There’s a plant out there 
with brilliant orange berries 
summer and autumn 
fused and for the life of me 
I couldn’t tell you 
what it is 
but that it is the colour 
of your heart, of that 
I am certain, a substitute 
for your gaping absence 
and the lack of sense 
in this paltry life lived 
without your words and wisdom 
and it sustains me 
on these sunny days just about 
provides a fragile focus for the mind 
in constant labour 
to lose itself 
forget about the physical 
wrenching of body 
from body 
that deep cut of the cord 
mercilessly bloodless 
as to be almost unnoticed 
albeit essential 
and thereafter a wanderer 
in search of its soul 
with a few berries for sustenance 
flushing out the beast that slowly 
eats the hours 
the days 
the years 
 

Long Hair

The longing gets knotted
in my hair each morning.
If it could be tugged at
with a wide-toothed comb

A gentle pull and the tangle
snaps painlessly away
falling with my stockings
by the bath and then I scoop it up

my hand a careful compass
bringing the orphaned bits
together avoiding the yellow stains
round the bowl gathering pile

upon pile with large depilatory swooshes
on hands and knees
trying not to think of loss
clumsy fistfuls of hair

nipped far from follicles,
fallacies and folly
I dump in the trash
a half-hearted gesture, really,

blitz the lot with the toothpaste tube
empty toilet roll, scraps
of snot-stained tissue. The thing
is

I'm never done. There are always
loose longings escaping - long, dark
flecks tangled on the floor
and after all that show of care

I get up again - I get up
and leave them there.
 
 

The Day

The day

has lost track of itself
in the hobble
because of its reservation.

You say

the landscape is starved
the wings of birds clipped
a sharp-edged paranoia
swoops for the kill

of growth and flight
those places I've sought out
through you
for a moment's peace 
silence, solitude.

The only way

it works is once removed
from the world
I don't know how or why
what makes it any different
the narrowness, perhaps,
of the ledge
good for a nest
perhaps the sun, the wind
that gives a sense
of wings.