new year

 

we beg your pardon,
but this new year's eve
we'll be gone in our cave
underneath the etherdown
as our bed rocks down time across
falls & eddies & tidepools & swifts

armour breaks

 

across our abysses of time
- yours mine his hers  -
we dance stumble rise fight dance
mourning sunrise morning
as the vastness of the past
flows seamlessly into here –
none of our learnings wasted

love is all we can give
& nothing is wasted.

ours

counting down

 

my limbs twist gently into
new configurations
fur begins to spread
my head shifts into
a more efficient angle
a forward drift of stance
in the amniotic fluid
of my cocoon
taut like a spring:

the membrane cracks
the transformation will be
complete

soon

I'm ready

to speak

hello word

 

hello, world.

monday blues perhaps

 

a million months ago
she died and kicked me in the
solar plexus kicking off
a twister twisting my
body and limbs and face into an
eightball of grief
that rolled off, automaton, spinned me
into a black whole
until I caved in. unknowing.
I collapsed into nothing-at-all.

my aching arms heaving me
out now. hello world.

the chemistry of love is
the chemistry of grief is
the nullity of chemistry.
implosion. end. explosion.
world. outward.

River Dawn

 

you jumped in the river
and joined me, you
sailed the house with me through stormy rapids
the bracken waters of the desert
navigated the maze of the jungle canals
plunged headlong down the falls of darkness
till all was upside down and shattered to pieces
and I but a car-wreck

I have crossed the river
so here I lie panting next to you.
the pain is over,
the far bank of the river is the far bank now:
I can see the hole where the foundation was.
I loved her.

our three sweet daughters, so much alike,
have moored the house to the river bank:
let’s tow it up on dry land,
let’s build the new foundations.

I am ready.

but right now, I am panting with exhaustion.
let me look at you.

good morning, my love.

reply to mr barnes, a beginning

every tear and reminiscence
a measure of the depth
of narcisism

for there is no afterlife
and no god either
except love
which can only be real

hammer to fall

it comes down at last like a storm of stones
three years' worth of tears and fears and pain
buckets-full of years
grave-day loads of bones

all is new & now, all old & then
the bed the same
but we're li'll nemo here

with my unknown past
on your tender shoulders

you make me fly
on
up
into us

the river far behind us

 

the reboot the reset almost complete,
we stand in her his my your shoes
overlooking this brandnew world of
mountains and rivers, of plains and woods
where the future will happen
where the future we shape

does it hurt to let go
a whole former land,
a whole former time?

you can't restart without losing the past
you can't restart without embracing death

so let us into dive into the open air

off we go

back to the past

it all reverts back to before you:
my belongings dropping away from me
like unsympathetic skydivers,
gone the car house job life
none of it mine to start with

so as senility grimaces at me
on the horizon, I reboot to
adolescence, nothing to give
but my bare skin

full-on reboot

onward

 

beyond the obliteration of a lifetime
lies the annihilation of dreamtime
understanding how to love
beyond memories, pictures and words

I am grateful you came packed
with a whole life
to live in

you’re making it so easy to
love you

t plus 365

 

a year ago today was
the first day that you were
not

you will never be again.
so against all odds
I planted
my life number two

and the river runs deep

steps beyond

out into the open
savannah. fear not. sing:

I love to love.
all of you.

the past happened.

the river

all anchors and tow-ropes severed
- not all of them painlessly,
more so for them than for us -
but the river is calling us

and so we drift into the future
with a houseful of memories and love
for sustenance
into a brandnew land

dissociation complete

the crisp spring light
floods your stonecold grave
where the first freesias of the new year
bud under your sun
that we’ve circled once
since the end of the past.

the circle is complete.

this is it then, the final cut
two wedding rings discarded
the past shut off, with
all the people in it and all the things
that were left undone and left unsaid -
flushed away in a flood of tears.

I loved you, my sun,
but my soul’s grown back,
and I travel without you now
onward onto an open ocean
in a new solar system