A Child I Could Abandon

I wanted a child I could abandon,
a flame I could freeze into a dried leaf...
light I could strip off my skin and run
like a stream of pain in a sea of grief?

I wanted to follow a star I could
forget when my eyes gave in to sleep -
I wanted to spill echoes in a wood,
then drown it into a silence deep.

I wished to write off the cancer of love
a beat at a time or a lazy slip
down the murky alley of thoughts, above
the hell of my purple, shivering lip.

The needle of existence was hollow -
it pursued a soul it could not swallow.

Hit and How

Listening to you from the sad vantage
of an age, of an age, of an age ...

How taken you had seemed one evening -
there wasn't any space for two to sit.
The bench was littered and the birds twittered;
a loose thread on my sleeve, I tried to fit
in the space, a universe, our shortest time -
and then you turned and said, said it:

that the light on my face and the fire
in your palm were the miracle,
and that we were to part until it hit 
me equally.

Sweetheart, I could overcome that turn -
you did not sit and I kept shrinking,
thinking in my heart that you were just
a candle I wouldn't choose.

Ever.

Paper Planes

These paper planes unfold
into letters that were never sent:
every morning my unruly eyes 
before your downcast ones -
"Good morning...", I whispered and you 
only nodded to the spill of pearls
around you, and as I turned
you looked at my shrinking form,
scribbling an unending word
on your pad.

What Does This Heart Orbit?

What does this heart orbit?
What does it want for it?

I never knew that Autumn
was a poem about sorrow -
it set my heart racing
and so I went for it.

A feather fell on a drum
and snowflakes filled my heart -
music had been listening,
that silence fell for it.

Many miles into the race,
my heartbeats slipped and
shed the time about them,
got caught in the orbit.

All of Twelve

All of twelve -
uncorrupted, unformed,
she stands on tiptoe
and pushes against
the gates of Time.

Her skirt whirls -
she's a curly thought;
she is heard singing
by those who know (it).

Time's rendered 
but a tremble -
her feet are rhythm bound.

Who knows what she'd grow to be -
a sonnet, a ballad, verse profound?

Concrete

Labyrinthine,
the sky is debris and clouds -
a concrete greyness, life
shrouds
this being -

a being that had once
rebelled and donned a belt of stars -
shorn today of reasons
to sing -

dwells a death
in a merciless womb -

they'll do him a tomb,
concrete.

The Stone Bridge

I arch when touched
by a river -
a stone bridge, I cringe,
shiver -

the brook's music,
and I am riddled with beats -

to live a flute
and yet endeavour
flatness!

The monotony of
being walked upon!

I do not die.
They die.