There’s a fishing boat off Galway –
it bears
your maiden name
The fisherman don’t know you –
yet –
but will
by close of day –
you were mounted on my stemhead
your bared breasts fixed my course
I sailed with you
and your fishermen
through rages
and dark squalls
Am I rebuffed by your cooling love?
I tremor under naked phone lines –
oscillating – now wind-touched –
Silent are our words in the wires
which we strung to allow such whip –
Without voices they are set to squinch
and tighten before a snapped mishap
of misunderstood tensions – of speech –
No text – no reveal – such cold harm
here – left open – rough translations
like the coded language of telegrams –
Are muted signals your intention?
And I’ll sit by my phone – as if
your voice is the waited-for-gift
As disordered pages
I read back my life –
until you – as Ludmilla –
entered mine
The creak of shined floorboards
from the weight of us
and of ten thousand books
under ten kilos of dust
You as Ludmilla
mark my book with your touch –
your stroke of the spine
is a pleasure to watch
*If on a winter’s night a traveler
The tall bay window
is our empty white frame –
on the front of this home
of unshuttered shame –
but now winter-battered –
past my amateur repair –
the paint has flaked off
through changes out there –
The weather has whipped it
in layer-thrashed strokes –
like the blistered hull
of a forgot-turned boat –
with a peeled underbelly
for so long undressed –
it has been left unsealed
losing sea-worthiness
No sensible man
would sail in her –
he would never return –
she is so unfair
Women slip from winsome
under their senescent faces –
their hands steal the looks
off youth’s eyed-embraces –
They pleasure in pastimes
of tease-tricks and flirts –
they command your heart –
their hard rules will subvert
I want to reach out
and trace your lined beauty –
of furrows and laugh lines
worn freely at forty
I will kiss your eyelids
of stitch-tightened skin –
because here is your beauty –
it is still within
There was a plan
doing the rounds
to destroy my love
and us –
I was the worst
of the plotters
and now that scheme
is crushed –
I pissed on
fizzing fuses
and broke the glass
to press
the alarm
and her breathing –
so crushing
her sweet neck
From this hill top distance
above the slope of the estate –
there – in thinning October light –
almost aligned to your rooftop –
I see that solitary oak still in leaf –
forever isolated – also cast out –
under which we took our shade
and where my laggard fingers
gripped at your then-bared skin –
slipping below your blue shorts –
flimsy attire suited for sunshine –
but now the cool dew counters
such all out abandonment –
our laid time remains in summer
I found value in my love for you
under Aurelius and Epictetus –
so I purchased a one-way ticket
to end my lonely sojourn abroad
I wasn’t tempted in empty deserts –
no fingers took my potent virtue –
no foreign lips encouraged sin –
But I saw mirrors on their pages
and I watched myself translating –
framing – like Christ – opportune times –
I saw my mouth speak in tongues
telling you to taste my poison
Now I unpack my emptied bags
having brought back nothing more –
I left behind heavy possessions
which I no longer wish to share
I don’t believe in God
but I think she hears my prayers
I can only hope to touch her face
if she deigns to ever care
We don’t talk much about politics
it bores her more than sex
We drink red wine and compromise
on what is truly meant
I woke to judgement nightmares
and a terror in my heart –
with an empty wine glass by my bed –
that brittle bodyguard
So she dug up my soul –
I have a price on my head –
she pulled it from my skull
because of what I said –
Quoting Aristotle –
in accordance with virtue –
she showed me my old failings
as they formed a ragged queue
Jealousy and mistrust
once mine to sculpt with ease –
I’d struck at our confidence –
I’d cut her blood with tears
She placed her prize on scales –
held high by a blinded hand –
and claimed the inside of my head
was hers to now command
