In the loom of a broken cassette tape If rain were ink and clouds paper And if seconds were pens and minutes, letters I would write you a novel a decade long And pour you a couplet a sunrise strong, Till the dull grey morning was poet (and painter) And your inspiration longed Among waterlogged ballpoint ballads, Would be the 10:02 back to childhood A last desire in fading Fire-brigade Till our windscreen wipers couldn't fathom February's vernacular verse And the battery of who we were was dead Jumper-lead all me to memory, the tongue to taste of then, As days are drivers and we all passengers In middle-lane rainfoetry, brailled to sing along, On the Costa of del propia to the rhythm of risk and reward Unplug the electric windows, let us be open to the elements If only the sound of the ocean could be What you hear when you lift a shell to your ear It's true contents not the sea of course Not what else did you think but the roar of blood confined in a spiral casing The cadence of silence in a wind-filled fist The surf of voice seeking an ear (it's hard to hear your own self speak when seas are storms are streets are gulls) And somewhere inside it all a moon ready to break No wonder then when put to your ear You hear only waves of yourself But though there is turmoil between tides The ocean is not its waves So the heart is not its currents And the soul is not its shadow. Between the bookends of a blood-red sunset I would write you a bible between blinks If sunset were paper and dusk the ink And the language of light My scripture to think, With every thought a heartbeat And every heartbeat a breath And every breath a prayer for daylights death In the dialect of dusk and the dialogue of dawn... What I mean to say is: There's a trembling in the telephone wires this morning and it sounds like a song on the tip of a songbird Cold enough to climb up a throat with forget-me-nots Till it sits on the tongue like a kiss on the cheek Of a cheek that was turned when the kiss was not wanted But beautiful still in its own braille of bitten back butterflies Beautiful but broken like the hymn you hum When the choir is gone and the congregation carpets With the congregation carpets of half-muttered half-hopes That half-formed and half-lost this morning in the half-light before Sparked like a sparrow spurned against a windowpane Of a windowpane world that's half-seen and half-seen through You know the song I mean: It's the one that you sing When the song that you want to sing Would be sung only in the singing And the silence that follows is a silence that knows Your secrets by heart, and sings them back to you Jukebox of shadows & vinyl reptilian. Play me again like a broken machine. I'm still here, between the grooves, between the first letter of your name and the last breath I took before I could say it. Replay. Rewind. Repeat. Till we are static (again) Till we are dust In the space between a sigh And what the sigh intended to say.
