The Worst Best Years: A Student Life Anthology

I have just had a poem about my student days published in a new anthology by Acid Bath Publishing. Copies of the anthology can be ordered online here:

https://www.acidbathpublishing.com/shop/worstbestyears

How sweet it is (to be loved by you)…

The idealist’s ideologue, congealed on his golden plate
Surrounded by powdered personae, the trappings of stagnant State
As one televisive advisory breaks silence to break away
The balance sheet of reality returns to red yesterday

Now mournful opposition jostles lines to pass old post
Decries each new position as they shuffle lots to roast
A deficit of vision and careers gone down the drains
Idyllic desperation for disparity remains

As rows of rats now queue to quit benighted, sinking boat
That put to sea on rumours, but was scuppered by the vote
Their captain hoped to walk the plank, to once again see land
But thanks to mutineers, he’ll take a shot for what was planned

Did not suit those who carried keys to privy, purse and pool
Who don’t take failure lightly, as it’s they who work to rule
And waiting in the wings to make an entrance, once again
Are other thoughtful fellows whose mark rarely leaves a stain

Parting Shots

Time stands still for none of us
And we were no exception
To make the best of fading lust
Ignoring your deception

Pretending things were perfect
We continued as before
As friends asked ‘is he worth it?’
Buddies set you up to score

That holiday near did for us;
Your family’s reception
On meeting me with much distrust
And little circumspection

Our boundaries were shifting
As I fought to keep my poise
My blinkers slowly lifting
To expose what truly was

With eyes that winced on meeting
Other women by the score
Full knowing that a greeting
Would uncover even more

We cursed each others’ choices
In the misery of loss
Until no amount of voices
Arguing the bloody toss

Could persuade me that I wanted
To accept the proffered shaft:
Wait the rest of life, undaunted,
Sat there, dreaming of the past

Thus a truce of sorts was drawn up
By the time we’d caught our breath
Though both of us were torn up
Crushed by every little death

Come the end, I felt responsible
For any pain you brought me
While accepting as inevitable
All the things you’d taught me

Plato’s model

The likely days and nights that pass
reflecting in my mind’s cool glass
the happiness I would enjoy
with him I choose to be my boy
my twin, my heart, my other soul,
once split-apart, now makes me whole
but walking through the world I know
has brought me little but sorrow.
The one I recognized as such,
who made me laugh and pleased me much
did leave me sad and quite forlorn,
and crying even, when withdrawn
my source of love now quite unknown
chose once again to be alone.
Then did I find thee, gentle friend
who knowing I had reached wits’ end
did comfort me, and let me grow
before forcing your heart to show.
Thus all was done in goodly time
with pleasant passings, sweetened vine
now riper, richer, more mature
in this, as some, less can be more.
So I have found my split-apart,
saved grace, built home, and mended heart.

A kind parting

What summers I spend in the depths of your gaze
While the half hours tick past with a sigh
How cool is the breeze, yet how warm is this haze
As I watch my life, lonely, drift by

There I sit and I bask in the glow of your sun
In the chill of your evening mocks
And I love you with all of my heart every morn’
So I suffer your slights and your shocks

‘Tis in vain and I know it, your heart is aflame
With the gas-lit by some other spark
And I see nothing here for me but future pain
As I talk to myself in the dark

Try to speak me some sense to this dull wit of mine
I will do what I must to survive
For to keep up my status through your frosty clime
One can barely call ‘being alive’.

So my mind is made up – without heed of my heart
And the tears join my smile on the floor
I must put them both back, though it may not be smart
For I’ll not hurt my love,
My one precious love
This only true love?
As I slip out the door.

