white-boy beats
(I always knew you could make better).

you could never
vanish from existence.
how implausible
to imagine.

as if
your vitiligo arms
could cease to be
in the world.

no, they are here.
just as the rest of you is here.

beautiful boy,
I will not let you be gone.
because the world is too small
without you.

the vigor of life
so light
does not matter.
you have only slipped away

into the next room.
and so it will continue to be

until I see you again.

happy 25th birthday finn

(I used a line from the Henry Scott Holland poem “death is nothing at all” that bears some relevance here. points if you can find it)