My Poetry is Lost at the End of your Leg

I’ve wanted you to call me every day
To hear your midnight stories of woe (or anything)
To listen to your turn of your phrase, your silent smiles
To hold our invisible vulnerability in my MIND line
I’ve wanted to sail with you in that unsafe dinghy
The one you told me about in Newcastle Upon Tyne
Where you would die dramatically on the sunset, drowning…
AND GO SLOWLY DOWN INTO YOURSELF ON SHORE

I’ve wanted to call you every day
I’ve wanted to see you clean my shower
With a FINE, YET FINER toothbrush
And to wrap my arms around your enticing waist
And sway to some inane, less-than-memorable, tune
And to have you transform a random cardboard box
INTO A KITTEN’S HOME (at your own pace)

I’ve prayed that fate is wrong and love is right
I’ve been tempted to knit us together a life
Unstitch you from your prison of sorts
And patchwork you into a dream of mine, of ours
I’ve given up on my sacred, fucking poetry
And from the book I once thought I’d write
I’ve erased our love affair of words
IN THE HOPE THAT YOU ARE RIGHT

But I think about you every day
The way you hoisted me up
And wrapped me, to you, like beetle dung
Your stories of us-dumbness and such and such
The way you bought me in with love
With invalid, yet quite credible, emotional currency
Because you didn’t have to reward me, you know
MY LOVE FOR YOU WAS PRICELESS

And yet I would die, to sail with you
And pay the price
And see that sunset
And pay that price

And I can’t eat risotto any more
You spoiled that for me
With your threats of cooking naked
And then your promises (few, then fewer)
Yet you made me SO happy
In your unsuitable leather jackets, your skimpy pinafores
Made up of lying packets of a man in middle age crisis
I would tread on uneasy eggshells for you
FOR AS LONG AS I COULD BARE NOT TO BREAK US

Into pieces

I STILL LOVE YOU SOMETIMES
AND THAT SOMETIMES IS NOW

But I dare not write your name
Indeed, I often think of you as dead
In some unknown airport lounge

AND YET I FEAR THE WORST
THAT YOU STILL LIVE WITHOUT ME
AND I, WITHOUT YOU

Years of self delusion
Stretching to a lifetime

SOME THINGS HAVE TO BE SAID

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