In-Situ

Walking talking things alight tonight the train of boredom,

boring into placid pupils,

praying for a jolt to suddenly derail

something

stellar or maybe minor; minarets of money,

us, makers of the artificial eyes,

an art in grinding lenses into spheres of bending light,

in part it starts with plano blanks like newborns from the womb;

life's generators shaping into form.

Askance a swollen pride, glancing at the date,

three years have passed in-situ

with my pupils sedate;

still here and still walking, still talking of things other,

my rail somehow merged with the others' southern course.

But I am dilated, ahead elated love,

implicit in the placid is contentedness.

I generate my lenses lusting for the future,

fast as it approaches, waiting for her breast.

Departures

With control I start the engine,

stammers of foresight flashing

like highbeams on a country road,

on hedgerows the future reflecting.

For now we leave in darkness,

in the shadow of the sun I will awake

alone and still with longing, it’s nothing

more than thoughts; so how can nothing ache,

even before we’ve left this driveway?

Departures-bound, our sounds of love

are wearied denials; I am not steering us

towards our months of grief.

A gear change, then I hold your hand again.

As long as this road is, it has an end;

Heathrow a double-edged guillotine and noose

- it brought my future and today takes my best friend.

Then it’s there in a blur of time, of colours

like sea on sand and stones on stones on earth

of dark iris pigmentation orbits

around mid-night candle-lit firsts.

It’s everything we hoped it wouldn’t be,

but everything that was inevitably this;

sitting side by side in each others’ arms,

tilted heads and the longest kiss.

Ludlow Castle

English clouds, a bastion of the sky,

turrets of grey and crenellated whites,

ghost of tar spilled and spilling,

scorched stone scars underfoot;

ascending the bridge to the old oak doors,

we enter the Inner Bailey, you and I,

a carpet of grass unscuffed through winter

undulates; and sunrays highlight History,

shadows like mirages of memory falls on

Mortimers Tower within the curtain wall,

and the Ice Tower at the far end, an iron gate

ensuring we dont fall, the dungeons imagined

beneath filled perhaps with death,

or just spiders and dust, musty and damp:

and in Magdalene's chapel faces stare

inwards from the circumference,

faces of Medieval whores, suggested,

a desecrated ground for love, as we

denegrate the lookout sanctum to makeout cove,

and scratch our love on the wall...

children picking holes in our time as laughs

threaten around the corridors of old stone,

(we question our own maturity)

shadows pass past peepholes.

Up spiral staircases, vision hindered,

around and around, watching feet fall

in footfalls, passing skeins of light;

ascension cuts breath like a guillotine.

Victory is seen for miles in the camera lens,

the English flag spread in the wind;

the cross, this history, this land of green seen there,

it could be yours for conquering.

I hope you seige the castle walls;

find a home inside them in my keep.