DECEMBER

There Is A Boat Down On The Quay

I remember as a child going down to the docks to see a merchant seaman uncle I adored off on a voyage. We none of us ever saw him again. Since then, there have been so many other departures.

There is a boat down on the quay come home at last.
The paint is chipped, the sails stained as if
Time has pissed up against them.
I imagine the sea-routes it has followed,
Sailing through the worlds sunken veins
With its cargo of longings;
A little boat that has nuzzled its way
Into the armpits of forests,
That has sliced through the moons reflection,
Through the phosphate that clings to the lips of waves.
I knew its crew once,
Those boys manacled to freedom
Who set sail over half a century ago,
And were like giants to me.
A solitary child in awe of oceans
I saw them peel their shadows from the land
And watched them depart.
What did they think when they peered
Over the rim of the world,
Where Time Roared and bubbled
And angels swooped like swallows?
Reading an ancient Morse-code of starlight,
Stranded by the longing to be elsewhere,
What secrets did they learn to forget?
I longed to be among them,
A passenger curled up in fates pocket,
I longed to be a part of them-
Those ghosts who set sail in my childhood,
Those phantoms who shaped me,
That marvelous crew for whom
I have stretched a simple goodbye
Out over a lifetime

BP

Simple Lyric

When I think of her sparkling face
And of her body that rocked this way and that,
When I think of her laughter,
Her jubilance that filled me,
It is a wonder I am not gone mad.

She is away and I cannot do what I want.
Other faces pale when I get close.
She is away and I cannot breathe her in.

The space her leaving has created
I have attempted to fill
With bodies that numbed upon touching,
Among them I expected her opposite,
And found only forgeries.

I know her wholeness is a fiction of my making,
Still I cannot dismiss this longing for her;
It is a craving for sensation new flesh
Cannot wholly calm or cancel,
It is perhaps for more than her.

At night above the parks the stars are swarming.
The streets are thick with nostalgia;
I move through senseless routine and insensitive chatter
As if her going did not matter.
She is away and I cannot breathe her in.
I am ill simply through wanting her.

BP

So Many

So many of those girls I longed for are gone now,
Turned to ash that skin so inexpertly kissed,
Those bodies I ached for-
Gone beyond diaries into flames.

When the years tear up our surface beauty
And throw it away like the bright wrappings on a parcel
What is left is what links all the breathing world:
An empathy, the burried knowledge of our going.

It is so easy to forget how the years pour away
And take out of sequence and before their time
So many who deserve longer
On this lush earth.

Along the streets in which I walked with them
The dawn's clear light varnishes houses and gardens,
And fixes forever under the day's glittering surface
So much half-remembered anguish.

The Stolen Orange

When I left I stole an orange
I kept it in my pocket
It felt like a warm planet

Everywhere I went smelt of oranges
Whenever I got into an awkward situation
I'd take out the orange and smell it

And immediately on even dead branches I saw
The lovely and fierce orange blossom
That smells so much of joy

When I went out I stole an orange
It was a safeguard against imagining
There was nothing bright or special in the world



BP

The Cynic's Only Love Poem

Love comes and goes
And often it has paused,
Then come back to see
The damage it has caused.


BP