Aunties that would

I pace a space of limited freedom.

A space where, when love’s concerned,

We’re rarely in our right mind.

And times eternal lines wash out

Onto white pages in elegant contours of black -

Outlining all it is I cannot say,

Like ink on a body bathed in caramel.

Tonight the roof is open. And enigmatic

Shapes fill the void above our heads;

Incandescent shapes swirling and burning

At night before the eyes of stars,

The stern staring bright shafts of winking white,

And yellow and crystal.

Oh, Pompeian Girl – the old me was young!

Oh, reckless indecision,

Ever evading good sense,

Like shapes in the black;

Light evasive figures of light-lost spaces –

Pinning at hope in the dark.

Oh discontented winter of your youth,

You have been weighed.

You have been found wanting.

You’re going down

And I’m coming with you.

Electricity hurts,

And the Hippie-code is broken.

Placid indifference envelops my heart.

The city reeks of Urban Folk, miscalculation and conceit.

I eat my hand, fingers first,

Contemplating the Epic Cycle,

Like Plato in the shadows of the Beule Gate.

And write drivel

With the neurotic mind of a sonneteer –

Past cure am I now reason is past care.

Still no star-fangled shape of blurry

Minds eye reveals itself.

Still the work is not yet done.

Tilting for months-on-end

Upon the abyss of some nauseating

Overheated, drug-induced-calm-before-the-storm.

I lose my touch,

And touch loose ends

Of quasi-philosophical moments

Of enlightenment, or revelation,

Or some other nonsensical,

Unimportant bullshit,

Like the etymology of

God and good.

Good God, and giddy aunts,

And aunties that would put the sophists

And the pop world, and the upper class,

And parliamentary embarrassment, and

The football score, and grammar, and

Self-induced debt, and man-flu, and

‘off days’, and awkward dates, and

Broken phones, and insufferable library fellows, and

Hangovers, and the middle class, and first world problems,

And second world problems, and no signal,

And problems with the ex, and

The wrong coloured flowers,

And the fickle whims of fussy eaters, -

The repulsion of grown men at the sight of blood,

Or a reasonably dirty kitchen surface;

A broken string, a bad day, a long week,

A bad long week, a weekend cut short,

A short changing, the wrong sized internet-delivery,

The trivial pursuit of ancient notions of justice,

And early mornings, and morning sickness,

And the evasive nature of

Soul-mates and talent and happiness,

And fucking myxomatosis,

And dissertation proposals

And dissertations, and deadlines and pay-cheques,

And checkups;

Anything that is not fighting for your life

Or for those you love…

…Aunties that put all this to shame.

She is strong.

She eats Odysseus for breakfast,

With his affable, sneering, divine assistance.

Lighten her load if you can.

My helpless heart and I are here all week.

And my velvet tongue will inflame

And be an irritant.

My unconscious will tell me that you scoff,

Though you don’t,

I know you don’t.

Yet doubt and delusion will prevail,

And I find myself

Pacing a space of limited freedom,

Crowded by celestial forms, looming deadlines

And unfinished sentences that...