Forgotten

We have forgotten the things that we used to do
We have forgotten the names that we used to call one another
The things I won't recover

We have forgotten the words that we used to say
We have forgotten the the games that we used to play together
My heart was yours forever

We have forgotten the people we used to be
We have forgotten the lives we were going to lead with each other
The things I won't recover,
This I won't recover.

Winterways

I was walking up and down the gravel outside the park
I was thinking of the last I time I was there
I imagined I remembered all we said
I whispered splintered words
I knelt down and took a stone
I walked back to my house alone again
The first I've done that this year, you know
I was walking up and down the gravel outside the park
I thought I heard something behind me
I was confused and a little scared
Because now I don't expect it.
Now when someone's there
It could be anyone at all
Except you.

Tracks

When I furst unfurled my eyes
When I let in the looming world
I saw the sky.
I looked into the water mirrored there
And felt the skin upon my bones twist and stretch.

When I first opened my mouth
I made no noise.
I was content to open and close
Feel the breath in my throat
And the sun on my hands.

When I first began to listen
I didn't know what I heard
Which was good.
It felt good to be free
And I knew I would never go home.

When I first tasted anything
It was the inside of my mouth
And the milk of my mother
Fed from hope.
I never knew fear or pain.

When I reached out with my hands
I felt the body of a child
That I did not know was mine.
I was innocent of every knowledge
And alone.

Advice on writing poetry

Never edit. Never draft. Never care.

Poetry is something internal made external. It doesn't need to explain itself. It is everything you are in a moment, everything you feel in your day and every experience you've ever had in your lifetime.

The moment you write it down it doesn't belong to you anymore.

Just sit down and write.

For You

I will fly upon your shoulders
Lift myself up to the clouds
God I can feel the wind in my throat
And I don't want to stop. I'll run
To the edge of the world
And throw myself off to keep this feeling
Fall forever into blackness
For you.

I will push myself to the furthest extremes
Of endurance. I am everything
I am any human act tonight.
I am genoicde and christening combined.

Let me feel this way, just for a little
Every day so filled with the oblivious
When I need something extraordinary.

You are the language my soul is learning to speak.

Ships Sailing on a Pure White Sea

Ships sailing on a pure white sea
Drifting away from the edge
What can I be that you'll take up with me
And we'll sail home instead?

Ships sailing on a pure white sea
Out into the pale dawn
I can hear the waves unbroken as you pass
Parting like strangers, as one

Ships sailing on a pure white sea
I sleep to regain your trust
I am empty of everything but wanting to leave
There is nothing here left for us

Ships sailing on a pure white sea
I have only one gift to resist
I know that it would be easy to stay
It would be all that I would not miss

Ships sailing on a pure white sea
Let me stand upon the bough
Of the tree by the harbour and watch you drift out
And please return to me, somehow.

Fragment

“Father father where are you going?
O do not walk so fast
Speak, father to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost”

William Blake, ‘The Little Boy Lost’.

The Other Side

I spend my days alone, these days
You never know who's watching you walk
I am awake in the night and I'm looking around
I can hear all my housemates talk

They are plotting to take a revenge for the callous
Way that I cut them adrift from my life
I didn't intend an offence to anyone
I didn't intend to be disliked

But I sleep so late in the mornings, or wake up
In the deepest depths of the night
I succumb to the yearning desires within me
Or I shut them all up, keep them out of sight

"When I die, think only this of me;
That in some corner of some foreign field
That is forever England" as Brooke once told me
I have seen it. The other side is revealed.

Distant Post

There is a sound across the mist
It's gliding through the streaming skies
It's falling like the rain on us
It's cold as friends and I don't know why

Confusion, it has peirced confusion
Left it charred and blackened out
The sound has shot through the ears of the animals
It has left this world and we're drifting out

I looked up and around to find the singer
Singer of this distant song
Where the light shines down from up on the hillside
I knew the voice would not wait long

I ran and I ran til my lungs were burning
I stumbled and clawed my way through the dark
To the distant post where the light's still shining
I could taste the beating of my heart

When I got to the top I found there was nothing
Just a drop away to the distant sea
And I knew in the moment the voice was lost there
Drifting and sinking below the beach

And I ran to the water's edge and I screamed out
Screamed as loud as my lungs could sustain
And I felt the spray on my lips in the night time
And I looked up into the coming rain

Pulled off clothes and I sank into wet sand
Splashed out from the safety of shore
Pulled myself through funereal tridents
Sinking with the rise and fall

And I swam until my arms were aching
I felt the cold in my body's shock
I lashed to keep my head above water
But something still was guiding me on

And in another few minutes I knew I was drowning
I turned back to the distant coast
I looked around and I heard that calling
Calling me like another ghost.