it's a stormy day the glimpsed
sun ivory light through
leaden gray.
It was always your eyes
i thought of their
sky blue when glad
so sun-filled clear.
you were also the wind
the endless veils
and clarity after
a storm
with you I felt - yes,
desperate sometimes
but seen.
now your absence says
it's gray today
without me
my shoes so still
on the floor
you don't call
I'm half without other half
raw where you tore off
the telephone cord umbilical
hangs lifeless
no voice sings furry
humour
that thing's a corpse
vibrates no meanings
it just hangs there
When you have
been journeying,
life in the house
slows to a crawl.
I go to the window.
I go to the window
again.
I walk along
the ridge crest
with nothing in my hands.
Where are you now?
and how is it
I am alive here —
as snow begins
to fall?
As I pass through,
I may touch ash,
Hemlock, fir,
spruce, alder,
maple, cedar,
madrone, yew,
willow, dark
myrtle, but —
not you.
The mountain wind
comes to me,
speaking your
wild thoughts.
On the Gold Coast Theatre building, a concrete mask
pretended to moan. Or sing? We weren't sure which.
We deduced it despised a violin and bells
hanging below it, an architect’s tacky gifts.
There was concrete. There were bricks, glass, wood.
To these we donated our need of symbol,
our weakness for decoration. Our bodies
represented us in front of the old Gold Coast,
which had left behind its design in order
to become. We are there no more, have scattered
to a heresy of heres. Our memories are
synaptic masks that pretend to moan—
or sing? We’re not sure which. Our memories
design an architecture of absence.
My mate, my friend, my love, my life.
My bosom's — as the phrase is — wife ;
My comrade in the hour of woe —
An hour whose limits I don't know —
My star in darkness, solace, balm.
My prophylaxis, refuge, calm.
Companion of the million blights
That plague my liver, purse and lights ;
My pleasant garden in the gloam.
My all — if you were ever home!
Had we but parted at the start,
I'd cut some figure in your heart ;
And though the lands between were wide,
You'd often see me at your side.
But having loved and stayed, my dear,
I'm always everywhere but here.
And, still more paradoxical.
You always see me not at all.
Cold against the sky
The blue jays cried at dawning.
The larks where are they?
Heavily upon the air
My ears tuned in to listen.
Yet when I am alone my eyes say, Come.
My hands cannot be still.
In that first moment all my senses ache,
Cells, that were empty fill,
The clay walls shake,
And unimprisoned thought runs where it will.
Runs and is glad and listens and doubts, and glooms
Because you are not here.
Then once more rises and is clear again
As sense is never clear,
And happy, though in vain
These eyes wait and these arms to bring you near.
Yet spite of thought my arms and eyes say, Come,
Pained with such discontent.
For though thought have you all my senses ache--
O, it was not meant