Epitaph

He lies here,

the boy who was always elsewhere.

Eiderdown

The television played on
in mute,
to empty furniture.

Someone sang the words,
over and over.

I thought of you,
I thought of you.

The Glass Room

"Man's answer to eternity!", the flashes proclaimed

amidst porcelain music and raptures of fearless colour

as nations stood still and stubborn bells danced in joy.

The gauntlet had been thrown

and impossibility hung its head in shame, vanquished.

Tomorrows went out of style, mirrors grew into windows,

apples were left unbitten, wishes summed up to wars,

dreams became common sense, distances went extinct,

carpenters turned emperors, love became a science,

and the air was taught a new kind of language.

"The departure of innocence!", the poets wailed, 

cowards with quills lurking behind bedecked windows,

as the sullen shadows of days marched past,

stretched out by the burdens of unceasing habit.

The forests wept, summers froze,

paperbacks forgot, shadows disappeared,

regrets smirked, corridors dissolved,

whispers faded, seas mourned,

and the air learnt a new kind of silence

For soon enough time's gentle currents turned into words, 

protesting indifference, spelling out remembrances,

trickling through long gardens and silver houses,

scything through the geometry of language, reclaiming history.

And when eternity arrived, eventually, 

the glass room stood, true to its promise,

a resolute mythology among the ruins of time,

glistening like a little boy's loneliness,

tender, teary and endlessly vast.