mi mi cry

by jkdavies

no, no, thank you for asking,
though you didn't.
yeah I am fine.
makes a change, huh?
no, I mean... you know what I mean.
oh for fucks sake
do I have to explain everything?
well, since you ask,
it would make a change
if you did ask.
I might not just say yeah,
I am fine. We could
even talk. But I know
your focus will slip back
to you in no time
and I don't want to waste
the time, if I focus on you
too, then both of us are
okay. If you looked at me,
properly,
you would be confused
and I would be even more
apologetic, and I would want
to hide again. Look at
the pretty mirror
I hold up to you instead.

coping...

by jkdavies

You have knocked the life out of me,
I shovel dead things into my mouth
but I only taste the fermented stuff.
Honesty looks good on me, but on you?
I didn't need to know how easily
you put me out of your mind.
You made me feel alive and I hate
to think how long ago that was now,
I want to quicken myself but it does not come,
I can not come, it is an exercise in friction and
though the flesh is willing the mind is freaked.
Reject, side dish, bit of fun, reject,
slut, tease, reject; words bicycle in my head.
Dead mould, mushrooms for tea.
Yes, on the side, by the pallid fish flesh. I will
shrivel up in the non-weight of your disregard.
This time, can I make the silence stick?
Can I pour in enough alcohol to make
me tongue tied and not voluble?
Bitter exudations, oozing failure, and
in the morning, sweet rancid sweat.
Success and failure both are counted
by apathy, not talking to you.
Your life goes on, maybe to her you will
seem a little distracted, maybe?
Maybe not even that, after all, she didn't
even notice when you went to her,
rubbed raw from our exertions.
I try another tentative rub, but no,
rejected by my own flesh. To drink
to sleep; to sleep perchance to weep.
You have knocked the life out of me,
and now half digested dead things
come back out of my mouth.

Mugged

by jkdavies

I am too weak and
you are too tempting, please
leave like a stormcloud.

Storm tossed reeds bounce back,
"you are strong, independent,
she needs me," he pleads.

My needs ploughed under
dark soil so yours can grow, forced
to my fallow time.

No coffin for this
love killed by your thoughtlessness;
naked mouldering.

Repeated goodbyes
touched to fiery sparks, puddled
blisters left to heal.

My essence pools,
slows to mirrored ice, blue sheened
to reflect you back.

Burren

by jkdavies

Stone dykes and stone grykes,
soil disappears down the cracks
along with the grey rain.
Plants scramble to get a hold
before the water trickles away;
running deep down the inside of the hills
and reappearing in lakes and turloughs
miles away, palely reflective.

A human sized landscape, it is barren
only from a distance, up close it is rich.
Turf patches, handfuls of sweet earth.
Men have been here a long time,
they take the stone and make stone things,
tombs, dolmens, crosses, walls and forts;
and yes, shelters for contemplative priests.

The seminarian contemplates, up here alone
he can imagine the sloughing off of sin,
an oyster being rinsed by the rain,
gnarled outside, with a wet pearly interior.

Thoughts of disappearing down the cracks;
a strange fish swimming underground
through the darkened pewter flow
and sudden silvery streams, brief sunlight
on a karst spring, then back down
into a dark sinkhole.

Swimming ahead of the strange salmon
that has eaten the hazelnuts, Father Dermot
had warned them against the burden
of knowledge that the flesh carries.
Oh, flesh, how could he not have tasted it,
tasted hers, ripe and freckled when the sun
danced the lake water to exuberant sparkles?

He swims with sinuous strokes,
racing the salmon, twisting and spiralling,
grey mercurial water and the Atlantic awaits.
He thinks of the water cycle, imagines
himself rising as droplets of moisture
to rain again on the stark hills.

Rain on him, contemplating, contemplating.
Father told him he should be here for weeks,
and that a priest who has never fallen
into temptation is a priest out of touch with the flock.
He thinks he could stay here, forever, thinking
on the bare bones of the world.


[Barkeeper's note:  please view jkdavies' photograph of the Burren here:
http://camelsaloonpostcards.blogspot.com/2010/07/greetings-fromthe-burren-county-clare.html]

Robbed

by jkdavies

Still I wish for you;
The sap rising in the trees
I will not blossom.
-
Yes, it is calmer
without you close, rain clouds scud
across the grey sky.
-
Ripe for seeding, sun
falls on open eyes, legs, heart;
you push into me.
-
You pull out of me,
drive from the hotel; litter swirls
windblown vortices.
-
Your seed trickles out
a wet patch; summer is due,
sunshine flew away.
-
Your words trickle in
Why do I let you? Cut, not
clutch at memories...