On a ramshackle Friday night,
Alleyways full of stray cats
Seeking prey, junkies trying to score,
And the dull roar of dreams dying,
We walked toward your place from the pub
Din of voices and bad music gone,
Just you and I in this persistent
Deadly night air so filled with portent
You could reach out and pop it
Like a balloon. But that would
Scare the neighbours, ensconced
In their warehouse loft apartments
Quaffing cheese and wine
Without irony, their lives compartments
Slotted to the back of a filing cabinet
Too deep to fathom.
I comment on the moon, so huge and bright,
Like a cartoon lantern,
Either lighting our way or mocking us.
You say: it is a celestial body -
It has neither function or meaning.
It just ‘is’.
And that’s the moment I realise I love you,
Amidst the madness and chaos,
The death and despair,
Your rational mind cuts through all poetry.
There are no more metaphors.
We ascended to your room
Stepping lightly over those sleeping
On the landing. It felt like idolatry.
All this youth in one place focused
Like a laser beam toward death.
There are no more similes.
You undress in a quantum mechanical way,
All my romance reduced to equations.
Planck's theorem. Heisenberg's principle.
We may never inhabit this same space again,
Not this here, not this now.
What good are words in the face of maths?
1 + 1 = 2
Utterly defeated, I lie beside you.
©shaun patrick green
