Woulda, coulda, shoulda

Sadness fits in the morning
In the slow hour after the dawn
In a Saturday morning
When even the quiet hum of the city is stilled
Sadness fits
Broken by birdsong
Or held in the perfect silence of a room
Alone

Thanks guys

There's something almost William Burroughsish about it - I like it, but I'd have to spend hours with it to even begin to understand it, I think. Well done.

Waiting

I fall into night
Waiting, ever waiting.
She, my dark princess
Far away in her lonely city
Will stir before midnight
(I pray!!)

The first few lines are a little, I don't know, distant? With the line: Peace never last as long as when you're with me, I feel you start to get into your stride, and from here it gets stronger and stronger. Is it possible that you sat down to write this and it took a few lines to find your Muse? Some great visuals in the latter part (Bleeds through my eyes). Keep 'em comin'

Lovely. There's a real lightness about it - it's like a snowflake falling. Love the line: "taste of muted cinnamon"

Thanks guys. Just noticed how I put "fiend" instead of "friend". Funny how those in some ways total opposite words are only one letter r away from each other.

I take the point about the second stanza, KC. Maybe I was being too much of a slave to the meter: 4,7,5,6 all the way through. It's only brand new, so I'll let it settle for a while, then maybe come back and rework it.

Might even leave the fiend.

I celebrate
The sixteenth of October
I give it over
To tears and thoughts of you

I clear the day
Ahead of time so nothing
No fiend or loved one
Can see me cry for you

I place a rose
Upon the ground that holds you
I wish I’d told you
How much you meant to me

Another deep one. Good work.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I wonder why my life's so cheap
If I should cry before I wake
It's cos of sadness and heartbreak

Thanks again. Getting used to Toronto by now, but it sure can be a STRANGE place. A song ... hmmmm. Any volunteers to put music to it?

Excellent wordplay, brother.

Hey dude - that's an interesting one

Nicely done

Heartfelt. Your pain is all over this one. Know that nothing is forever. The future has wonders and joys in store for you that, right now, you could never imagine.

Thanks guys

Nice playing with words, dude

New Town

Coming to a new town
Born again in asphalt fumes
In urine smells
And sonic booms

Crowded in a streetcar
Tally up the broken souls
The goddesses
On birth control
The businessmen
On mobile phones
The downturned eyes
And muted tones
The drugs
The sex
The rock ‘n’ roll

Watching from a distance
The city’s voice, a steady roar
So like a heartbeat
Like a whore

When I was a very young child, there was a bookcase in the corner of our living room. It wasn’t a very big bookcase – my parents were readers, but not particularly bookish. There was one book there called “Those Who Are About to Die”. Its cover contained a painting of a woman, sitting on the ground. There were ropes around her ankles, and someone was fixing a rope to her left wrist. The other wrist was already roped. Each rope ran to a harness, and the harnesses were attached to very large, very strong-looking horses. I was fascinated by this book cover, even though I was maybe only three years old. I asked my mother what was happening here, why was the man tying the woman to the horses. She told me that it was a picture of the Roman arena, the Colosseum, and that, once the ropes were tied, the man would whip the horses and the woman would be torn apart. Not a subtle woman, my mother.
I still remember the horror I felt upon hearing this story. I looked again at the woman in the painting. I must have spent hours and hours looking at her. She represented the first inkling in my child’s mind that the world might be a place where terrible things could happen.

I left the flat a couple of hours later. By that time, we’d gotten past all the sadness, and we spent the time laughing and joking and reminiscing. It was like old times, but eventually I had to go home. Somewhere along the way I’d met someone else, started building a life, bought a house, and got committed. She got committed too, but in a very different way.
This all happened, as I said, on a Saturday. She died on the Sunday. At some point, late at night, she gathered together all the pills she would need and fed them to herself, one by one, just as the voices told her to. There was no call, no text message. She didn’t leave a note. She was just gone.
And afterwards, when the funeral was done, and the gravestone was carved with her name and the dates that circumscribed her pitifully short life, when grief had washed out my eyes with its acid tears, I found myself in my own private Colosseum. I was the one sitting helpless in the sand. I was the one the Roman soldier was securing to the horses. On one side my wrist and ankle were bound, not with ropes, but with the words I said that day: I know, someday, you’ll go. I know it, and I’d do anything to stop it from happening. But I can’t. On the other, I was bound with the words I should have said: Don’t go! Stay with me. I’ll help you. I’ll be here for you. I’ll never give up on you. Don’t go. Stay. Please, stay.
I can still see the face of the woman in the painting; every detail of it is perfectly preserved in my mind. It was a look of anguish and resignation, a look of a person who knew she was doomed. I saw that same look that Saturday, when she was telling me about the voices. I just didn’t recognize it then.
And now, when I lie down in the silence of the night, I can almost feel that faceless Roman tightening the cord around my wrist. I know that soon he’ll stand up and crack his whip, and those huge horses will start to draw away apart. Some nights, they pull hard.