Today I have to crawl back in,
To indulge again in skin, slimy, loose,
Wrinkled saggy skin.
I could lift it in great handfuls,
Feel the muscles, the blood, the everything,
The clammy coldness beneath my fingers.
It makes me sick to the mind;
I want to crawl back out again and run
But there is nothing left to run on, to run to,
Only something uglier than this.
I want to claw it off, the itching in my arms. Scratching,
Scratching at raw flesh, raw muscle,
Exposed veins, all stuck beneath my fingernails.
It is disgusting.
It is inconsequential.
It’s skin.

The morning smelt like one of those lost summers,
those bright mornings I remember as a child
before I understood beauty.
It tasted like the cool milk I’d sipped on the cusp of a promising day,
when the stern rebukes of my father could not dim
the power of the blue sky to lift my spirits.
Sadness barely grazed my knees as I walked on the dewy grass
for everything was a masterpiece I'd never examined properly.
The air was warm and golden,
and I was the knight or the lost hero and the afternoon was
set to be filled with imagination and friendships
that I clasped so dear.
But we were sitting on the wall of the Garden of Eden,
looking in and drinking in its beauty, but knowing,
behind us that a dark fiend lurked,
yet never minding to turn around to look properly.
It was when who we were was not quite tangible,
when the light softened the whirling confusion of growing and forming
and we could smile and laugh
and think never mind tomorrow, it's today.
Yes, for a moment, the morning smelt like a lost summer,
so quickly fleeting.

You sleep in shudders,
In thundestorms and clouds,
You dwell in nightmares,
Unseen demons,
Wrapping you in shrouds.

You talk like madness,
You raise up ghosts,
You fear the monsters
Of children’s dreams,
Ever but feebly engrossed.

I hide your fears,
Behind closed doors,
I bring back summer in poems and
Repeat your favourite words;
An attempt to soothe the angered sores.

I fill others with your own lies,
A promise of better days,
Of words written in your own hand.
I deceive them of my cares,
Protecting your mind’s maze.

But still there are unhealed scars,
Quiet whispers and silent sighs
And I wish I could ease you
Into one night of rest,
If you could just close your eyes.

A blue tourmaline sky hung above,
Wispy grass stood steady,
Only swaying, occasionally,
To the song of the bush cricket.

He lay down in the open air,
And traced unseen words across the sky,
Ink forever wet, forever dry,
Unwritten poems, lost to the afternoon.

Is this what it is to love then?

-

To be forever in pain,

A fire burning in the pit of my stomach,

A smoke stinging at my eyes?

Is this fire never to be put out,

By the gentle touch of a beautiful river,

Never to be quelled by the loving hands

Of one who’s seasons change in time with mine?

-

Ah, but it must burn on,

For my love is not like others.

It is not the blooming, glorified sun,

It is the moon, hidden behind a cloud.

Neither is it the lively spring, crisp with newborn life,

It is the autumn, decaying leaves and approaching winter.

-

I am then to be spat on,

To be broken,

To be trapped like an infestation of rats.

It is the wrong love,

It is a snow shower in midsummer,

It is loving what is not yours to love.

-

Day after day I hear sweet words

Whispered or said in blossoming tones,

But they are not for me.

From those who I wish would whisper

Comes no word for they can never

Utter a single syllable to me.

-

And so must everyone but I

Feel the tender kisses of the sun

And find the first flowers

of spring laid on their pillow?

And shall I not bathe in the

Pale glow of a sublime sunrise or

Feel the passionate heat of a beautiful summer?

-

Ah, but I shall not.

I shall feel only the broken skin of hands in winter,

Feel the touch of a broken pine.

I will see only the angry stone of the mountains

And suffer the sting of the bee.

How brutal are the hearts of man,

Those stones I wish to crack.

-

Ah, what an impossible task it is that I have been set.

and I begin to wonder.

Was this love to love at all

or was it but a curse placed on me?