part two:

explanations,

endings

nut

Nut brown

as a light brown nut......

(down as a bright long burn

in my book -

she's my book that's burning

with her burning look)

Her eyes, now, might be Hazel,

speckled brown,

perhaps green in the edges,

you could look for colours all day long

and still be finding them

if you could look;

her skin is lightly freckled,

and her hair

(of course) is somewhere on the edge of honey,

fringed across black brows.

But she inhabits her, this is the point,

so totally that all of her are one,

embodied;

such a mystery cannot be plumbed,

there is no way except immersion in it.

(And there's 'the point'

the point of separation where

description strips the subject and objectifies -

this is the sequence of a shopping list

and not an explanation of realities.)

It's not just that.....

she holds me in her hand because she has

a poise born of restraint, a playful glint,

and holds

within those bounds a whirl of fire,

a boiling soul,

a passion past believing,

seething grief,

- she's scared me sometimes, with the things she knows,

she takes me places that I dare not go,

I know I love her (and I tell her so).

And she is beautiful.

Her hair's the colour of Sauternes,

or if you beat the sunlight into rods

on some late August afternoon,

or purified a syrup into gas

and packed it in a bottle and looked through,

or just imagined barley in a ripened field

when you were feeling happy on a sunny day

then that might be the colour that love is,

which is to say

the colour of her hair.

ink

My love gave me the pen with which I write,

the book with purple edges and the thoughts I save

to tell her something honest,

something straight,

and so the ink returns itself to her,

coiling on the pages that she gave.

Love's a circle, follows such a course,

our patterns circles, radiating on,

and we perform our circles in accordance

with the willful urging of oblivion.

Freedom comes in choosing what there is

between compulsion, luck and circumstance

we cannot read the book until we write

though we might know the ending in advance.....

I'm stretched out in the cold room, long and thin;

rain roars on the roof, and my escape,

the long road that I stretch to reach to you

is no more than a dark line on white paper.

border

The intervening contours swept by rain,

a green procession

under flags of separation,

I check my passion at the customs house

that I may gain admission to the south again.

want

Perhaps I want too much and love too helplessly

in theory I might rather have autonomy

but when it comes to being with you, honestly

I do my best to melt me into youandme.

Relationships exist in this dichotomy

I have a need that fills a need in you

the most sustaining might be co-dependency

perhaps I want too much because you want it too.

run

Don't run away now,

you will never be free if you run away now,

you will always be trapped by the running

and my life is all I have,

and I would do anything

- I would even be happy -

do seven impossible things decided by committee,

invent new sins,

recreate the past,

say something true......

I am your future, which you can deny

only by dying;

I knew you when I saw you,

and I know you now,

I know that you could turn and walk away

though it would cost you every hope

I know

you are impaled upon that spike,

I know you, and I know you capable,

equipped with madness and with senseless pain,

I know that you could do all this again.

There is no help.

We're trapped in history.

There's just one thing I want, and that is love

and I was building my life to your shore

and if you leave then I am left no life,

my bridge sticks out to ocean like a pier

the island that it sought has moved or sunk,

and I am almost,

I am lost,

all lost,

I am most lost,

the dark,

the least,

the last;

it isn't worth the price if that's the cost,

but I will pay it twice because you ask.

bell

You've never gone so far before

and I am frightened

hollow,

I ring with unease

I know love is a force will burn and break

I'm full of empty

stuffed with nothing so hard I will burst

a lump forms in my heart,

don't lock me out.

Let tides subside,

the moon has phases too,

the Spring tide hurts the most,

here at its ebb

my face hurts with the tears I do not shed,

if we could share these feelings they would be less bad.

spike

Somewhere far back I can hear the laughter,

I am left spread-eagled on this rock

and pecked by happy buzzards one day after.

You know how I feel,

I feel the spike

that I enacted enter through my skin.

I feel the black sick of despair,

and I feel nothing.

I suffer for their sins and for your sin :

if there is nothing left but suffering

then that is mine;

you'll have to smile,

pretending nothing's happened,

though the wheels have stopped;

the song's expired,

the woods are still,

the angels fled,

their wings in tatters and their minds exploded.

You will come to know this in a while.

sight

I ring you up

your voice is like a vice

so cold and strained I don't need telling twice

it has me in a grip as hard as ice,

I know I am to be the sacrifice.

You tell me not to see you

but my eyes

are clenched in pain

and I see otherwise

your image comes unbidden

though I try.

in

It's June, now,

in the January sales,

the seasons prove inadequate,

there aren't enough

since she has balanced my world on her finger.

