Liaisons

 

In summer time, head to the cemetery,

out around nine o’clock, where birches drip the days

and you’re freshly plucked and razored

into what you think is your best self.

 

You’re meeting friends, supposed to be going

out with a boy, some years older than you

and you don’t know his last name, but covet

his leather gloves and biker jacket, para boots

 

with stories to tell. Your friends have sticky palms

and cider on their breath, the ground is flecked

with rollies; it’s August and you are still young,

until September comes and moves everyone on.

 

You kiss the boy on the cheek, maybe take it a little further,

fingers in zippers and the soft sounds of birds,

a gnat swarm suddenly veils you, a graveyard bride,

or a gothic pop-song caricature of yourself.

 

Later, you lie on the earth and play dead.

Imagine what it would be like to spill into the soil,

while others tell themselves that everything will be ok.

Night rises, fix up your lipstick, kiss the boy

 

on the cheek again, say thank you,

because that’s what your mother taught you;

that manners are as important,

as the way that you live.

 

 

 

Sharing

 

It was the hunger for sensations,

to try the body at what it can do;

 

amber light, smoke rising from your mouth,

a crackle of charred papers, sparks flying.

 

We speak in voices that expect to be nothing,

charcoal choked like blackened buds,

 

ashed to the open air, with our uncertain laughter

sure that nothing had happened. It didn’t work

 

yet I remember now, how happy we were

to try, to become something else.

 

 

 

Hollow Hills

 

We live in the country, so we hang out in fields,

with bottles and guitars, cappoed a half tone higher.

Picks like teeth shining as blue skies fall into night.

 

Side by side, handprints pressing the place into us,

blossoms dropping on red earth. We are only visitors,

exiled with the wind, hair flying like prayers,

 

with water colour animals surfing green waves.

Fingers pluck the time we know, beached inland

with a pool of sky, looking down through layers

 

of trampled ancestors. Music reveals the heart,

lifts us into sleep, beneath the hollow hills

where we are safe,  nobody will harm us.