How like when you kiss
You are a stranger
in the colours and
curves of an unfamiliar city
In which we have instantly
Become as mannequins in the windows
We don’t see the colours
That in their unfamiliarity are
Beautiful only in their mystery
As everything once were
When first learning the world


How when your fingers were as spring
Does with flowers
Opening them like bandages
Carefully untying knots of clenched fists
All things congealed in time
Now flowing, now running
As children do at infinite in the afternoon
Through autumns auburn bridges falling down


Your mouth was a nest
Hatching careful, secretive seeming
Words
To become unleashed on the un-listening sky
In the way a flock of birds might suddenly
Burst
Out of a withered tree
Disguised before as leaves
A tree Shivering as if wanting
to come in from the cold
And the static of those starlings
As if the tree had been
Like a giant clock-flower
blown


Your tongue a stranger
Crying, wailing distressed
In pieces
To some taxi driver
A train has come and emptied itself
Of the wrong faces
You had become used to it
Like a sea no longer believing in mermaids
The feeling some presence
More than anyone you meet
Is missing
No one to turn to
Your tongue searching
Like a torch in a cave
If anything of the past
That first time
Could have survived


and no one
can ever taste the same
like he has the anti virus
to your feverish days of battling with the quiet
like bits of hail biting your face
on the tip of his tongue
chemicals reacting in the wrong mouth
the wrong colours
flaunted across the sky
like confetti from the best day
of someone else’s lives
feeling like the one who didn’t speak up
the truth tasting like the rusted iron tint of the rain
every kiss is vermilion
and fingers are like ink demons crawling
awkward haikus
down your spine


it feels like the first time for a while
until every single Braille
you trace over is like paper cuts
as you drag your nails through skin
like clutching graveside gravel
placing kisses on his chest like flowers on a grave
feels like betraying the stars
you were written in
constellations in the freckles of his cheeks
just isnt the same


Every other part of you is yearning
To mean something beautiful
To capture his inspiration
In a moment
If it ever comes
As the snowflake when it is seen
In the semi-luminous breath of a street-light
But careful as the snow
Like a white jigsaw slotting into place
Scrambling to find its perfect landing
All the multitude pieces of you
Forced together to fit
Your skin is seamless though
To trace over each piece with my hands
Feeling for the angel in the stone



Then all those pieces coming apart
Like those birds from the tree
Making way for spring
A train arriving late
Out of the station fog
A survivors hand breaking through rubble
Clasping yours as if it were
The very source of light and life
Almost breaking your fingers
Brittle empty cages
Missing the presence of its bird





Rescue dawn breaking through
A hatched entrance
The rescuers smile, ashen
A woman
Digging you out
of river silt
like a lost bracelet






Every
Single
Morning


With her eyes



How you crave
the familiarity of her tongue now
Its colours and curves
Tangled as two kites in a tree
Not wanting to set free

The sky dissects wings
Puppeteers the breeze
In each other we are trapped
Yet flow and stretch and soar
With such an ease

Everything is missing the presence of us now
Our seperate lives lost
As strangers in its unending streets
The sky is screaming at the trees
Like clock flowers that cant be broken
The birds, the leaves are clinging on
And in autumn still
Falling side by side, clinging to
Wet pavements and windows
In twos and twos
In this world of ones
Achieving the together-sketched forever

If you [Log In] as a member you can discuss this work with others