Keeping Six Feet Apart

Even though we wanted to be together it just didn’t last,
we wanted to move forward but strayed into the past
a trial separation that became permanent too fast.
So now we’re living six feet apart.

I leave you kisses on a post-it note
remember your perfume by hugging your old coat
as we no longer touch and that’s what hurts the most.
As now we’re always six feet apart.

Today I walk under the sun to where you lie under the ground
knowing that if I met you again on a crazy rebound,
that we’d still mess it up a second time around.
And that we were always destined to be six feet apart.

Sleepless Nights

Sometimes on sleepless nights I
let my fingers trace the
roadmap of scars that
circumnavigate my body.
And just like that I’m hurtling
down roads I thought were no more,
journeying to long forgotten places
I hoped never to visit again.
My mind is at a crossroads
of indecision.
No way is the best way
all ways lead the wrong way.

Sometimes on sleepless nights I
find my fingers desperate to trace
the roadmap of scars that
circumnavigate my body.
I close my eyes, clench my fists
and do my best to
resist temptation.

I Think I Need to Stop Watching the News?

The Nightly News has become my daily drug,
I mainline every headline
convulse as the stories hit me,
I just can’t tear my eyes away.
In front of me the world is twisting,
changing beyond recognition as
newsflashes, opinions, updates and more
smash in to my eager synapses.
Everything has become a soundbite
all repeated continuously while in the background
a surge of pandemonium swells.
I ride these waves of truth and rumour,
ride them as they rise and fall and
I fall hard with them,
brain on fire with all I’ve witnessed,
overdosing on information.

 

The Last Journey before Isolation

I am one of three unwise men
gathering early at the bus stop,
for our reluctant journey
to the silent city.

I place my bag on my seat
enforce social isolation.
Cover my face with a newspaper
breath in news
breath out speculation.
Breath in fact
breath out fiction.

When we arrive we scatter
like rats, scuttling down silent streets.
Masked spirits avoid eye contact
before vanishing as quickly as
the smoke from my cigarette.

 

Written after I returned from my last commute to Birmingham and the lockdown was announced.

Isolation Mornings

Mornings are now peaceful affairs,
I relax on my creaky garden chair
hugging my coffee
half listening to bird song,
quietly chuckling at a squirrel’s acrobatics.
A fat bumble bee flits from plant to plant
as a caterpillar slowly munches on a leaf,
while the spider on the table contemplates life.

All to soon my break is over,
I rise, stretch, then head back indoors,
back to my digital world.
As nature carries on,
in harmony never in isolation,
impossible to lockdown.