Lament for Apollo

Through Grey Street 
I stagger
Clothed in silver
Dreaming of Apollo

My lips are blackened
My fingers numb
The prospect of warmth ahead
Somewhere, why doubt?

I’ve seen his bow arched over the river
His flaming arrows around the market place
Yet men seem distant
They count their pennies and sigh
Drink ale and forget

From the sweltering heavens
Apollo aimed at us by the Tyne
But then he argued with Dionysus
Over wine and theatre
And grew weary himself

The Swing Bridge bears a glorious scarlet
The stalls at Monument sell sizzling sausages
And I shiver
Day after day after day

Whilst Apollo heads on a cruise ship for Hyperborea
To bathe naked with the muses
I look out to the world from this tiny window
Open the latch, drop
My last burning desire in the stove

Words

Carried out firmly
On the tip of my muscular tongue
Delicately poured onto silken paper
Vowels moaning as they fall, head down
Consonants landing with a thud
Avidly they rearrange themselves
As if to please me
So is the beginning of loss
And guilt
For if they aren’t the right words
I cannot take them back
The pen rises
The wrong words shiver in dismay
I draw a jagged line over them
And instantly learn to regret it:
Dread the sight of the blotch
That makes up their crossed, annihilated bodies
Upon my soft, white page
The ghosts I set free
Come back to haunt me

Lunacy

Over the rooftops my soul glides
Gentle and unrushed
As the night closes in I see
People in the streets below
Pacing to-and-fro
The body in bed, numb with cold,
Contorts and shrinks
Into shapes too familiar
Yet so unlike me
And I smile
For over the frowning clouds
The best of me is saved
Rocked by a soothing wind
Towards the moon
The bowed new moon
That draws stars upon my brow,
Nurturing with glowing hands
Every illicit minute of sovereign insanity.