The Vine

Curling, creeping, strangling-

this feeling is a vine

rooted nowhere, feeding.

This feeling isn’t mine.

Mask, please come and take me,

I’d wear you like a cross,

heavy and unpeeling,

so they won’t see the loss

of innocence and life,

that reassuring pulse.

Where is it now, I wonder?

Now everything is false.

Even me, trusted friend

of me and I alone;

I sing, but now, no answer-

all music overthrown.

Why is this fan so heavy?

This foolishness in lace.

My wrists are weak, I cannot speak,

nor even hide my face.

So please mask, come and take me

and end this wretched road.

Make me believe the lies they see

so I won’t let it show-

that this vine grows inside me

and whispers every day

its rootless words, it mutters-

as all meaning slips away.

The End of the World

The end of the world approaches.
We will go out in style,
luxury and decadence.
The sky will open like prison gates
iron grey, while below we drown
in gold, the manmade kind
that will never have the value
of Old Sunshine.

Oh, misery-!
that this is to be our fate;
burnt from the earth
by rain and fire and drought,
as pestilence is burnt
from a cadavre,
as the mummy
is prepared.

But as the cogs are scoured,
I will sit, grave and still
in the last bar of Old Sunshine
and love as a virgin loves.
I will not see their starving faces,
nor hear their lurid screams;
I will close my eyes as
their architecture falls.

Our bridge of dreams will break,
swamped by golden, swollen seas.
There will be nothing left to give,
but the very last pure heart-
mine, beating.
And everything will cease
but your memory, trapped
in Old Sunshine.