My Poetry: Chocolate Cake

I bought you three cakes
all different types,
peddled those sugary wedges
across the city when demons
had you chained to your bed.

Bought you cake
because I wanted to make you feel
like I cared you got better,
because I felt helpless
to do anything else.

It was the last time I saw you.

That summer afternoon
when all the things that didn't matter
sat outside your window
baking in the afternoon heat.

The white cardboard boxes
looked like coffins
laid out on your blue cotton sheets
which turned to metal
under your touch,

you reached out
with a fork for the chocolate cake,
ate it like a sinner
consumes a last minute pardon,

you didn't speak again
after whispering a thank you,
until I left, I never knew
if it's sweet medicine healed,
I only hoped.

My Poetry: And It Stoned Me

And It Stoned Me

---

Sat, watching waves lick the beach

like a dog in summer
I find a stone and I'm stoned,
A thousand lifetimes
Cupped in my hand.
Silent, constant like the water
Which shaped it,
Or as if it'd seen things
It could not articulate

Or understood all words

Lost truth in translation.
Quite, like it had seen seas

Which no longer exist
Except in myth,
Like it could not tell of its birth
Formed in the breast
Of infant moss mountain
Riven by infinite time
Whose back was scarred
From ancient footprints.

Could not tell of how
It's been thrown by hand

Of unknown man
Knee and back bent
To a matriarch diety.

Could never speak of the day
It survived robed preachers

Whose twisted tongue
Spoke of ritualistic secrets
As they confiscated innocence
Singing from hymn sheets gilded

By soiled coin;
Curupt men who put worth
In stone tablet words
Then forgot to look
Beneath their noses
At a simple stone
And question why
Some mountains reman silent
Reaching to caress
The sad cheek of sky
While others caress
pebble beach sea
And others incite
Violence and greed.

My Poetry: Notes from a Thursday Morning

Notes from a Thursday Morning

---

The cold air,
is still as the sea.
Gulls hunt on wing
for tourist offerings,
but the barren streets
are litter free this morning,
except for the gum freckles
making them look diseased
somehow,
and of course
they are for those
stuck in god forsaken city,
static except for the lines
on bog-top tiles
and the cracked face
greeting people
with a beggars courtesy
on the bit between
St James' and North Street.
But there’s nothing
but fluff filling
my pocket so I shrug,
and offer an appology
by way of explanation that
I can't even buy a smile
from the hipster barista
in destination café,
or short order waitress
in the corner ignoring me
filling her notepad
with pencil sketches
for a new sweetheart,
cold and still as the air.

 

My Poetry: The Empty Chair

The Empty Chair

---

And from nowhere,
the empty chair appears,
its cheap pine veneer
blankly staring.
I was not even thinking
of you or her or them,
but there it is,
a silent reminder
sat neatly opposite
in sullen soundtrack cafe,
as if from nowhere
like a summer storm or
guest house ghost
to remind the eye,
what it does not see
that a solitary coffee
is no substitute
since we said goodbye.