so good to see you
smoke-eyed stranger in the night
with blood on your teeth
when you spark that talk
sly fruit bloom on sullen trees
starlings fall like snow
I remember you
burning sweet Ballachulish
heather by the loch
in a hotel room
shadowed by the Three Sisters
and scented orange
we hoped our extinct
volcano might come to life
in that flash of light
Absence is the heart of Love a brutal
Board game for two or more
Capricious players intent on self
Delusion a power struggle not
Enlightenment or hope for the spiritual
Frisson of two strangers touching skin
Gestures an attempt at unexpected soul
Happiness is a voidable experiment not
Intended to last more than ninety nine
Joyful but repetitive days when ruinous
Keepsakes fall like autumn rain before
Love breakfasts lessen to burnt toast
Marmite with cold coffee because
No-one notices cloud formations or
Opens their eyes to truly see another
Person is not the perfect answer to every
Question but more questions that require
Rumination and lead to rheumatism and
Slavery but do not give up hope bitter
Times do not last and love is not worthless
Undressing in the dark nor a virtuous
Virus causing fever flush and accelerated
Weeping at weekends instead
Xpect expectations to be compromised
You will not be satisfied unless you are a
Zealot intent on annihilation.
You are nothing but a clatter of bones in a dressing gown
coughing up phlegm over our breakfast table.
You are nothing but a slither of liver, lungs, kidneys, brain,
faithless heart pumping white crimson around and around.
You are nothing but a hundred billion neurons firing arrow
thoughts about yourself into a mist of grey.
You stab the butter knife in the marmalade.
I want to stab it in your eye, see your ego bleed out.
Suddenly you look at me and describe a dream
you had about building a house from Plasticine.
As you turn your face and smile, morning sunbeams
blaze just below the curve of your cheek
bone, the place I kiss before we sleep
cool and sharp as an underground stream.
we camped in the Black Mountains
and you thought you saw a wolf. I was a stain
in the shadow of a great cliff of sturdy construction
with a hinged lid. The shoe-box of Hiroshima,
can we forget that flash? How did God shine
the light in the passing space, not minding
as lemmings dived? She had Her own intentions.
I let night glide over my head like cling film
on a frozen turkey, smoothing the bitter lines.
Then you looked up and described a dream,
the sun scrambled on New Year’s Day. Your words
consumed another, one for every minute.
At midnight you stood beneath the pines singing
Jerusalem. I broke free and soared
in the middle of it all, crazy laughing
as the reservoir rotted red as sunset. I was the one
who once loved you, with your yes, yes, yes until
the world shouted no, do not drive or use machines.
You were the watchman of my panopticon.
I was a clock ticking.
It was a time of velvet love,
revolution and Snakebite.
My mother gave me beige
polo necks and warned
of the dangers of touching.
My summer job yielded
a red dress from Bus Stop
with a plunging neckline
and a scalloped hem that swirled
when I twirled to Bowie and Bolan
alone in my room, rehearsing
my poses with a feather boa.
I met him on the landing of a cold
terraced in Queensbury, queuing
for the loo and giddy with homebrew.
He pretended to take my picture
with an imaginary camera, squinting
and clicking his tongue. You look like
what’s her name from Pan’s People,
he said as he kissed my neck. He wore
a peacock feather in his blonde locks
and a guitar with a tartan strap. His lips
were curvaceous like Bryan Ferry’s.
He called himself Fritz and a pacifist.
My mother was ironing father’s
socks, underpants and cotton shirts
when I got in, the steam clouding
the kitchen with a choking mist.
She didn’t look up when I gave her
the peacock feather. It’s pretty, I said.
Some call it the evil eye, she replied.
Next day it was tucked behind her
gilded wedding photo on the shelf
with the candles and the broken clock.
They say blood is thicker than water
so I will build a bridge, a stunning
suspension of disbelief
spanning the oceans between us.
Blood will call to blood, a weaving
of broken strands. 25 is the magic
number. You will come to me, nameless
and lost but loved since always. Brother,
sister, can you hear me, can you feel me
twist in your heart, burn
in your bones, a splinter in your gut,
a memory of what might have been?
Do you dream of dark streets
in a northern city? Do you cry out
in your sleep? Are your eyes flecked
with gold like mine? Is there a gap
between your front teeth? Is your skin
smooth as avocado? Do you like cryptic
puzzles? I have a clue. Together
we will find answers. Let us rendezvous
on the scarlet arc across the blue.
I have prepared a place and I’m waiting.
Note:- on average the amount of DNA shared between half-siblings is 25%
Time and lavender do not heal
your marks like a signature at my door.
My plastic skin splits beneath flaking
layers of paint. Wind and rain penetrate
my openings. No one hears the alarm
and soon decay sets in. The floor
sags underfoot, the walls are festooned
with festive mildew. What goes around
comes around. Time is a serpent biting
its tail, a palimpsest. If I close my eyes
real tight I see you running, a flash
of orange on green, a broken traffic light.
Naked before the mirror, her limbs bent in wilful
directions. She was a misshapen tree, bent
by a bomb blast in some forgotten war, misshapen
but surviving in the ruins of a bombed out town
in a ruined land with a name impossible to spell.
Like the victim of a witch’s spell one leg pointed
left, the other pointed right pulling her opposite
ways. Her life was a circle, a gravitational pull
to wayward rotation. Men caught by her centrifugal
spin queued in rotation to see her flicker matchstick
shadows on the bedroom ceiling, flickering
like the wings of a bird in a locked room.
“Friendship is delicate as a glass, once broken it can be fixed but there will always be cracks”.
Waqar Ahmed
The Purple Hermit 