A Year In Morse

(Sometimes you find yourself in the weird position where a poetry magazine says they're going to publish your work in their forthcoming issue... then there's a great long silence as you wait for the issue to emerge... Then it becomes apparent that what originally seemed to be abnormally long gap between publication dates was actually a literary journal's equivalent of a hospice stay rather than a pleasant holiday in southern Spain.

Er... the magazine died a death, ceased publication and never ran the poem, that's what I'm trying to say in plain English.  And by the time I became aware of the situation and had the opportunity to do something else with it, I felt that I'd moved on slightly and I couldn't be bothered anymore.  That's no reason for you all not to see it, though).

There were no barriers anymore.

I’d reached the point of

“no looking back”, and the

future was also unclear.

The beach was a

pebble-dashed wall

pushed on its side.

The sun caught the

wings of an aircraft,

full of oblivious,

invisible extras in our scene.

Flash.  Flash.  Flash.  Stop.

You stood there

with a strawberry and cream

sunburn, a barcode on a

trash youth novel with a

luminous pink jacket.

There was some

hiccupping laughter

over by an arcade

machine with a

spinning metallic

sphere inside.

Click, click, click.  Drone.

There wasn’t much to do.

We were there holding hands

for the sake of it,

staying at home

with the curtains drawn,

starting sentences with the

phrases “do you think”,

“what about” and “so what if”,

then saying goodbye without

grudges when we hit on “the solution”.

The tongue of the door

kissed the latch

delicately as I left,

tripping its way over the

top lip sensitively but

without passion.

Click.  Click.   Goodbye.