We’ll take a ferry to the beach,
And open baskets in the park,
And climb the statues as they sleep,
Explore the city after dark.
We’ll do the things we said we’d do,
The days we always put off with
Our dream that life would stay the same,
And Spanish skies, remaining blue,
Would wait for us.
David
The gas would not clear for another two months, they said, as casually as reading of drizzle. And then they went on to talk about the sport, the concerts, previously on again, now indefinitely cancelled. A lot of hope died that afternoon. Houses, already diminished and unhomely, crowded with supplies and the packaging of supplies, shrank further. Loneliness and lifelessness extended a few more whistling miles. And in Valencia, feeling time’s real weight as never before, a young boy and girl dashed the three hundred yards separating their apartments, dying, as they ran in yellow air, a charming, stupid death.
David
Life’s best when it’s ahead of you;
The moment’s too intense,
The past is grey or teary blue,
And dead and done and through.
It’s best to drink and dream at night
Of things that soon will be;
Of great adventures in the light
You’re never up to see.
David
How long must men in purple painÂ
In such a woeful state remain
Before their ills, so harshly blind,
Dislodge them from their rightful minds?
How long must wives with blackened eyes
Restrain their lust for kitchen knives,
Before a tortured void of ease
Brings better nature to its knees?
How long will stomachs growl at night
While passers-by suspend their sight,
Before the doomed and mighty tramp
Sees brightly by the devil’s lamp?
In every second that has passed,
A sin was thwarted at the last,
With some good reason to exist,
But by a hair its moment missed.
David
It’s bigger than you and bigger than me,
Bigger than anything under the sun;
It’s what binds good and evil into one.
The rush of murder, or charity,
The virtuous poor or wicked rich,
It doesn’t care a thing; it matters not which
To this psychopathic angel inside the head,
Satisfied only when the body is dead.
David
There never is,
And still you look around,
From side to side, up to the stars,
Down at the ground;
Alas, there’s nothing to be found;
The same dull flesh
In different shape and pose;
The same grey minds and sounds;
The games of speech
You’ve played before and lost.
And though you’ll sometimes catch
A new-appearing type,
Perhaps a crowd one million thick,
Don’t bother hope;
There’s no-one new around.
David
When you love Italy, any Italian will do.
His hair may fray and curl in ugly ways,
Her mind may fail and bore;
But a true Italian is Italy itself,
And unbeknownst to them, for shame,
It is the country, the blood, that you adore.
David
They’ve wound green tape round the playground next door
They must have done it last night, it wasn’t there before;
The tobacconists and pharmacists have cut their work hours;
Only the bearers of truncheons have increased their powers.
The doctors are gods, alcohol is gold,
Young lives must go numb for the lives of the old.
My greatest desire is a few miles away,
But it might as well be a few thousand today.
David
Just two months prior, as vivid as dreams,
And stranger still, two yards from the sea,
I was late, you were tired and waiting for me,
The sky, gentle winter, smooth and evenly white,
Made spikes on the water that lived by its light.
My thoughts were still slow and nostalgic for sleep,
My limbs hardly better. You glanced with surprise
As I looked and I smiled at the clouds in your eyes.
Just one month prior, as fast as a thought,
And deeper still, one inch from your face,
I had two calm hands on a corset of lace;
The light through the window had just been released;
In its cradling arms, we both lay at peace.
Today, behind bars of benevolent law,
I’m bored and I’m thinking of when it will come,
The day this is over, when the demon is gone,
When I’ll rest by your side in a bubble of dawn,
And we’ll jeer and we’ll laugh at what has withdrawn.
David
I asked the time. His phone lit up.
He smiled as I espied the face.
“It’s nothing,” so he laughed at once,
“Just something I meant to erase.”
The laugh was forced, did not convince
My friend nor me, and then he swore
“She’s beautiful. Well there, at least.
She might not be so anymore.”
“OK,” I nodded, still unclear,
And glanced again upon the screen,
Which faded grey, then perfect black.
He rubbed his eyes to kill a dream.
David
espressotype 