I cried, and cried really - fitfully, Frightened of the night to come  And days to follow. I cared not for friends  And how they would comfort me,  For I had thrown away a love. A life once mapped in notion Now lost to fantasy  To regret  To the shadows of another being  For he and I no longer identified  For good or bad, he was a different man  And so it was my soul  That bled asunder  Wrent by my own wretched hands  My tongue in fact  My thoughts - My future for a cigarette.  Could it really have been that banal?  A voice, in answer, on a phone some weeks later blamed me anyway. © The Hairy Teacher, (revised 8/1… [more]

It might've been the last time I saw him That trip up north along the coast, At least at points inevitably so. And in all its vagueness surely, It's still further shrouded by that doubt, That almost disbelief: Surely there was at least one time other. But if there was, the memory's withholding Insistent upon the poetry of this - The final memory, The beauty and the beast. I never cried on hearing he had passed But stopped to think a thousand thoughts A thousand reasons Why our paths They should have crossed. But we didn't know each other And though I bow to some intended whisper The wind is only pandering to My own instilled importance. We had become nothing to each other, Just echoes… [more]