Hands

I wished, still wish, to travel the world.
I wish to see Russia and Pakistan,
southern Africa and the US east coast,
France, Belgium, and
Te Anau just one more time.
I wish to see the golden jellyfish of Palau,
or the Aurora Borealis in frozen Alaska.
I wish for the world, I wish for the world…

On this Sunday, enduring to the end
is just a little too much.
Enduring to the end with joy in heart,
it’s enough to make a grown man cry.

On a ferry ride from Victoria to Port Angeles,
when phobia marred a fidgeting finger
and made flesh raw,
when sense and reason had no place,
a hand was offered
and it stayed
until chaos went its way.

© Blake Leitch September 18, 2016

John Mayer Reminder 5:8

Love ain’t a thing,
love is a verb.
Love is giving
and commitment,
an adventure
for star-crossed souls.
But when adventure
is too much
for a weary body,
love is time.
Love is every hour
of dedication,
every day of old stories,
every year of
anniversary.
It is the conversations
and songs
and, if one is lucky,
the slow dance.
Love ain’t a thing,
love is a verb.

© Blake Leitch July 13, 2016

Impending Extraction

It’s just a tooth,
just a tooth.
So why is there fear?
Why insecurity?
Why doubt and apprehension?

I remember a scalpel inside my wrist.
I don’t remember if it were
the radius or the ulna;
I just remember a rod of lightning
searing through my bones.
I only remember being torn
from the inside.
I simply remember pain, simple pain,
excruciating pain undulled by anaesthesia.

It’s just a tooth,
just a tooth.
There is fear,
insecurity,
doubt and apprehension.

© Blake Leitch July 05, 2016

A Hard Truth

I’m meant to be dead,
meant to have drowned in my own mucus
more than two decades ago.

Chest infections,
pneumonia,
liver failure,
respiratory failure,
tumours…
This is my resume,
my physiological portfolio.

And I’m stuck in between
hope and desire.
I hope for a bit of pity,
for someone to pet me,
for the basest of human connection.
This can happen now or tomorrow,
can happen at all.
Desire? I desire all.
I desire true love
and true passion
and true adoration above inspiration.

But I’m meant to be dead.

True things take time,
and I am disadvantaged by image too.
I do not qualify for lust, let alone love.
Have you ever tried going on a date
without physical possibility?
Well, no possibility means no result.
No possibility means no chance.
And even if there were chance,
if some mad god smiled on me,
it’s only one more chest infection,
only one probable heart attack,
only one slip of my control by my eroding hand,
only one step before fate is realised.

Happy endings are made for few,
and I am on the farthest end from there.
Death is the friend I have been taught to know,
and death is the friend forever at my side.

© Blake Leitch May 9, 2016

Importance

At a certain hour
before rest is yours,
aquamarine and forget-me-not
become nothing more than blue.
Royal, scarlet, ruby;
they’re all reds.
And lemon and gold,
just yellows.
Eyes and heart become
pieces of the whole of you,
and shades of love disappear
at a certain hour
before rest is yours.

© Blake Leitch June 3, 2016