Lighthouse Lost

Cursed to be a bridge between worlds
I float
listening for the whisper of one
who would deliver me from freedom,
who would sink into my soul
and fish out words I'd never dare to speak.

What footprints
does love leave behind?
Remnants from the beginning of things?
Or mud tracked in from the wilderness?

When we are weak from dreaming
our fathers offer up prayers 
so that we might find what was lost.
But this grants us no salvation, 
for we are still praying for theirs.

What use is magic
when your tears write poetry?
What use is the divine
when we are animated by song?

&&

They say 
if you don’t stand for anything
you’ll fall for everything.
And fall I did 
into her arms.
And in her eyes I'd catch a glimpse of eternity
with each 
rotten thought.

Tell me again 
why your blood is thicker than mine,
why your water tastes sweeter,
why my bread isn’t enough.

I know what I lack
the venom that I spent my life diluting 
is no homeopathic cure.
It bellows and spits. A corrosive liqueur that feeds my flame
content only when spent 
on trinkets and empty visions.

So
walk with me 
once more to the lighthouse 
where we locked hearts for the first time,
vowing to throw away the key 
(just not into the sea)

We'll look up and see Cassiopeia 
dangling her feet 
her gaze fixed
on the creases in your neck
as you crane
and strain
your pupils to the disco of darkness
the hum
of the sand beneath your feet.

But she isn’t the same girl,
whose soft mythology captured your imagination
and danced away like a wild elephant
while you fell asleep on the train.

Leave me now in this sick winter
to unravel the contradictions
that lead me to God.
To the centre of my labyrinth
where instead 
of a monster 
was a mirror

It’s time to let go
from a dream that lasted longer this time
from the whirl almost seen
from an embrace that held on.