Unreachable Horizons

 

The insane winds that charged our mighty galleon

Dropped

And our love became

Becalmed

An implausible sea change

This thing - this all consuming thing

That had, for weeks thrown us

Side to side, 

That had tossed us on the waves of

Mad, excited romance

Now silent

And drifting

Off course

Still moving

Still saying the words

And doing the actions

But now without energy or momentum

We tried to use the oars, a while,

But it’s hard for two poor sailors to propel

So big a ship

And it seemed madness, now,

To look around

To see so huge a boat and know ourselves

To be so small a crew

It became a question of which 

Nautical metaphor to pursue

Was one of us to dive away and drown?

Would we die together

Mad, and staring, thirsty, at the sea?

And even if the wind picked up

And our ship once more rose up and fell

And smashed through these green and concrete waves

We would be brittle captains

Staring at unreachable horizons

Terrified that the wind might drop

Eyes pricking with doubt

As birds looped and called out

Under the infinite sky

The Evening Tide

 

My fingertips ripple in stumbling rhythm

Across the uneven landscape

Of books on a shelf

Come across one

Its faded spine

Golden in the evening sun

As dust motes glitter, suspended,

Imperceptibly drifting

Mumbling voices

Fragments of dreams

The subterranean murmur of the sea

You lent me this years ago

I’m still half way through 

Probably not even half 

The creases cross barely a third

Of the spine

It lives here, jammed tight

Among other books in similar states

Borrowed from friends

Except ‘borrowed’ suggests the possibility 

Of return

Inside each book

Are corners of pages

Turned, for years now, to hold places

I never went back to

If I tried to unfold them, they’d

Crack and they’d

Break

It’s been too long, now

Those creases are part of the page

Patterns of sand dance in the wind

Waves build

Huge, surround sound rumbling

Ominous as they approach

Then break and fizzle and politely

Wash across the sand

The sun slopes across the room

Shadows pool among the spines of the books

Fill the depths between

Rising, slowly, to swallow them up

The Tail Without an End

The picture that made her cry 

Was not even of her dog.

It’s funny how things can affect you

Years after the fact

Random connections in the brain combine

To render memories, moments formed by

A combination of tastes,

A play of light, 

Something in the air

And here she was, 

In tears, at a photograph

That wasn’t even of her dog

That wasn’t, in fact

A picture of a dog, at all.

It was a little boy, by himself, who might

In other circumstances, have owned a dog

But in this case was just standing alone

In a puddle, 

Smiling at the sky

And here she was, in tears

At a photograph

Of a boy without a dog

Even stranger,

She’d never owned a dog, either.

Never had a dog

Just like the boy, 

In the puddle

Smiling at the sky

I suppose that was the connection

It’s funny, 

How things can affect you

Years after the fact.

 

Slinky Mister

 

I’d like to be a slinky mister

A spectral individual

A spidery kind of guy

Limbs wandering out across the sofa

As I recline, majestic loafer

A personality extended, 

Stretched

Refined

I want to cast a shadow that is longer

Thinner, knife-like, sleek and slender

A spiky shadow, Nosferatu

A stark expressionist meander 

I don’t mean taller,

That won’t help

I can jump

I can climb

I can stand on things to reach high shelves

I don’t need to be 

Higher

It’s the curvature,

The shape

The unspooling of myself

That I desire

I want to be a spiny shape that 

Runs like ink across the world

This wound up spring, uncurling slowly

Would I be better?

It feels like it

If I had Lowry’s brushstrokes in my bones

No need to shout or jump

To artificially extend myself across the cracks

I make in every room.

I’d lounge, instead,

A scattered shadow of tree branches

A broken, jagged spider’s web

A cutting fellow

An undone conundrum

A looping, loping counterweight

A scribbled note, slowly unfolding

A mess of limbs

Great at Twister

A strung out Summer cloud

A fine recliner

An uncoiled man

A slinky mister

Do Not Gaze Into The Abyss (The Abyss Doesn't Like It)

 

“Be careful,” said Paul’s mum

As we were going out to play

“If you end up fighting monsters

You may yourself become monstrous, 

Along the way.”

It was a weird thing to say.

And she said it in that casual way

You’d get from mums in the 1980s

Though their warnings weren’t usually so far reaching

They tended to be about talking to strangers

Or playing by electrical wires

Not matters so intellectual, existential and Nietzschean

“Be careful if you fight with monsters.”

Not, “Don’t fight monsters.” This was, apparently fine. 

Paul’s mum, like mine, was of the belief

That kids learn better through experience

Let them find out for themselves what 

Horrors promethean

Lurked in the shadows and trees

Of the long Summer afternoons and evenings

Nothing wrong, thought Paul’s mum

With letting kids learn

What it feels like to wrestle a creature that burns

Like the fires of hell

It’s character building, I guess

And it wasn’t just us

All our friends

Said their mums were OK

If they came back at teatime with

Bruises and bleeding

And the knowledge of death in their eyes

But all were quite clear that no matter the struggle

Our conduct, when fighting

Must be decent and cordial

“Remember your manners, 

And watch your behaviour, 

With the creatures that arise from the depths

When you step on the cracks in the pavement.”

And our mums, it turns out, 

Were insightful and wise.

Not that we were so smart as to always

Remember their words or heed their advice

But there’s monsters out there

Who tried to engage us

And make us like them

Their faces like mirrors, 

Their screams and nightmare accents contagious

They’d open their jaws and show us the abyss

And we’d just make up weird songs 

And we’d blow them a kiss

And they’d curse us with words that should rip out our souls

But we’d just say, “No thank you,

We need to get home.”

And those monsters went back at the end of those days

To their mums, I suppose

For their tea, 

In their dens and their caves

And their mums would say to them

“Did you have a nice time?

Did you meet any humans? 

Did you show them the dark endless pleasures of night?”

But the monsters would shake their weird heads and stay quiet

Hot tears would well up

In their foul insect eyes

They’d failed to make monsters of me or of Paul

If anything, they’d started, themselves, to transform

They caught themselves humming

Our daft little songs

They’d start to forget what was right, what was wrong

Where their festering hearts and minds really belonged

If only their mums had told them

Of the dangers out there in the long Summer days

Where there’s humour, and joy and forgiveness and love

No sinister creature can truly prevail

But don’t be too hard on the mums of those monsters

They knew of the risks, but they probably reckoned

That holding things lightly,

And keeping good humour,

Is not advice generally given or taken

Or heeded by humans

And decent behaviour,

Less about winning and more about truth

While poison to monsters,

Is not something most human creatures

Can really be bothered to do.