Cast the ragged net a little wider,

(half the things we catch we do not see)

lingering, consider where you linger

you will find the reasons are inside her,

there was something calling from the start.

down

if i went down for you

how would i know when we were back ?

i miss you but i must not turn and look.

my palm still stings

and if there are no footings I will fall

or only bubbles rise up to the surface

(of course, I might sprout wings,

and just my luck

to sprout wings underwater, in a swamp)

Still,

we don't believe in Spirits, but are moved by them.....

all enquiry beckons us within,

to hidden places and dark moments, where transgression holds.

So there's the pull,

the pulse, the puzzle, the terrain,

the dark heart of a territory held around by shadows;

Hell is chill.

The heat is dark, synthetic,

though it burns your fingers yet it leaves you cold

I do not want to go down there again

my palm still stings,

I pray you follow me

that pain not follow pain that follows pain.

down 2

My palm still stings

an impact made by surfaces

to reach

the essence writhing underneath

to generate a black heat in a broken heart

and bring the pain outside.

It's far too close,

this process,

to the exploitations of a vicious lust.

I fear I broke you,

or I broke your trust.

flame

Though I have smoked and guttered, I have burned.

I thought it must disclose, but was it heat

that burned without a flame, a smouldering

of fumes and choking gasses, you suppose ?

A slow, consuming fire that sheds no light ?

If so, there are no lessons to be learned,

no shouldering the burden, if that's right.

half

I split ourself in half

and grind up here

(dead centre)

in my fracture box

across the concrete miles,

the flattened earth.

There's no sense to my movements,

it's a paradox;

I drive fast to die faster.

My life is dream,

this waking is like death,

a cold, impossible disaster.

My life is in your life,

is in us,

this is no place for me, the place I live;

(the place I live is with you, I should say)

but we are always called upon to suffer the impossible,

and all this we accomplish by existing every day.

other half

This half of us

has,

by some oversight,

been left without a heart,

parts of a brain

(in which are burned bright fragments of a dream or vision seems more vivid than this drab of real)

a nervous system reaching out to feel

the missing whole

and registering pain.

portrait

The blackest ink

loaded on the perfect brush

could not depict

the subtle tapering straightness of her brow

and no description show

the clustering of brown flecks in her eyes

that flock around the pupil in the dark.

She is beyond containment,

irreducible,

a being is a motion,

not a print,

and so we slide in process,

never fixed,

reaching towards somewhere that is not....

I can't say what I mean,

when words are both too clumsy and too thin,

I splash them with my meaning,

none goes in.

We are emotionally made

and driven,

told in stories,

woven out of dreams,

past understanding.

Could we ever hope to contemplate

the vastness of an instant

or explain

a single kiss ?

I start at a description which obscures,

and sink into a gallery of words;

I only know my lover who I miss.

edge

Don't give me doubt.

I walked the edge with you.

I came as close to nothing as I can.

If I am not enough

dispose of love;

No more than an unhappy animal.

faith

I place you at the apex of desires,

I'd lay it out straight, were it not so tangled;

I have powers best not exercised:

this line holds the hook by which I'm angled.

Take me to the brink. We might fly off.

I have the faith which kills, that much is true,

the question's not if I have faith enough

but whether I have faith enough for you.

arts

You are no experiment or play-thing,

(I only have one life I have to live)

you think I am taking; I am giving,

one day you will push and I may give.

I wait, (I will), I wish, I wonder what,

to undertake, to try, to undergo,

to say I understand, or maybe not,

if you don't give a shit then I don't know.

I reach for you sometimes and you're not there,

a chasm may be bridged, a distance crossed,

but there are no technologies or arts

with which to link an intimacy lost.

obvious

I was a fool to think that I could cope

I can't afford you, that is obvious

You have disturbed me in my unaccustomed course

the thing that hurts most, that attracts me most.

I took you for a source of joy, of hope

but now you snip my head off with your claws,

a routine gesture for you, I suppose,

the one who most attracts me hurts me most.

lines

The telephone smells of sorrow

hunched and neglected

in the blacked-out hall

the lines have withered

with the shrieking cold

or this is my pathetic fallacy?

Our union's disjunctive,

yet I seek

none other than our resolution into harmony.

Can that be all ?

I fear for our connection......

You, I know,

fear for yourself.

Perhaps for me ?

pour

My certainty has poured into your doubt

but cannot fill it up;

I do not want more freedom

but involvement,

I want what I need, and I want you.

