A LONG NIGHT of thoughts stowed...

❖ Dragging out the words that came When I thought of your slow sneaky decay, Sitting on the frozen ground in the alleyways. It’s a long long road, left dismayed.

Fringe-dwelling freedom toad. Mr Hop hops around our pyre in concentric circles as we admire the desired.

Up and away to where the worker bees go. What did freedom mean yesterday? Can we find that land again and stay?

It’s a long way to where the workers play. Come over, please me to please you, I pray.

Forever is everywhere tomorrow! Always tomorrow, never today. It’s always later that’s why the levity in our moods will always fray.

Raze my lover to ash, Though I cannot see what frightened the cat, I know my eyes lie and someone is here. Then the room was suddenly cooled by her visit. Nothing really seems to be as we feared. No way to catch a glimpse, so nothing is clear. Toward proving the unknown my mind was steered.

Roaming around lost but thankful you're near. Shrouded in death I still covet your veneer.

Imaginary or real eternal company is what I seek. Everyone wants to replace the vanishing warmth, though nothing can replace your breast on my cheek. You cannot fake what makes your knees weak.

The only thing harder than my heart of ice. The aching that can’t be ignored, and how you were my vice. Born in love you rose in death, Sanctified in the teary waters of the bereft. I’m all that’s left, timid, meek, with a salty cheek.

Low-slung moon and a cloud to hide behind and a Long crawl to safety from the sun’s scorching of our kind.

Take a meaningful glare at your dependency so rarely. Are you making your mistakes count? Is there a way not everything is a loss? Sewn the seeds and leave without enduring your best at your behest.

I forgot to get older, what does this shrivelling body crave? It’s such a long way to the beginning. Everyone’s so obsessed with the end. Foreboding what’s around the corner, forbidding me to mourn her, you thought I was kidding about our forlorn heart.

My mind is still reeling from the beating maturity that had given it near the start. So intense a moment of love that lasted a decade, I don’t see how we can ignore the neon exit arrows. The people employed to point at the doors weren’t mistaken with fingers to the floor.

Others chase us, ‘out of it’. ‘So out of it’ we go to the park in the dark and wander around the misty morning. Trying our damnedest to catch the shadows As they run from tree to tree in the pitch black we still manage to see. Shadows danced across the face of white fog and misty frost of midnight's lost dawnings.

Tripping through meadows with no hope, following the hedgerow, and A makeshift map to find our way back to the empty street where Midnight is so thickly stacked. Warm our cheeks back to back, black of night and sleet, save slipping through the cracks. Whose guilt is it with which we’re so heavily racked? Not bloody mine!

She was my only thought as an assignee. So learn that kindness is to slay the beasts making homes on our backs! Learn to abandon your regrets and make a new track!

Let the old ones heal, dare yourself to feel. Take life by the hand, be thankful you are strong, stand and belong!

ALFREEDOM