Dusk Melodies

Dusk.

That grey creeping dusk that settles on the city like dust, 
countless particles of night.

And all these night creatures, 

floating around their concrete fish bowl. 

Gangs of chain-smoking hooligans,
 that paw and cough and troll 

through the parting crowds. 

The dread-headed ring leader, 

the hangers-on 

and that guy,

who 'happened to grow up with them,' 

an allegiance that will flicker and wane over time,

 as they all take,
 to their respective paths.

It's the smell of hamburgers,espresso and diesel.

My city.

My chaotic, self absorbed nation of capitalists, 

opportunists

orphans

 and refugees. 

My demented little planet,

 and the joy of its obscuring nature. 

The music of your vagabonds, 

the promise of your towers. 

To drink in the Promethean pleasure of a Friday night, 

jumping and taxiing and staggering,

with drunken sores for eyes.

I glaze myself upon you.

I cant stop.

The perpetual acquisition of love.

Like little bits of tinsel I hold onto,

to light the trees, 

as the dusk settles in, 

through my sparkly forest.

Darker and darker now.

Down it goes.

Till you're choking on the blackness.

Till you're gasping for air.

While my lungs burn in the encroaching darkness,

I hide in the street light,

because I know

that the darkness brings with it

my deepest vulnerabilities,

and memories

of you. 

The Memory of His Love

I loved that man from the moment I laid eyes on him.

God what a cliché.

But he we was, thick chaos incarnate. He was sloppy, messy, unfashionable passion. He was raw hurt, with a smile on. Though I would spend a long time pretending that my attraction to him was meaningless, a passing incantation of my ability to love anyone, time is the ultimate leveller. It proves truth in remarkable ways. I am still unable to escape the visceral gravity that pulls in my heart towards him. His memory wins me over like Christmas, how long after you stop believing, does the memory of joy and anticipation linger?

It would be easy to write it all away, to create some beautiful allegory about our differences but, despite which aspects of it would be true, what I felt for him was what I had been searching for all of my life and didn't know it. Now watching it disappearing from sight behind me, as this unnavigable ship drifts on, I ache not for the companionship or the support, not for the alleviation of loneliness, or loss of friendship, no, all these things will find me in time; I ache for the discovery another human spirit worth beliving in. I ache for the moments when I believed, in the realness of love.

I have believed, as it becomes easy to believe, that love is a fallacy. That it is the contrivance of greeting card companies and pampered women and disillusioned teenagers. My values have always been cast and recast again upon the echelons of intelligence and privilege and I have believed that that you should never need someones love. That all that matters in this world is to be somebody, to be something, to create and say and do something of a higher and higher merit, depth and understanding. Those are the values to which my life was ascribed. Love, like life after all, was for the taking  because I deserved it. Because I was in some way - particular. This genealogical hypothesis, this innate moral compass of destiny is a burden and a curse; as much as it is a pillar and a touchstone.

And then it happened. 

Wrapped tightly in his strong embrace, sheltered from the cold pattering of ceaseless raindrops, huddled together in our small patch of solitude I found something, something I didn't know I wanted and something I never believed I was meant to have. To be home again, in the fragrance of his movements, the subtle wit of his grin, the grimy taste of his hard days. To be the thing, the one thing in his life that burns so bright and so sweet that he could lick his lips a thousand miles away and still taste it. I knew he was always there, deeply embedded in the fabric of my body, from the nights we spent lying together our minds interwoven in tangled whispers of past lives and future aspirations. But I was stuck, woven into the failure of my anger and mistrust. Stuck in the reassuring fortress of my stubborn defenses. I thought I was dancing around, what I couldn't see was taking me alive. With the melodic sizzle of a pad of butter down a hot pan I slid into his arms, into his life and further and further away from all the hopes and expectations I had covered myself in. All the hard edges of my past, all the whaling cries of 'girl misunderstood' melted away, because I was the girl loved by him. Loved with ferocity and tenderness. Loved until the light shone in the night and the moon and stars lit up the days and I didn't know what was up and what was down and where I stood, all I knew was the deep, calm, levelling force of his presence; and the way his eyes drooped when he was tired and the way his voice sounded when he was happy and the way he tied his boots and rolled his cigarettes. I knew the feel of his last kiss in the morning, his proud heart, his dirty finger nails. I knew every inch of him and the time between each beating pulse. And I knew how much these things frightened and excited me. I wanted to drive myself into the cliff face of his being because he was beautiful and I wanted to be beautiful too. Lovely in the eyes of someone who knows no motive, has nothing to enforce and nothing to prove. Someone whos loves, truely.

I know that in time I will care less and less. As the memories fade and grey, the thought of his eyes staring back at me tear my soul to pieces less and less,  I will convince myself, as we all do, that I have no regrets, that I did the best I could at the time. I will convince myself that it was never meant to be. . .

And I will be wrong.

And if I never find it again, 

I will die with those thoughts in my head,

and the memory

 of his love.

Toothbrush Pen

 I grabbed my toothbrush,

thinking it was a pen.

It's a funny adult thing,

carrying a toothbrush

though everyday life.

While the trees go on,

playing shadow puppets on the ground

and little shadow leaves,

ride bigger shadow branches,

into battle.

And under this cool winter siege,

I remember being young

and thinking about the freedom

of dirty teeth.

The freedom when,

I could run my little tongue all day 

along their grubby veneer,

and nobody cared.

All that freedom.

And no one 

to tell me what to do with it.

Now I am an adult

and I carry my toothbrush,

back and forth,

back and forth,

to a job

that nobody cares

if I show up to.

Down a road

nobody cares,

if I take. 

And on I go,

rubbing my tongue

against the worlds grubby indifference,

and wondering;

 is this what freedom feels like? 

Everywhere to go,

everything to do

and all the knowledge 

of its crushing irrelevancy.

You do and you don't.

It comes and it goes.

Nothing but,

fluttering little morsels of passion

to lead me down

another dead end;

with a toothbrush for a pen.

The Grip of Love

For a girl who,

words always held such power,

 to persuade and convey

to emote and reform.

To know now,

that her words 

are powerless;

powerless to fix anything.

To change,

anything.

Powerless to bridge

this impossible divide 

that grows within us.

How far we've come

to be this far apart.

To be so hopelessly lost,

from each other.

Too many sun bleached promises,

and dry cracked memories.

Too much of the inspiration to travel

to each other,

lost

in endless oppressive days

that pulled us apart.

I, me.

You, you.

Two things,

passing in and out

of the painfully casual,

grip of love.