black stamp

after the settlement made official -- with a splodgey
black stamp, on a neatly creased piece of letter-sized paper,
a final, dignified and oddly drama less full stop.

cast into a shock of silence, not knowing what emotion to express,
I chose nothing. just a large exhalation, a relaxation,
then a determination to file and move on.

but I have been stamped. my heart still carries this black ink,
which -- as certain as my degree– is a permanent hue,
it can never be truly erased and lost in history.

Imprinted with attics of halloween bunnies, still life with woodpecker,
the tipsy tuesdays bringing a apprehensive smell of
misunderstood microbrew laced with a lungful of forgetting.

a fountain of faces follow me, they haunt me in their unresolved
absence. all those people who (it turns out) I never really knew.
their lasting black mark seems a largely mutual fakeness.

my thoughts cannot forget the pent-up misery and
wandering loneliness, of sitting cold in a room playing mendelssohn
to an empty futon; of silent tears emptying out to strangers.

posing curiously to examine this sticky blackness branding me,
I suddenly comprehend that for this printing
I wouldn’t have it any other way -- I wouldn’t want it to.

finally I know what faith is

in the garden of our memories
the breeze sings
the waves roar, and the sandstorm hits
but we are safe, we are warm and
we are so happy
under this rich sandy comforter,
where the only thing to get us is
each other.

in the garden of our memories
the breeze stomps
the trees sway, going to your
Victorian home and back
and home and back,
clasping at hands and at straws
feeling the ecstasy of each
moment together.

through this sadness
through all this pain
I reach for your love and
finally I know what faith is.

london rain

the rain makes me angry
and the sun numb.

my one relief: the bus ride home:

where everything has been done
and where you are waiting.

endlessly internalising escape.

sheets

sheets posted off to waste,notes
that will see no more sound.
they call to me, a cherished regret,

part of a passage of raptured loss.

left in an airport lounge, I long for them,
furiously read with a child's simple blessing.
golden stars, pencil marks and potent aspiration.

I then see our sunset house, so crystal-clear,
the only other image (than yours) just google maps.
the roses reach out, the grass grows long,

I nurture the sounds of new memory.

I sat on that stool and mimicked odysseys,
appreciating my unfaltering listener, my sage.
I built upon a case of joy but with strings

tightened and bound like sincerity.

but then we had to reach out, dropping our
fortunes (and the sheet music) for unknown ventures.
we purged the old lines, urging with

unexpected grace notes towards a cathartic major chord.