Category: poetry

I need hugs. Contact;
reassuring, physical.
You, all around me.

One has never been enough.
I’m incomplete without you.

new breath, black eyes, tiny life,
     (
      best friend
one step
      removed by wife
two steps
      removed by son
infinitely
      separated by a gulf I cannot cross
alone)
a beautiful thing, now peaceful.
Both of us unable to survive
     without
     human touch,
     community,
     love
only I know how to fake it,
so my
slow death
     (sped a step by his arrival)
goes unnoticed
     (as birth is announced broadly)
I am become my own failure:
alone-
      separated from the community
     -because I am
alone.
my dying breath, my black tears, my tiny life.

failure is like
   a flavour
   of ice cream
it’s always just intense enough
     so you can taste it
        even as it numbs

Sometimes the diff’rence
between round-trip and one-way
is the strength to stay …