Category: Poetry

Started as this:

Finished as this:

Crying her howling love
She begs him,
“Go, dance in gentler drifting.
A better love lies, fast and full
Waiting after dawn.
Angry at fear,
I came down a hero!
A hawk!
But now find I gave a dream away.”

Okay, so I’m sure we all caught on that Monday was Singles Awareness Day/Blood Pump Day/Valentine’s Day/a Hallmark Holiday which is all full of bullshit anyway.

I literally wrote this in the last 10 minutes. I’m tired and have a mildly upset tummy. This is unedited written-down brain-vomit.

But it’s Valentine’s Week (or something), and I kinda like it, so I’m going to post it here, in its rawest of forms. Thoughts would be appreciated. I don’t know what this will become. Maybe lyrics. Maybe nothing.

Maybe just another meaningless blog on the World Wide Web.

But it has been born, it has a name, and now, a place to live.

Enjoy it if you must.

x ND

*****

If I had a lover to call my own
I’d hold him close inside my bed
And call him “my bug”,
Pulling the blankets tight.

If I had a lover that was completely mine,
I’d tell him riddles he’d understand
And he’d say, “I’m not sure why you ask me these things
And not what we’re making for dinner.”

If a lover had me, he’d ask so sweetly,
“Will you be mine? And only mine?”
And I would say,
“I am my own, but I’m willing to share me sometimes.”

And if he were you, we’d lie beneath the stars
Picking out the constellations like a patchwork,
Listening to albums,
Listening to speeches over the radio.
We’d fumble at night time, like careless teenagers,
And you would always show me up.

If I had a lover, we’d share secret plans,
Of Middle East peace and invention schemes.
We’d write bad poetry long past midnight
And sleep in ’til long after noon.

And if he were you, I’d be a bundle of bliss,
Ticking off desires with a biro.
Counting down dreamings,
Throwing off expectations already reached.
We’d tickle each other, just for reactions,
‘Til we were flat on our backs, laughing at the world.

If you were my lover, imagine the trails we would weave and leave through time and space, like the shimmering stars that we are.
If you were my lover, we’d dance in the forest, dressed in a quilt, as rain poured down around us.
If you were my lover, it would all be a lie, but what a lie to live.

At what point do we stop being young?
Fall out of being splendid in the dark.
When do we start taking no for an answer?
When do we begin to lose our shine,
Our magnificence,
Rubbing off on those we brush past.

The answer is never.
Your glory will always be there.
It is simply on someone else’s coattails.
It is cradled in your loved ones’ hearts.
You will always be splendid,
It’s just sometimes we are so busy admiring, we forget to remind you.

I didn’t feel the need to apologise
It’s not my fault that you and I were here
But what ensued as a result of your attentions
Has occurred, and that’s a fact that won’t disappear.

And my red-headed friend
Has declined to ever let me call you a man
And my light-hearted pixie girl
Is saying I should take it if I can.

But if there’s something in my way,
Should I bend to its will?
Should I let this morning come and trip me?
Should I let my guardian fall?

I was so, so sure.

And this pill, flowing through my system
Is making me say things I’d never say before
It felt mildly artificial,
But at least I know you’d keep her warm.

I was so, so sure.

I have loved you well beyond my means
Leaving you with the bitter taste that runs through conquest’s deepest seams,
Streaking to the surface.
Twenty-one years and I still haven’t learned
The meaning of the word “no”.

I was so, so sure.
But now I don’t even know myself.

I am a painter.
With words on my palette
And a barb in my heart,
I sing for my equals
And do my best
To start a revolution
For the thinkers,
Not the formulas,
For it is these bitter patterns
That always pull me down.

Oh! To be a scholar!
To always have the answer
And never to dwell
On the prettiness of things.
In a world that is harsh,
To never see the sunlight.
Although I know that I would have to sacrifice my spirit
To be one of their number.
This is why I am a painter.

Fight for the freedom to love,
For hatred has only cheated us thus far.
The wars were wasted,
Like the lives that fell like leaves at their hand.
“Love thy neighbour,”
Came the call from above.
Why do we ignore the words of God?
Is it because he is human too?

 

When you are old
There will be a house
On a hill
Where you will dwell,
All cosy and warm and wrapped in a blanket.
There you will dwell.

And the trees all around,
For miles around,
Will shelter you from the world,
As your hands get arthritic from their years of toil
And your fists refuse to open.

Only then will you hear my name,
Breathed softly on the evening wind,
And remember youthful times long past.

My lonely spirit will smile on you
And all your aging memories,
Vivid as the day they were wrought.
And though you can’t see me
I will gently brush the silver hair from your wrinkled brow
In the hope that for a moment
(I don’t want long, just a moment)
You’ll wish you hadn’t been so dismissive of my Echo of old.