We learn to
play with people
by playing with toys.
We love them to bits.
We’re always hugging them.
We can’t be without them,
until we get a shiny, new toy
and forget all about them.
And when years later
we meet them again
in a brown cardboard box
or in an empty supermarket
and all the memories
of what all
and how much
they meant to us
takes our breath away
as we realise
how much
we can forget
for how
little.
There comes
a time in
every relationship
when the past
is way larger than
the future.
That’s your cue
to exit stage left
laughing.
When you left me
I wanted to throw a
Molotov cocktail into
your car.
I wanted to
machine gun
your entire
unsympathetic family.
I wanted to dynamite
your house.
I wanted to guillotine
your asinine friends.
And castrate your
non-existent,
future husband.
And in a few
short years I’ve
forgotten how the
fuck do you even
look like.
Thank god for
a bad memory
The house always wins.
No matter how
you hedge your bets.
No matter how
well you play
your cards.
No matter
how much you’ve read
the game.
That’s the way it is.
And every morning
you wake up you
are at the table.
Placing your bets.
Rolling the dice.
And the old man time
let’s you win a while.
Or else no one will gamble.
But eventually
he wipes you clean,
empties your pockets,
and ushers you out.
To doze in the sun
for a while
to get over the crushing
hangover after being drunk
on yourself
for half your life.
If you’re lucky
you’ll have a dog
who’ll listen to your stories
of that time when you
had the aces up your sleeves.
You try to warn the young.
But they laugh at you.
They are winning now.
They are running with the horses.
They are rolling with the dice.
They are full of cocaine and hope.
For now.
The house always wins.
But that only you know.
And now your dog.
Misery is the glue that
binds stronger than
any happiness.
It is the only true test of love.
Anyone can be
a friend in fair weather.
A lover, in springtime.
It’s the hard, cold wind
that separates
hope from belief.
It’s the thorns that pave the
road that
separate the pilgrim
from the curious.
We have walked the
unforgiving mile, without
forgetting to kiss.
I rest my case.
When I was growing up
my father used to
recite to me a couplet
in Sanskrit,
every time he found
me slacking.
Roughly translated,
it meant ‘ No deer
enters the mouth of
a sleeping lion.’
I have always found
the visual arresting.
A snoring lion
with his gaping jaws wide open,
dreaming of an obedient
deer who places her
head in it.
Sooner or later he’ll
wake up feeling hungry
and foolish.
He’ll stretch his coiled
muscles and lower himself
into a crouch and sniff the
air for prey and melt
into the tall grass.
Then a leap,
a frightened yelp,
the white of terrified
deer eyes,
the flash of claws,
sharp teeth ripping
open the wind pipe,
the weakening
death struggle,
the metallic smell
of blood.
And its dinner time
in Savannah.
No deer
enters the mouth of
a sleeping lion.
It’s good to have dreams.
It’s better to wake up
and hunt them down.
