for Alina Baraz
Transient through the Urban Flora of London’s south,
I Drift atop rolling waves,
their depths rising, enveloping all
in each passing rock of the Bakerloo.
Deluged in Pretty Thoughts, serene
I Unfold words with each bars heartbeat,
poetry within each ear’s bud -caressed in my carriage,
I blossom your Jasmine words.
An alternate version of the poem “Union”.
For those I spent time with at the IOE.
*****
Our time dims twilight as our course draws to a close.
We forecasted a spring never-ending, sharing in optimistic lies, wishing on an unlikely future forever together.
Though together we have blossomed into a family.
Read wide and vast,
adventure and explore,
speaking slow
though thoughts move fast.
Drink red wine
and tequila too,
sitting with minds intertwined,
allowing peace’s pass.
Debate the world flaws
shimmer in ideal’s gleam,
reconstructing this world
as if in an idealist’s dream.
Fail
and succeed,
recieve an education,
not a degree.
Her visage a familiar face.
-a granite façade etched content.
Eyes lacquered in tears,
her trembling bust
a vacuum tomb
-clasping at her chest’s air.
She inhales the pain of others,
stealing breaths of distraction,
scavenging peace through neglectful altruism.
In search of an opiate
to soothe her inner hurt
– a moment’s suicide
in another’s vein.
My eyes finally prized open.
The judgmental clock face
shows me pm, and half a day
unconscious departed.
The morning now purely theoretical,
the sun half way passed,
before I’ve spoken my first word,
or taken my morning coffee
As a newborn, blanketed in last night’s haven
I stroll,
through the social threads
of this already passed morning.
Dabs of white silk insulate us from the summers sun's glow. As I, legs akimbo s t r e t c h upon my bed. Yellow sheets kicked to a hill at my feet. The walls yellow and the winter throw too. A petit Sri Lankan Buddha perched on the sill clocks this summer's air.
He’s accomplished nothing,
his life a watered downs success,
a “skidder” was it?
His hands filled and emptied
in times unrelenting passing.
The smartest man in the room
-the pin his satin lapel sports.
A cut glass vernacular
affected by a crude Kingstonian drawl.
He amongst his Muji décor,
pours Oolong tea in a sole cup.
His community an artificial complex
continuing his saga of solitary emancipation.
In a carnal crash of two
eyes glazed
heated in sexual need.
We sought our delicious counter.
I approached you,
bearing words of no weight.
You were smiling, cheeks rosed,
eyes coyly flitting away.
Upheld by the bar and it medicines,
we back and forth, exchanged air,
hoping for a bold gale,
so we may sail afar.
And so,
surrounded by shoes fitting another,
in your bed, I wake.
An explorer of every pleasure’s niche,
my right arm humming, unconscious
from a precarious night’s pose.
We sip tea, and a second one too,
laying again exposed,
as we flick questions, discovering
passions and pursuits .
Clothed now in Hampstead, we part,
returning to our lives before this past morning,
our gaze locked, gasping reunion.
J.C. FitzDerick 