Dirty Pretty Secret

Who’s the dirty pretty secret?

Are you mine or am I yours?

The things we don’t talk about, the things we don’t ever show to others.

What happened to the bright eyes we were born with, why do we sully them with the world?

Stay awhile

Stay awhile before you go
stay awhile.
You were never meant to stay,
but i was never meant to go.
So stay awhile before you go,
past the dams into the flow.

Bangkok, reprised

i.
City of unforgiven dreams
catawauling with dazzling speed,
you fanned your flanks in sunning gold.
Never quite apologetic
of a disrepaired state,
traditions dressed in streamers.
Emboldened, I took your hand in mine,
in rushing breath, dashed into stirring,
celebrating streets. Higher and higher.

ii.
Maybe you caught my disease.
Most likely, you never would,
merely sympathetic to the symptoms
driven by the fervour that was this.
This. A pulsing, inexplicable shudder.
Softly, I stole moments
when your mind was somewhere else, and
drew the soft curves of your cheek,
your distant, tearless eyes on the pages.
t’were later tucked away in invisible sleeves.

iii.
We walked all day. Furious, purposeful strides.
I scanned paranomas with shuttered eyes,
retaining, discarding, committing snapshots
like I always did, an occupational hazard.
Most of them were of you,
young brows furrowing in thought,
fingers picking at fashioned constructs,
retaining, discarding, committing snapshots
that will eventually birth relevance to your course.
You were most beautiful when something caught your eye.

iv.
I would like for you to be tailored
in bolts of happiness. Yard by yard.

v.
How did it feel, what were you thinking
as you held my hand in yours, when we inadvertently
delved into one misadventure after another?
I dare not posit a reasonable supposition.
How could I, when everything is eclipsed in waking,
always before you did; as if the mind has made up its mind
to stretch forever in the long, slow moments of morning,
or the sweet, soft tones of night. I encase you in parentheses.

vi.
If language were the crystalistion of unbidden thought,
you would have no shortage of the finest jewels,
polished, facet by facet, presented on the sheerest satin.

vii.
I would like for you to be still, to calm unforgiven waters
on my unexpiring patience, ripple by ripple, time after time.

all in the entanglement

and none in the breakdown.

I need to organise them scribblings in the moleskin, and transmute them into something so damn beautiful.