Two Poems

Physics & Fables

Our love faded to
lily-stained fields.

They bloomed where nettles grew
and the blossom dirtied the mud.

We looked towards
the fasting mountain

which had not eaten its fill of love
since our departure (

whereas once it gorged itself to

frenzy on the fat of our bodies
& dovetails wrenched from
the flocks that pecked at us
on the cliffs

); we lounged amongst

its outcrops, draped
in satin & the
freezing rain,

knowing

that nothing lasts
& all lovers are alone:
they sit as creatures of circumstance
feeling nothing when
they look to the Sun
& see only colours.

Every evening we enacted tragedy

amidst smoke and snowdrops/
a string of past tenses
reduced together to
physics & fables;

we never could bear the silence

of the meadow
so we gave ourselves to the city
to ensure we'd never be alone,
but the city demanded
only quiet
so that all could hear
its roar. Sometimes

it tricked us with its

darkness, by its
engulfing of our sentences
into dissonance;

finally, we mistook

that comedy
for divinity,

we thought heaven was a bed,

the cold air purgatory
& felt no hell
at least
while it lasted.

Cities

Darkness sits upon the forest,

snow slumbers below it,

but I did not feel my way here to rest

amongst the hollows, to forget

about paths, or the pain

purchased daily through failing to create;

I came to dwell in nature's grave,

where bluebells fail to grow

where the snow is translated into rain.

The trees scale monuments of bone

about me, their branches

streaks of light, shining, aching, to go

into the orange night, the nothing glow

that makes me wander again, searching,

though aimless, to the last

cities of the wild, whose fast departure

swarmed into the world far too fast -

they fell before the roots

that plundered the soil, growing so vast

that all fictions were rendered crude.

No gods dwelt there, the muse

long ago packed her lyre, rendered mute

by the lovers she had refused.

Even the demons feared

the twisted copses, where they crawled confused

until the night song sounded, solemn and cruel.

Someone take me home, bring me clear,

these cities are empty

and though this must be the place, it's not here

where I meant to stay, it's not me

who sits among grey stones

of poets and salvation, I only

wanted the chance to be alone,

undressed before the dark

ivy wrapped underground, which, groaning

under its weight, falls from the far

reaches, away  towards

my ghostlike and awakening grasp

to a new city, waiting to be born.