After

Dublin in Spring

Wind me up
Like a vine
Around you close.
Weave your limbs through me
And turn the sky a Technicolor grey.
Fill me with your milkshake–
So blue.
Sink like syrup into our gate
Break the lock, let no one in–
Climb into us
Our flat so warm
Our future now here
Our plans realized.

The Surgeon

Your flag billowed out the window
Trumpeting politics
From on high.
I guess from a Haighted balcony you looked larger than you were
Up close—
So weathered:
Like a mistral
Scissoring trees
You’d cut in, daring in your surgery.
I had to admit
I respected you —
You made me look like a novice.
It seemed to me you knew exactly how to stitch the pain
But left a seam
That only you knew how to untie.
February came and I lay with my arm around you, paralyzed;
Not sure if it even belonged to me anymore.
I felt like it had melted and become part of you —
Everything else in my life had.
That morning I walked home from your bed,
I needed a doctor.
You tore me open so badly this time
I thought I’d never recover.
Funny how a pack of smokes and a warm cup of tea
Cures insanity.
I pulled up a chair, took a deep breath
And decided to save you on a page.
Then I could set you somewhere unrealistic
Like you had done to me
Try to make you live up to Sainthood and see how you fared.