The Girl of Silver Green

Bitten nails brush the hair from her face.

He can’t stop staring at her eyes, they dip at the end like she’s about to fall asleep and dream in silver green. 

So he smiles at her and she smiles back.

A reach through the gap between the isle of the place where people die young but still live long lives.

He tells her his name and she makes poetry with it. Poetry for them to live by.

And he teaches her how to fall in love.

How to dream fiercely.

It's in the language. Scream at the trees just to watch the leaves fall.

Toned and Summer Kissed

Skies was 9 hours away by train, but it was chance to wake up somewhere else and be a different person. Loy had my back those days when we were barely men as we watched the emptiness of the dry savanna roll by from the carriage window. We drank bad coffee to help recover from the cheap booze up in the diner cabin that ended just before dawn.

Mostly we hung out with a group of locals who didn’t do much, but they were good guys, gave us a place to stay and showed us around. That's how I met her.

They pretended to know her to get a laugh when she rejected me. It was on a bus back to Montrose one afternoon. She was impressed with my confidence and we talked almost all the way; oblivious to their intentions. 

I invited her to a party we’d planned and she turned up with a friend, by the end of the week we were hand-in-hand staring hopelessly in the depths of each other, intoxicated, toned and kissed by the summer.

Time has a way of drawing the curtain behind you; Loy and I went back home to become the people we are and I remember the skins we inhabited. The details of the good times and the acceptance we felt. But I can never remember her face.

Time has a way of making the past into stories we tell to the strangers we used to dream of becoming and its mists close in on the people we once were so we can never go back.

To Live Well

To those who would die as all must do, fear not the interminable void.

Live with thrust and parry. Seek the unwritten roads in lands with languages you don’t understand.
Dangle from the sides of mountains, welcome uncharted terrain and brace against the storms of well earned mistakes.

Find love, make love and be loved Because every rainbow ends in the same place: a coldly lit room surrounded by those held dearest lying that you will definitely make it, or the welcome steel of a violent and abrupt release.

London Skate Project

Morgan Tsvangirai: a tribute

Dear Zimbabweans

Tomorrow a man will wake up, eat his first meal of the day, kiss his wife and drive to the cemetery where he is employed as a grave digger.

At no point will he understand the importance of his work, for tomorrow he digs a grave for man of character.

And the mud on the gravediggers hands will be history, the history of a Zimbabwean son who dared to stand up against tyranny, who suffered the indignities of prison and torture for what he believed.

Many will say he failed in his futile pursuits but more will talk of his dedication and unrelenting labours towards the cause.

His vision a bright new Zimbabwe cut short all too soon.

That grave will be for Morgan Tsvangirai, a leader and a friend of the Zimbabwean people.

May his vision endure now that his body cannot.

Wasted Petals

She was there in the debris of what could have been. A moth on fire on the back of her

jacket, smoky eyes peering over the fur collar to dazzle with those cherry pop lips against

sun tinted skin and legs in cut-offs like sabres.

I watched her jukebox from one empty glass to the next but she never remembered my

name no matter how loud I said it.

The youth we shared, back then, was a currency all too quickly wasted on bad drugs and

worse people. She couldn’t help herself.

There were roses in the gutter, too many like her, and tulips on the side of young

tombstones. I knew the beauty would take her, so I watched and grew petals while

I waited.    

Glitter Blue Lipstick

An understanding came over him in the smoky twilight; here in this slug motel on edge of town. In this place of drugs, booze and heedless sexual encounters he sat at the edge of the bed, hands in hair contemplating a great truth.

Two paths lay before him; one to happiness the other to Love. Because they could never be the same, not when Love could be so dangerous and could inspire such lunacy. 

Not when Love could be the red dress lying on stained carpet next to a broken martini glass marked with last night’s glitter blue lipstick.

That type of love took its chances, burnt brightest and died young, hurt you in the most satisfying ways and walked away with what little dignity you had left.

And this is where she found him from beneath the fallen sheets of their reckless bed. Wrapping her arms around his naked torso she placed her head on his back to listen to him breath and ease what troubles he’d found.

This was the answer he was looking for, so he chose love, the path more treacherous, but the only one worth dying on.