Tuesday 7 January 2014

If You Must Love


If You Must Love


I've had a thousand epiphanies about her

She loves me, she loves me not
She loves me but loves another too
She loves me but doesn't know it
She loves me but doesn't know how to say so...

Each wore the unmistakeable face of truth
In the moment of its finding
Until the finding of the next
Which proved the former face of truth a lie

If you must love, don’t be the first to do so.

About Living


About Living

I think I’m dying
Now that I’ve found the secret to living

The chiming reverberations
Of an old, black, dusty piano
Travel from trembling strings
Struck by hammers 
Struck by fingers 
Struck by a heart
Aching with joy or sadness
And moved to speak
Using notes sad and blue
Or peaceful and green
Or bright and yellow
Or raging and red

Because she wore a dress
Of blue, green, yellow and red
That day at the beach with white sand
And deckchairs, sunbathers with tanned skin and half-conquered sandcastles
Where she said she loved him – but not enough
Or he said he loved her – but not enough
And they should have been happy but weren’t
And each wondered why it was so hard to be happy
In a world so full of people wanting to be happy
The grainy feeling of hot sand between his toes
As they curled inward
Away from the anger and disappointment

On that windy evening when he was twelve
And got sand in his eyes while reading Romeo and Juliet
On a patio by a dusty Arabian street side 
Summer’s cool breath creeping up his skin
In a trail of goosebumps and erect hairs
When he decided that dying for love was beautiful
Or that there was no beauty in loving enough to die
And set his heart (which was later to ache)
Towards finding a love true enough to die for
Or a truth beyond love, worth living for
Ignorant to the fact that his heart commanded him and not he, his heart –
The evening he had haddock for dinner

It smelled fishy but he didn’t know what it was
How could he when he had only just learned to walk
He stared at it, trying to find the words
Which best described the stinging sensation at the ridge of his nose
Whenever he went near and inhaled deeply
But his vocabulary was as limited as his mobility
So, he stretched a fidgety finger
Attached to a fidgety forearm
And the fidgety frame
Of a fidgety infant
Scooped a dollop and put it in his mouth
And learned that he didn’t enjoy the taste of cat faeces

Not unlike the taste on his tongue
The first time he breathed – heard, saw, touched and smelled
Untainted by the membrane of his mother’s womb –
And cried because he felt everything at once and it was all too much
When all he ate or drank was the rich milk of his mother’s breast
Of which he never grew tired
Because he didn’t know there was anything else to savour
And came to it with fresh enthusiasm
Each time it was presented to him
As his sole reason for and means to living
Hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting
All too great an adventure to decline


Nowadays, I kill my adventures before they’ve begun
For being too stupid, too dangerous or too childish

I find my living shrinking
To fewer and less momentous events

And my dying, swelling
With the emptiness of all the things I’ve learned not to do