David Robison

Tag: romance

  • Full Stop

    “It would be lovely if you were not a stepping stone but my full stop.”
    And if the end can be a beginning,
    but not like death (beginning decay) for that comes anyway.

    “If a person became your home.”
    As if the self were stabilised, like a place, 
    and seeing these possibilities as a prism.
    A person you leave but know you’ll return to – 
    and somehow not a prison.

    “I feel safe with you.”
    And of the tugs at my being?
    The cursed reeds which pull and wind as desire-looms, 
    underpinning, stronger for not saying and
    fully below the seeing?
    Will these then be unimportant or just accepted
    as real, like all the things we momentarily feel?

    Is this comfort, love, something chosen not given?
    Are you my full stop?
    And that to this end, from this end, 
    is this stop our beginning?

    Written by

    David
    Full stop - image by Leo Reynolds on Flickr.

  • The hardest thing

    Letting you go seemed the hardest thing:
    hard, because you haven’t been here –
    seemed, a mix of what fleeted then haunted 
    when fixated, with dreams that appear.

    That mixture of what was here 
    and what had gone before,
    poised us 
    perfectly wrong.

    The reverberation and the mis-lip read well. 
    It drew the most exquisite pain.
    ‘Could have’ hurts so much more than ‘did’.
    Half a century had already flung off its lid,
    and I yet with artistry and verse to burgle and gain.

    And in the indulgence of reworking, I built a great mythology –
    a romance, barely, produced a whole anthology.

    And so the kindest thing to do, for both of us,
    even just in song –
    “You have to let it go.”
    “I’ve met someone I like, so…”

    It seemed the hardest thing.
    It’s why crows croak in the field instead of sing.
    Tears choke up their beaks and then
    the wet page is torn through by the chimera pen.

    I still fear your face,
    but at last, it would not hurt
    to acknowledge other touch.
    Not our beeswax, all along,
    but what’s appropriate or fair
    is not what rhymes or makes the song.

    So see you, maybe, if you’ve a use,
    in spring and summer of another life,
    where, with minds free from fear and childhood’s abuse,
    I am your man, and you are my wife.

    Written by

    David

  • My heart is not free

    Gratitude first I must show, Universe.
    She was tall, top-notch, with a feather in her hair.
    Silk gloves and feathered earrings.

    The way loose, gingery-blonde hair poured down her forehead
    was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.
    Too churlish to mention then: my heart is not free.

    The curve of her nose, her brows framed such eyes.
    We danced in a way I have never relaxed,
    arms softly draped around snug fitting backs.
    Big smiles on show for all to see,
    I knew the DJ, he smiled back to me. 
    As she pulled me gently for kiss after kiss,
    drunk with the happy, let the revellers see –
    I barely do feel it: my heart isn’t free.

    With long strides to mine, 
    she held the beauty I’d long thought,
    would never (save once) be accorded to me.
    Hand in hand, we leaned and bounded as the youngest lovers.
    Had I overlooked myself, it would be jealously.
    When she lay on my bed, on top of the rug
    “Don’t put on a shirt,” she said, “come down to me.”

    And so what if my heart is not free?
    A bird that is born for joy, 
    can yet sit in a cage and sing.
    Bright and happy – the bars are just staves for the melody.

    I listened to her heart beat in the morning,
    my ear against her breast.
    Ah d-dum, d-d-dum, ah d-dum, d-d-dum.
    And tea in bed, then coffee and
    the pastries, warmed through, were Lidl’s finest. 
    The void banished, death and aging but a dream,
    in the sweet present.  Nothing to resent. 

    And as she left, 
    I did not feel bereft.
    The leisurely day remains spread out in front of me.
    Make some jam, pet the pets, sip more tea.
    It was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.

    The notification says you’ve re-friended me.

    After closing the windows
    and closing the doors,
    only then do I pause, only then do I see:

    Till they scatter my ashes round that bench by the sea.
    My heart is still yours, my heart is not free.

    Written by

    David

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