Scratchy vinyl

 

Shady lanes,

love's first embrace

under

pale moonlight

hearts raced,

and I felt at one.

But was I one

or were we two,

not together in tune,

Just

a mismatched

instrumentation,

a misplayed harmony

on scratchy vinyl,

a recreation of something,

that couldn't be called final.

A tribute act,

the notes played right,

but the passion was

a fire that couldn't

take light.

 

Hotel rooms

and hidden spaces,

anywhere we could taste

the intimate fruits

of love's trees, but the feelings

never sang like

the birds in those leaves.

For the fruit was sour

and nothing could

make it sweet. For love wasn't

just a fruit you eat,

but a life, a story

of shared devotion,

shared views over shared oceans.

 

And in those memories,

messy bedroom scenes,

places dreams went to die.

And I sigh, for my heart

was untouched by your

melody—a piano played off-key,

a misplaced note

ruining the orchestration

of you and me.

 

Cemetery gates.

As love dies away,

going through motions

trying to catch emotions,

but no feelings sing

when it isn't love

but a skin feeling.

 

And my love is a galaxy

where we can fly,

on the waves of

a symphony,

a choir,

not a beat-up

old tambourine,

left in the roadside gutter.

We can soar

Higher

and feel every ringing sound

the universe is granting.

Because love.

Love is blinding.

But oh so enlightening.

Razorblade rain

 

Close your eyes and take the beating.

A rain of schoolyard bruises, but you

know no other way, there is no use.

You accept the feeling, embrace it,

become one with the way blood tastes

on your lips. Abused, misused, confused,

and you lap it all up

- attention -

it is all better than oblivion,

right? Right?

A shout into the void at night.

 

And it cycles in seasons, an inch taller

and you fall harder. But still the kicks

are seasoning your skin, tenderising

your mind, to never lay a hand on another,

but poisoning your river so you struggle

to feel the flow of love, without the sickness

in the stomach grabbing hold. And you

look and see the smiles, the laughs...

Is this my place in life? Maybe this story

was always divined.

 

And whilst the kicks and punches hurt,

they only bruise the surface layers.

Underneath

a world starts to form defences,

a village coming together.

I hear songs of defiance,

laughter and cheers, as they

build fortresses of reformed

sticks and stones, towers of secrets

looking out at the heavens, awaiting

an onslaught to their homes. Fraught,

but unbowed

they pull all of your slumped emotions

into the core, protection zone.

And the pain is lessened,

as you close off and listen

to them sing you to sleep.

A lullaby of peace.

 

The words however,

they have no defences for. Their walls

can't hold them back, they attack from all sides.

Sharpened edges, razorblade rain,

cuts so much deeper into your writhing mass,

slivering pieces of your shivering meat-sack skin,

until you are a withering wreck

in a torn costume of pain.

 

But no one comes. No heroes.

You escape the rain in worlds

of fantasy, in worlds of games,

in the blurry sweeps of time,

in music, songs of pain,

that heal your own.

You escape in the drink, in

pushing yourself to the brink,

in sex, in feeling

something nice upon the skin,

but nothing takes the place.

Until a beat in your chest.

A tribal drumbeat of clicking fingers.

A song without music,

a lyric sheet of all the memories

that still linger somewhere

in the darkness, in the mental

wilderness.

 

And you forgive, never forget.

You let bygones fall into a layby,

and wither like a roadside shrine.

You open your eyes to beauty and

the sun that shines. The moonlight

that guides, the moments of divinity

in perfect harmony with infinity.

And you smile a real smile.

For nothing can ever bruise you again,

this skin suit is both armour and healing,

arms to hold and to be held within.

And the river flows clean, no poison remaining.

Young Bill

 

I talk to your star, every once in a while.

I don't know if you hear me, or if you

are there at all, but I do know that you are

in my heart when I need to call.

And you probably think it's fanciful,

like me, you didn't see organised religion

as an answer, but did you hear

the universe singing at all?

 

Because I still get unsure, I still feel doubt,

I still don't know if I'm doing it all right.

I still feel alien in my skin,

malfunctioning in my brain,

and a slight pain in the hip

when I stand in the rain.

 

But I think you would

have been proud of the man I became,

or am becoming, because this growth is ongoing.

And maybe, you would have had a better insight

into who I was, and the world I was forming.

Why I didn't fit into the same boxes as you.

Why I could never have been just a clone of you,

following the same 9-to-5 drone of life,

when my mind can't connect

those threads half the time.

 

They used to call me 'young Bill'.

 

A falling cascade of Polaroid

faces flood my mind - 'the worker'.

'The father'. 'The cartoonist'. 'The thinker'. 'The smile

that just sat, content'.

 

And I question silently, were we more similar

than we seemed?

 

Did you have a slightly miswired brain?

Did you see the magic

in the way the flowers swayed?

Or the way the rain bursts as it falls

on your cheeks in a sweet embrace?

 

And whilst I see it now in my face,

I also see that I couldn't ever be

a replacement, or a placeholder.

 

And one last Polaroid falls across my eyes:

'The poet'.

 

I am a different being, and as I grow older

I know that my path was never meant to

reach the same destination, but maybe

that was ultimately the way destiny was

bent into shape by your creative mind.

You dreamed big, but the world wouldn't let you soar.

Well, I roar back that I dream bigger, and I won't

be pushed onto a factory floor

and stamped under those heavy boots.

 

I am more.

 

I'd rather be a torch holder

shining down on everyone,

beaming with joy when they

show the world the love inherent in them.

Or when they point out the unjust, the people

that cause distrust, the ones that hurt

and those faded stories of dust.

And I think you would have seen the magic.

For I know I saw in your eyes

a glint when you glanced at the starlight,

and song was never far from your lips.

You just came from a different generation,

where they never saw the beauty in difference.

 

I'll put a record on for you,

some Motown numbers

as I glance up at your star.

And I'll let my feet move in dance,

for I think of you every day,

and every night as I watch the sky.

And the starlight will glisten

in my teardrop eyes,

as those heavenly lights listen

to my silent cries.