Expulsé du Paradis

Ce qu’on aurait appellé l’atout principal
de ce pèlerinage m’est perdu.
On a laissé mon coeur se distraire pendant
assez de temps.  Maintenant, il est cuit.
Et on n’a plus de voies, plus d’avenues,
plus de dépit, plus de tristesse.
On n’a plus de sentiments actuels, seule, nue.
Je devrais te quitter, aller explorer d’autres possibilités
de ce monde, dans ce monde,
puis qu’il existe de plusieurs possibilités.
Mais j’ai plus de volonté me jeter dans l’océan
Pour voir si j’ai du quoi flotter, ou si
Je me suis habillée avec aplomb en plomb.
Et les jours passent, sans que je m’en aperçoive…
La vieillesse m’atteint à l’âge d’un quart de siècle.
J’ai un regard fixé, tout droit, sans voir.
La lueur que j’avais trouvé dans vos yeux s’est éteint
Et je restes dans le noir.

Enchaine

A miracle of lights and lies
Lies hidden deep within your eyes
Eyes that of nature were not borne
Born to rail and scold and scorn
Scorn one who loves you ever so
So much she cannot let you go
Go tear a heart from one whose beats
Beat strongly yet enough to weep.

Generic post-breakup analysis (hers)

I love your mem’ry more
Than what you were to me in life.
Though I still daydream daily
Of my role then as your wife.
I tried to do my duty
Did the best job that I could.
I think we just weren’t meant to last
Our match was not too good.
I, far too jealous would become
Without you by my side,
And you would feel quite suffocated
By my endless pride.
We’d rub each other constantly
‘Til fur would start to fly,
Then I would comfort you in shame
Each time you’d start to cry.
We never solved our problems
And yet argued without end.
I loved you as a mother
You preferred me as a friend.
So everything imploded
As things came to quite a head.
I never got to blow my top –
My reason turned you red.
We parted with great sorrow,
But, with also great relief.
For separation somehow,
Despite distance, caused no grief.
I can’t forget my lover,
Though I hear you have moved on.
We hurt each other deeply
And these feelings won’t begone.
I cannot wish you evil,
That would go against the grain.
But with your joy, I counsel
That you also bear some pain.
For one without the other,
No sense can it construct,
As concepts out of balance:
Sep’rate are just fucked.

Nauseous with nostalgia

Why on earth is it that even years after the event, I still cannot let you go?  Your lopsided smile and ugly, grinning, gurning face plague me from hour to hour.  I cannot sit in a room without smiling at some returning memory, and as warmth returns to my frozen heart, I take stock.  Weighing all of my options carefully, I balance from foot to foot, leaning this way, then that.  I am a pendulum, wavering, uncertain whether or whither to swing.  I am a clock, stopped still the day you left me, and only now beginning to find my rhythm once more.  As the shallow tick-tock of life creeps up my spine and tickles my veins into action, so the thaw begins.  I must be wary, lest my wintry organs melt to a spring flood of love, and I, swept along by my own strong current, am drowned by it.  Suffocated, helpless.  A fisher, tangled and caught in my own nets and snared by traps of my own devising, struggling to break free.  Wary indeed.  As my love for you had become a mantra – words of comfort to be spoken before sleep and upon waking; My ‘I love you’s with their reedy echo in the damp morning air, somehow growing to a rope with which to hang myself – and swing I did, groaning in pain and tormenting myself minutely with your voice, your face, your scorn, derision, pity.  Tearing myself down, piece by piece, until I had ceased to be.  Where once I stood, proud and strong, shining brightly for all to see – lay a stone.  My rougher edges smoothed to a bland pebble.  My glittering core dulled by your swell and smashed on rocks of my own choosing.  Broken and without pattern, without hope of re-making, mending, rebirth.  I lie here, and I am troubled.  That I still harbour feelings for you does not pain me or even shame me to action.  Nothing I could do to myself or to others could change that fact.  That these feelings grow stronger despite our mutual distance frightens and excites me.  I thought I had no more tears, and now I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  I can feel again.  What I thought had to have gone forever has returned to me.  Now I find myself at a crossroads with a choice.  Do I go onward?  Or do I turn back?

A dismissal

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
Why then do I find you so ugly?
And how is it that
I resent holding you close?
You are not part of me.
You are no reminder of love.
You have brought me nothing but hate.
I feel the burden of you –
I cannot carry you,
You weigh me down!
Leave me.