Remember me

You broke my heart –
Your bruised, confused eyes, staring and searching,
Senselessly clinging onto the shell of who you were,
A lifetime ago, you now wake up every day
To another memory, you remind me of what you are,
You are lost

You’re a silent child, wandering the aisles of the store, eyes searching faintly for your mother,
You might be able to describe her hair, or her jacket, her name, though to you it would just be “Mum”,
Which you call out faintly in your heart,
Wondering where you are, or why you came, or how you got here, or who I am,

I can see a mind fading to black,
A final curtain closing quietly, yet without mercy,
It reminds me of a memory,

My grandpa, my opa, that stoic old man who used to think we were so loud,
When he tried to enjoy his silence, when it was still a choice,
Though he loved music, and the music of his hundreds of clocks, his endless time,
Till he was almost blind and deaf,
Each new memory fading sooner than the next,

When I shared a pizza with him in the garden
A simple salami pizza, but to him it was magical
I saw him transform back into
A quiet little boy, savouring every bite, so content for a moment,
Present and oh so precious,
When he was finished I would take away the boxes,

And soon after, a few months,
A few more cups of tea, a coffee,
And three pizzas,
He passed away peacefully in his bed.

Now I look at you,
Every time you come into my life,
With searching eyes, so confused and almost blind,

I can’t help but feel my deepest sympathy.
I want to cry at the sight of you, my poor child.
I’m sorry I can’t help you.
I’m sorry you won’t understand
Whatever I will say.
I wish I could help you find your peace, or
To take your hand and help you find your mum, wherever she may be,

But it’s not my time,
I’m so, so sorry.

Passing

Passing pleasantries
Ignored like roadkill
A plant in a pothole
Drowning in the smallest rainstorm
Living for every bit of sun I can catch
On whatever leaves I have left
Before
A deer eats my head
A car strikes it dead
Crashes into a tree
It collapses onto the street
Where she was about to cross
She now passes
If only she hadn’t ignored
A pleasantry

Tense

Clenched jaw, strained eyes —
The damned dishes are cleaned
By hands, stressed and tense —
I can hear the washing machine
Screaming and crying from the next room,
Alongside the dry, clean clothes covering my bed —
My bed that looks clean but hasn’t seen a clean sheet
In maybe three or six weeks —
I can’t do it all in one morning,
Not when I can’t stop, and I
Go on and on and on, with my jaw clenched
and my eyes strained,
my hands stressed and tense —
I can hear the washing machine

The sandwich and the sidewalk

I saw God the other day, sitting on the sidewalk outside of the Albert Heijn.
A crown in the form of a worn and weathered grey beanie, I thought
It must be a tad too warm, but
He does work in mysterious ways.

He asked me for some change, and I told him
I used to pray to him, and ask the same.
Dejected, he asked for some food – a soft sandwich, perhaps, as he no longer had his heavenly teeth.
I got him a bacon and egg sandwich
From the bin with all the ‘aged’ produce,
Priced down to celebrate its final ‘best-before day.’
I figured it would be softened, and moistened by age.
The bacon egg combo is a classic combination, like
Man and sin, bacon and egg, man and bacon, and man and egg.

When I walked out with the soggy sandwich, a spark sparkled in God’s eyes,
A few tears on his cheeks, reminding me of the soggy bread I held in my hands.
He said he couldn’t believe I came back and provided him his heavenly lunch,
And he shook my hand, and gave me a hug.

I held him for a moment.

How did you fall so far?
Was your throne,
Your horse,
Your holiness
So high?

The taller they are, the harder they fall, and you
Were on the highest pedestal—my neck would break
If I tried to meet your eyes, your expectations, and now
I see you in your truest form.
You
Wanted so badly to be loved and adored by all,
And in turn you would grant us your conditional love, but
I guess you will have to settle
For a soggy sandwich.

