Creme pies

Before, it was crème pies; mellow peaks for every day and every day a different flavour, different colour, the same sparkle of sugar and then

We’d whip more cream – yours was always softest – and we’d joke and sing and mix our different colours until

the last thing I expected – you to mix the crème with concrete - and to grey the peaks in quiet rage that hardened for weeks until

you suddenly offered me a spoon and we crouched again like comrades, to scoop the sweet and chew the fat whilst I collected unequal pieces

I’d cry.

And laugh.

And remember.

And then:

We start to whip more crème – though I doubt now whose is softest - and I joke and sing and plan my different colours until

The last thing I expect – for me to mix the crème with salty tears – and to flood the peaks in quiet hurt that hardens for weeks until

I can’t forget the dizzying pain of being hit in the face by concrete.

Truth

He would always wonder, afterwards -
But then -
Honesty rolling off his tongue like liquid nitrogen
To fog the space between them
And as the summer rolled away from them
The freeze that he assumed would thaw
Cracked in silver veins
That one day, in a ray of sunshine
Splintered in a barrage
Of her curious resentment
And he will always wonder, now
If he should have lied as well.

Musings

Trying to claw it all back

As if it’s possible to rescind the flint

Of your meaning

Before it petrifies.

Melbourne

In hues of crimson, scarlet hazy, the ire will rise like a phoenix wounded

Put your forgiveness on ice, like leftovers; the soft squelch of the seal of the freezer -

Close it up and forget about it; like a Tupperware coffin you’ll reserve the hate

For another meal; at -2 degrees; suspended

It crystalizes to a chilling dust as the frost would form on a bag of peas, young;

But hardened into shrivelled pebbles of gall, inedible.

Such is the feast to serve upon yourself– indelible

You will force the lumps down vehemently, your gullet gaping with a wound       

Of your own eviscerating fury – so young,

So advanced; an engine in need of antifreeze

So the boil and cold of it might be suspended

How prehistoric are the stalactites of your own self-hatred?

Every single frozen inch of you a measurement to hate:

Unforgiveable nerves sting with the incredible

Petrification; self-condemnation is a bitch suspended

High above the mouldy rub of an ancient wound

A long, discoloured, loping frieze

Around the amygdala and back again – race you there. Oh, to be young!

Those youths who sauté layers without repentance - the blind young

Whose eyes don’t feel the sharp and pungent bite - so unknowing of themselves to hate

Whilst I’ve long had my heart in the freezer

Cushioned by the sharp and lumpy and inedible

Deficiencies – of what I did, and who I am and what I am yet to do; that is my wound:

The grouse over deeds as yet suspended

They crawl the halls of neurons not yet electrified. But wait for it! There! The world upended

Like I’ve grabbed for the bag with a hole in it; the young

Peas, green and brittle and wounded

Bouncing on the linoleum, cascades of self-loathing tapping with their pure hate hate hate

Inedible.

But I will make myself eat it, every mouthful. Because fuck you and I said so. And the freeze-

Dried pits of despair that melt and weep and sluice between my toes, the freezer

Breaks. Relief is suspended

Reversing; pulsing, pulsating, protracting; young

But ancient – a dread so newly recognised. Indelible

A veritable stew of seething hate

Reaches boiling point on the floor; a never ending wound.

Would that I could suspend; a hatred so young and primitive; knowledge of deeds as small as the stones in a freezer-bag of peas; a wounded fucking cunt. Inedible. Indelible. Incredible pain.

Extrospective

The worst thing about being?

That unswerving assumption you can’t see

The sweeping beneath the carpet;

the lumps that lie there become mountains - 

In the corner of your retina you watch them - 

Your corneas scraped

By every new harsh-toned phrase

Or lie

Beaten back by a brush as though it

was never said –

But in your head

It fills the cracks; the fibres in the wool grow

pointed with the shape of it

Cairns of a grudge

So when the rug’s pulled out from underneath

You’ve been here already

Seville

SEVILLE

In golden hues, and byzantine blue, vidriado tiles
greet the lost and weary traveller in Seville.
Sunlight momentarily emolliates the new year’s winter

in a halo of light behind the orange trees.

In Tiempos pasados the bitterness softens
When Old Acquaintance should be forgot

And that’s what you’re doing: forgetting; as though the frigid air could make forgot

Make slick, like the world-weary cobblestones and tiles

To slip, unnoticed and unoppressed by the traffic of profane tourists, skeletons softened

By the drudgery of their cumbersome packs and manuals of facts: Seville

Cathedrals and Visigoths and orange trees

Enthralled by hues of pink in the halo of winter.

Your own passport is stamped with promise yet the winter

Cools within your entrails, not forgot

And the rotten muck of decomposing fruit beneath the Valencia trees

And the throbbing white of a hotel room encased in tiles;

Is your Seville

Dull in loneliness; the piquancy of sleeping pills softens

Until the new morning in a new year, breaks and softens

You sit in a bar eating deep fried phallic totems against the winter

One day to recover your social media felicity: in Seville!

You won’t let the world think you’ve forgot

Those Andalusian villas with their pink and apricot tiles

A myriad of selfie smiles digitally remastered against the dark silhouettes of trees

You post a golden canvas that fades towards darkness and fairy lights in the trees

Signal to the World-wide web that the tumult softens

Inside your head, the fragments might tessellate perfectly like tiles

Or crack you open in great ice-sheathes like winter

You have not forgot.

Even amidst the beauty of Seville

You are the lost and heartsick traveller, ambling through Seville

Sick to death of Rossini’s frantic overture curling through the trees

In days to come, you will have forgot

How byzantine blues and the verisimilitude of orange hues and dirt might have softened

Had only you given yourself to the history and winter

Depart now from winter in Seville; whose tiles crack under trees laden with bitter hopefulness; where memories soften but cannot be forgot

Untitled

For your life to be ending like this no lights on
The trolley screeches in the hall and you don’t care

That cordial is all that’s left now

I thought you’d scream blue murder for one last wine

Instead I rub your feet as you look through me

Past me

A void of forget me not blue

Where you don’t know my name


A good death is humble, fast, noble
Which of these is yours as they take your shit away

In a pan; 
dress your bruises – you sleep on the floor now

The slightest descent of all, from a distance of mere inches

Yet it takes forever
The world seems suspended above you
Photographs of people out of reach

I feed you mangoes on a spoon

Sunshine dripping down your chin

Sunshine 
in your smile – so loving

Fumbling back to conversation so infrequently now:

How's my job, how's my car, how's my
identity - wrapped in fog, in the incessant screaming
Of a tv in the common room

Life dwindles down to this:
Mango pulp pulsing in a cerebral blender 
Where you've got no idea that everything we've been through
Goes beyond the last 20 seconds
Like the goldfish in the waiting room
It's all so incongruous
The will it takes to find you 
You still don’t remember me
Yet I’ll love you forever