Memento Vivere We lived here once. The rain we heard fell everywhere. Silence except the wind across the ground. It’s best to keep quiet. Words are like dead seeds, they vanish when they’re said.   *   New Year’s Eve without stars or...

There’s something wrong with the sky

it’s the colour of a bruise and smells
of burnt toast. Do you hear that noise?
Someone’s shredding the blue

Something started you to wake,
Leaving sockprints in the parquet

We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone

We set about him with rifle butts and spades,
waiting our turn alongside our enemies,
the same sunburnt flesh, the same blistered
feet. Met where our camps, the same

    She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...

I am most visceral
when being disarmed
by a song, a lyric
written and sung…
in the broad New Yawk vowels