Bishops and Pawns Both Strike on the Diagonal

Frozen pathways, broken bridges, the
Spilling sewers of Rome, the holy excrement rains
From the sky, the smell is putrid
Like a preacher working the corner for days on end,
Working his body, a bible glued to his hand,
There aren’t enough eyes on an angel to truly witness
This state of despair, not enough holy mops
To rid the world of dirty priests, one man once said
“Let the children come to me,” he should have said
“Don’t let the children near a priest,” they should
Call a consistory, make it extraordinary, take it
To the top, to the tip of his white hat—haven’t we learned
That we should stay away from white hats, white masks, white robes, white cloaks, white men that
Disrobed nature and nations, stole from their people, took away their gods
And put them in a museum, hiding behind bulletproof glass, far out of reach
From tax-paying citizens, increasingly depressed denizens, we need more
Destructive dissidents with bottles of gasoline, rags soaked in alcohol,
To light it all aflame, but only at the end of the week, to make it sabbatical.

Blades

tiredness and rain, the feeling of wanting
a breathless escape
from it all and to
watch from a higher place
to the ground below and the wild seas
with waves as high as planes,
green plains of desolation, and grass
that is always greener on the other side
but
what does the colour of the grass matter
maybe i like it damaged and coarse,
and not cutting, separated and divorced

green and unknowing

Do you think I couldn’t see us
In the blues and yellows
Of yesteryear, when
I saw you more often than the clouds in the sky,
And we would greet each other more frequently
Than we would say goodbye?

Alas, one essential colour was missing
To create the colours on the rainbow.
The colours on the spectrum
Lacked life – red
Blood that I remember so vividly:
Draining from your face,
Except for your eyes,
Looking into mine, bloodshot
And heartbroken, God,

I see you now
Left behind
Drowning in the blues and yellows
Clinging onto an idealised memory
Fragmented pieces of me
That drag you down
Deep into the sea
Deep into
The blue and yellow fantasy

im barely here, you’re not here at all

I’m so far gone
But it makes me think of you
Dreams we had
Dreams we never
had
Dreams we should have had
Now
We’re nothing more
Than strangers passing by
On the street, listening
To songs we told each other about
Thinking
About what we could have been
But
Now we are nothing more
Than dust in the wind

Impressions in the sands
Of time
The hourglass
Turns upon itself and
We are where we begun

Being nothing at all

Heaven or Rain

Rain pours down like the fury of an angry God,
As he tries to drown us once more
And breaks rainbows and promises of eternal love.

How could he not
When he sees the joy on our face
Through sin and pain,
As he realises we have no shame.

We are naked and exuberant,
With heads in the clouds –
Joyous reflections in the refractions of sunshine
That shimmer so vividly.

Heaven could not compare
To these moments we share.
You are greater than eternity,
And I’ll take care of you till our hellish end,
My beautiful, rain-stricken friend.

We can dry ourselves by the fires of torment,
Roast marshmallows on pitchforks and torture tools,
And watch the flames of forever
Burn on, and on,
But at least we’ll watch them burn

Together.

Birthmarks and Scars in the Spotlight

Check my birthmarks –
My personal spots and signs,
My life scars, too many to count
But they are mine
Either by birthright, or the attempts on my life.
It feels like I have nine lives,
Four chambers, one bullet
And a cocked hammer –
Pulled back by my stress,
Until I snap, and take that one in four chance
To blast myself in the head.
Although I’m not better off dead.
I’m better off red
In the face, with tears on my cheeks,
Till I’m wet, soaked, covered in sadness,
To the point of breathless madness
But it’s fine, it’s all for the sake of saving him,
That child residing on the inside
Of my heart, working the machine
The way he’s worked his whole damned life,
Putting his own desires aside,
All for the sake of peace and mediation,
Another tough pill to swallow,
But facing the truth is his daily medication

As he carries the same marks,
The same scars, given to him by lovers,
Mothers, brothers, friends and absent fathers,
Who were either there to embrace him,
Burn him at the stake, or neglect him
The way I did when I buried him in the dark
Cold hard ground when I was five.

No, I didn’t want to look at him,
Be him, or free him from his despair,
No, that little boy was going nowhere
If it was up to me, till a point in my life
When I realised that little boy never gave up the fight.