To search for a Nightingale

A springtime walk: just the two of us; two by two,

Alone on the scoured Wick. Wind

Buffets, ripening trees.

The birds draping through jet streams;

Updrafts. Bullets grazing through sheets of glass.

Indecipherable call of the nightingale;

Inviting, unique, non-sequential.

A flash of lemon yellow,

Blackened steel, an archer’s target for a face –

Rich cherry blush. No shame here,

Except for us. Foolish amateurs –

We’ve never seen the Goldfinch before.

Mirrors how we found each other, 

Christ. Drawn to the mad chitterings

Of boring birds; all mouth no trousers.

Strafing the tangled bush for the source of these sounds,

As beams of colour ping across the sky,

Turning ‘round, we embraced each other, finally.

If we…

If we were to walk along a lane,

I’d always think of it snowing.

The cold flakes land and hide the pain,

Of a lifetime of never knowing.

If we were to swim under the sea,

I’d catch my belly on the sand.

I now know what it is to be free,

And am no longer a one-man band.

If we were to fly amongst the clouds,

The blue sky would tease us higher.

How great it is away from the crowds,

Where true love can now conspire.

If we were to travel in a time machine,

We would end up going forwards.

Sometimes it feels like I am in a dream,

with fuzzy reality on its borders.

If we were to be frozen forever,

Petrified in place on the settee.

I’d be so happy to be together,

Holding hands for eternity.

Sleep paralysis

Wake up suddenly,

A smile creeps across my face;

We’re still holding hands.

A thousand monkeys

A thousand monkeys,

On a thousand typewriters,

Could never complete one word,

Within one chapter,

Of one book,

As part of one anthology,

Anything close to how much I love you.

As a stupid monkey myself,

I can’t even do it.

Knowing you for so long

Is the greatest, eternal treasure of my life.

The longer we sit on this (love) egg together,

The richer its yoke becomes.

This is not just a boring, shop-brought (love) egg

… It vibrates.

This (love) egg shakes my bones,

Although as the old saying goes:

“Better to wobble than rattle”.

We have been sitting on an egg

Much more powerful than we know.

As it slowly hatches, long, and slowly over time,

Our chick is bigger than both of us.

We can feed it and raise it,

But it always needs more care and nurturing.

It SQUAWKS for more feeding –

I will nip off for some food, my darling.

Yum-yum.

I will feed it until the end of time,

Until I am a mere speck of life

Alongside this behemoth which we have been feeding.

The love we have for each other

Puts our bodies into perspective.

We are all we have 

but also,

We’re nothing against what we share.

Even together, we cannot defeat

This beast from the East.

It is live, fighting, demanding, hungry

Love.

What am I saying?

This poem is dumb.

It’s just r/simpsonsshitposting,

Innuendo,

Dumb movie quotes we laugh at,

And fart jokes.

I am no bard.

But I am a lover, with the perfect muse.

It doesn’t even rhyme,

Or have any structure.

Things are getting desperate now – 

So I’ll turn to the greats

To salvage it, somehow:

L is for legs

O is for original

U is for, “U r my bby”

I is for, “I luv Lueze”

S is for sexy

E is for “easily the greatest thing in my life”.

Drink that bar dry

My wife runs the bar, here.

So, what’ll it be? Beer? Whisky? Gin?

She won’t quit until you order something,

and leave with your head starting to spin.

The booze doesn’t keep me, here.

There’s more to us than that.

She’s got my heart taped to the wall behind her:

Past the bottles, and behind the tat.

Love is on the menu; now see, here.

The ‘bar’ is just a metaphor, to say she lifts me up

Higher than the hardest spirit,

from the lightest of her cups.

The inverse of love and being (poem)

You’re always there and I love you.

I know I can take it for granted

but it’s not without an enamoured trade-off.

To love-in-mutual-relation is to sit in this halfway house

of absolute faith in the other

and an infinite regress of feeling, that this faith is not ever enough.

Nor, should it just be enough.

I can’t help it, falling in love with you like this.

Children and the chronically insecure, the incels,

go on about how they don’t deserve this love you deign on them.

In a way, they’re right. But they don’t mean it.

They don’t think they’re worth it

because they don’t chew their nails down until they’re bloody,

or grind their teeth with anxiety that tomorrow, you won’t be there to tell them to stop.

I know you’ll be there

yet, it doesn’t stop me worrying.

You do love me, and I’ll always be here.

Crazy Dinner Blues (poem/haiku)

Crazy dinner blues.

At least you can leave, darling;

I’ve got to clean up.

Crazy Dinner Blues

Bar Hall Fantasia (poem)

Holding out for love –

Yeah, not easy, bruh.

Keep the mast flying high,

If you’re lucky, that is.

Wear your love and affection

On you sleeve

To reel her in.

She might not come but, well,

You’ve tried.

It’s not on you

If she thinks

She can do better.

Maybe she will –

Not much mind, not much.

Bar Hall Fantasia

Do you think he’ll know? (poem)

Oh, he’ll never know.

Promise me, promise me, promise me,

That’ll he’ll never know.

Who knows what will happen?

Do you?

No, I don’t know –

But he won’t.

Do you think he’ll know?