The future sends flowers

 

My mental arrangements

lay in disorganised confusion,

like an illusion of rose petals

cluttered over the floor.

Scattered pictures. Nothing more.

No concrete memories to pour,

not a statue of your face

nor of our racing hearts. Now I stand.

Alone in this shell,

a cocoon in deep space.

Floating along. Alone in this well

of deepening self-disgrace.

Alone in this sinking quicksand

like a slow-motion hourglass.

Just passing through.

I paint myself, and the image stares back.

 

A man without a face.

 

Flashing lights,

cinema screen distortion,

burning, bubbling

who I remember

and who I will be.

A calendar without dates.

A diary with no pages.

My thoughts clatter

through the uncovered

cavernous space, scrawling

smiles upon the walls of

this empty temple. Smiles

to the moments that time has erased.

 

But as I look back, I see only frowns.

 

Time begins to crack.

Lightning strikes etched into glass.

All around I see slivers, fragments

cut from this jaded timepiece galaxy.

Jigsaw pieces of who I have been.

Faded, so the edges are the only guide

to complete the image. Photographs

that should exist are now just plotholes

into a weathered past.

Holes I can’t help falling in,

as my stumbled steps keep crumbling.

 

Memories run away and leave me.

Rats fleeing a sinking ship

and I'm left afloat on a sea,

in the hazy fog that circles

menacingly.

Staring deeply into the void...

 

 

 

 

And my future sends me flowers,

and in those flowers I see galaxies,

all the grand colours of the cosmos 

as space opens up,

and in the fields I see you and I,

planting love to grow in memories to come.

A universe of love always ready to bloom,

cuddled tight like the trees above.

liquid truth

 

Tell me your story, let it roll

gently over me. I don’t wish to

wade in the shallows, I don’t want

to sift through rock pools, only

reflecting back my own image.

I want to break down the sands,

let the waters flow through my hands,

feeling their coolness tingling my fingers,

as I listen to the shells whisper their echoes.

 

I want the depths to swallow me whole.

I want to feel every wave as it lingers

for a second before collapsing over me,

rushing your page,

and as I’m sinking

even deeper,

into words that have faded,

worn with age, I want your

ink to stain

skin.

Let me weep for every tear

you’ve ever cried. Let my smile

for every high crest you’ve ridden

like a dolphin in the wind.

Let me hold your every loss

and celebrate every win.

 

You could just splash

a few droplets over me,

little liquid gems of story,

and even though my heart

would still be soaked through

with the beautiful spectrum of truth,

I want it all, the whole pool,

the rivers that flow to

the whole ocean.

I want the rains to pour

so I can know you more.

 

I want to stand on your shore,

throwing the sand behind me,

no bucket or spade, I want to feel

every grain, every sharp strain of proof,

that inside there is so much more,

inside there is you.

And as it drifts away.

I’ll keep dusting away the pain

until I’m just an island in the ocean of you.

 

I want to dive into the depths,

Where the light doesn’t glow,

don’t worry it will never drown me,

I want to be taken on the currents,

rushed through your past, your now

into the future you.

I want to find shipwrecks

of where you used to be,

and paint them in bright colours

so you can see they are not ugly,

but beautiful parts of history.

 

And as I’m swimming in this vortex,

swirling a whirlpool around me,

I want to feel your rushing heart

race through me, as I open chests

of treasure to show what you have kept

hidden for too many pages of your story.

The violence of thunder to come

 

Take in the silence,

the inviting silence.

The quiet solitude

of a nightfall horizon.

The wispy clouds swooping

into dreamy waves.

Enjoy the way the daylight fades.

Ignore the sound in the distance,

the violence

of thunder to come.

 

See the way the colours change.

Green to deep blue. Marooned

in this island solitude, only lit

by the shiver of the moon

falling in fractured slivers

over the grassy view.

Ignore the red smears that

streak through your thoughts.

The light fear in the air

that fizzles with hate.

Ignore the leer of menace

that permeates the atmosphere.

 

Sit for a second.

A brief existence flicking by.

As the silence of that

 

tick

 

is followed

by a static hiss,

an alarming sound, ignore this.

Sit in bliss watching the

moonlight kiss the oncoming dawn.

The most devastating storms

always arrive as humanity sleeps

away its fears.

 

For in this second of tranquillity,

all sits peaceful, easy.

The wind whispers breezily,

as the nocturnal animals

feed hungrily,

ravished, famished.

 

Shaken.

 

The air tastes metallic,

but the song she sings feels

uneasy, for she sings of terrors

to come, tragic warbling screams

in static haze, London calling

a late, ghostly warning

shaking through the airwaves,

the pounding ache mistaken as

flames licking the sky in one final

dance as daylight awakens

to the annihilated scream

of the flaming sun

and the blinding light

when all is

 

 

 

gone.

 

Enjoy the silence.