I think sometimes you're not impressed enough:

I do want your approval, and I know

that pleading will not find it,

and I sometimes turn away in sheer despair;

what can I do ?

Except want what I have ?

and you withdraw.

song

I want you but

not if you don't want me.

I don't know what

awaits us, or what is,

I have a jagged blade that rusts in vinegar,

I have a cold, dark, little, hard, dry place

in which to squeeze myself if things go wrong,

a tiny hole inside a small black stone.

I live a life in fragments;

we all do,

we sleep with people, but we dream alone;

if you won't listen, then there is no song,

and if you don't believe it, it's not true.

slit

Slit me open.

What's left but the guts ?

I love your cruelty,

though it cuts too deep,

I've no defence against your truth or beauty,

though they may be a play of surfaces.

fit

She's a nest of snakes, I must admit

as much as she is flowers;

there it is :

I cannot take or leave her,

she is hers,

I don't know if there's any way I fit.

certificates

I had not thought that this could be;

how strange, and how predictable :

a frantic passion suddenly

a mutual indifference.

As if Love's censors disapproved

our details of equivalence,

declared certificates removed

and marked us 'Not applicable'.

lost

Lost without you

and so lost in you,

the distance separating tautens to

a higher pitch of wanting,

I am stretched

and racked on reminiscence

and attacked by pangs of dreaming

my mind's photographs

are windows into sunlight :

I recall

our tender violence,

our wise, crazy joy,

our craving and restraint,

love's paradoxes

linking up our absence in this placeless place,

as we become self for the other's sake.

orbit

As my erratic passage felt your pull

my orbit was eccentric and I then

bounced off your atmosphere,

near burning up.

I saw your seas boil as I passed

I saw your skies cloud over. I fled on a full

year, maybe further, but the sky is curved

(by love) and I flowed back

more strange and more familiar, each return

an equal peril, though more regular

accompanied by tidal waves

and earthquakes, shooting stars

and hot, beseeching winds;

yet this too calms, the wild ellipse

settles to an orbit

and our oceans swell

towards a sky-wide unity which

gulls shriek over headlands.....

Soon perhaps our planets may collapse

together in a single cataclysm,

now allow our atmospheres to mingle,

my sky brushes your sky,

we exchange

the furthest reach of birdsong

and an icy trace,

as each one circles each.

Now my lover you are moving my horizon,

fill my heaven, plain as bread, and soon

we'll measure seasons by our observations

(there is weather in you anyway)

I am your planet and your satellite

now we are each the other's moon.

pause

Poised amid the fulness of the moon

I contemplate my fractures……

almost freedom, not to know what comes

as I observe the forked tongues of the future,

the road that leads to nowhere,

and the path of oblivion.

Is this a thin isthmus, or proud promontory ?

How wide is time ?

The present still seems seamless and inviolable, yet

the continent of newness wears away

so soon a scattered, rocky archipelago,

a rolled map locked up in a cabinet.

Some time you are not and I my friend

can recognise us as unintertwined

it seems so many of the ties that bind

are proven to be velcro in the end.

poison

If you were poison, I would eat you still

you are a flower of the dangerous

and our behaviour’s desperation’s overspill,

a love that is devoured by us.

It’s not so easy to be close to you,

one day I may be pushed out when you shove,

yet we may be escaping from and through

an us that is devoured by love.

sight

I ring you up

your voice is like a vice

so cold and strained I don't need telling twice

it has me in a grip as hard as ice,

I know I am to be the sacrifice.

You tell me not to see you

but my eyes

are clenched in pain

and I see otherwise

your image comes unbidden

though I try.

thread

No more detached than when I was with her

my thoughts entangle her as she recurs

in brittle fragments thrown out by the force

and presence so unquestionably hers.

There’s no essence but the dark on-driving,

burrowing for light, the borrowed thread,

and so we spin the stories of our lives

dissolving

(leaving what we cannot say unsaid).

nothing

There’s nothing here except a brutal lack,

there is no love, there is not even fear.

A loss of self? How could you get it back?

There’s nothing here,

there’s nothing here,

there’s nothing here

moths or ashes

So far away, so tiny and so hard,

there behind you scattered on the floor

a grey pile of smoked shadows

(my bright dreaming)

punctured, crumpled things that once had flight

See the desert, dazed and desolate,

I am ankle-deep in moths or ashes,

dust stirs thickly in the stifled air.

hazel poems part three

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