how to forget

delete every text
delete every email
tear up your poems
erase the unfinished letters
save nothing
pour water on your heart
steady the pulse
dream her out of your nights
remove her name from your lips
cover her face with darkness
drown her voice with silence

and then forget how to smile

the valentine

unrequited love
returned
unwrapped
but the rose is still sent
and the words still written
brave
futile
gestures
have always been my thing
and I like to think
they always will

room 487

there's a knack to the key cards
green and I am in
red and I'm just an idiot
in a hallway
it's a different hotel
but the room is the same
I unpack nothing
I switch on the TV
but I don't listen
it's just background noise
for the emptiness
through the glass
I see another city
and as darkness falls
the same noisy lights rise
nothing is new
nothing surprises me
I smile at my reflection
caught between
a room and a skyline
stay there I tell myself
for neither side
has anything to offer you

mornings should be

to awake

within a woman's arms

to breath and inhale

her fragrance

her sex

to turn and by a single touch

arouse the longing

that has so long been mine

to taste

to consume

and be consumed

then to lay spent in each other's arms

content within the symmetry of love

the lost valentine

falling in love with the promise
of someone like you
my Dulcinea
but I am no knight
I have no quest
maybe a little "nut loose"
but I see wind turbines
not monsters
now I realise that life
occasionally keeps her promises
but age is like bars of steel
tempered with irony
and the cruellest jailors of our hearts
are the broken hopes we cling to
so maybe just maybe
life is teaching me
that the best loves are the ones we carry
secretly
tucked and folded in our hearts
for none to see
for more often than not
they last a lifetime
so never search for me
for the man who writes these words
just know that there is someone
who from time to time
holds up your heart to the light
and sees no flaws





(Some of these words were for an unsent Valentine. But it was not fear that held me back but a truth. The measure of any heart is found when we examine the inventory and see what is missing and what was let go. I chose to let go.)