Domestic Scene

When I got back home at around noon I was starving, so I went into the kitchen and got a Cadbury's Wispa, sat down and started eating it. In came Joey, still in his dressing gown.

"Back so soon? You were only gone an hour or so. What have you got there? Is that chocolate?"

"Mm. A Wispa. Do you want some?"

"Yes please."

He bent over towards the bar to take a bite. Then a thought occurred to me.

"Oh wait, actually" I said, "You might prefer to take a bite out of the other end."

"What? Why?"

He looked at me. I took the chocolate out of the wrapper and turned it around and offered it to him again.

"Oh... God... Have you just had a cock in your mouth?" he asked.

"Look. This end is fine," I said brightly, "It's perfectly safe. There's no cock poison on it. I promise."

"No thanks. No, really. I think I'll just leave it."

I shrugged. And carried on eating. He does very well, does Joey.

Scent

It's not new-mown grass,
Or fresh-baked bread,
Or that jumper my mother knit me.
The one I never wore
But couldn't throw out,
Because it smelled
Of so much mother-love.
It's your skin.
It smells of blackness:
Like the memory of fire
Up a morning chimney,
And the depth of a cat's shadow
Leaping under a puddle,
And the falling weight of your hair
As you laugh in some far-flung bar,
The just-snuffed candlelight
On tables-for-two,
The spaces between stars.
This is the scent of you.

I guess part of the problem was
The way my imagination rushed
Into the blackness and filled it.
It was all my fault.
I mistook so many
Beautiful, invisible things
For you.

Not Poetry

This is not poetry.
I am not a poet.
But this verse proves
That if I could write poems,
The first of them
Would be for you.

Ghost Village

I thought of this place again today: the ancient village clinging to a mountainside, its tumbledown walls knotted with roots and branches, its inhabitants driven out by deadly avalanches a hundred years ago. I remembered how wrong it felt to climb over the roots and the ruins in my cheerful summer shoes, the breeze clammy on my arms, like a disconnected hand touching me in a crowd. I felt as though the lost souls from all around must gather here, where the living could not dwell.

I thought of it again today. I thought it was perhaps the kind of place you might have flown away to. I imagined going there again some day and visiting you, bringing you something pretty that would bob in the breeze. Except that it was so hard to find the village and I can't remember how I got there anymore.

Take my love, such as it is. There is no graveside I can visit, but I promise to build you a village just like this one in my mind. I promise to sing you lullabies among the ruins as the sun goes down. And in the mornings, I will bring pretty things that bob in the breeze.