Porcelain filled with lavender tea sits delicately on the table. The old doily cloth matches your dress, were both inherited from mother? Remember how she would laugh so loud? Flower teased by a small bumble bee, please ignore it if you are able it will only sting if under stress. Remember that advice from brother? Bees have the temper of a storm cloud. "I'm glad that we still have each other" Oh how I wish you'd say this aloud
Ten soldiers, all lie flat. Children, ten of them, hand in hand. Kings recognised in a hurried, nervous manner, without noticing the crimson velvet HEARTS.
Dangled cold toes under hot taps Weary bones that cry to collapse. With night she is blessed with peaceful request that she rest in it's traps. When awoken, as sun shines brightly, the rattled chest clenches tightly. Warmed by a shiver death doth order her: deliver politely.
The young heart denies all final goodbyes once more. Choral peace song cries while death try disguise it's score. With winged bird it flies, news that all hope dies in war.
Soon you will be washed upon the sands of time as a memory left on the tongue tips of the angels left behind. Your physical form will be gradually reborn from the glistening teardrops we’ll cry in chorus as your body is bid to the eternal dust. You’ll slip into the arms of family through the gap of our knowing and feeling; welcomed and soothed by the same loving presence you too once grieved. All the fear you feel in the shallows of this vast ocean will no longer matter as you begin to drift between the folding waves of a final sleep. Goodbyes won’t be whispered into the sea, but the thickening mist will nod, on my behalf, that we’ll meet again someday.
Knotted tightly in my psyche is a feral call: a plea to return to an unvisited place where unfamiliar arms can bring rest. Routine saps the life from my soul - within safety it writhes in silent agony Lacking nourishment unknown - unnamed. Hunger looks inward to survive famine. Ravenous claws stripping only prime cuts - psychological filet, served bloody and rare. I will be the last to walk away from me. The world unrecognisably cold and damp under the footsteps of a more fulfilling life
I know this night, I know its call. Agony wears a harpy's grin to tempt the lungs to drown within. The bedfellow of cortisol; this life raft needs prescription scrawl before we're buried in its skin. I know this night. A panic button protocol shotgunned with cheap raspberry gin. Hope: the very first deadly sin that chokes us all against the wall I know this night.
Death's kiss, with all of it's surgical precision, cannot wash away your scent. Sweet burnt marshmallow pooled in the final sands of the hourglass - a tar to keep the coffin sealed. Stale espresso left in the morning dew whispers that it tastes the same - a brew far more bitter than the lonely truth.
Ecstasy drips like hot wax. Can you bear the pain? What’s my name?
Your mind is already closed. Can you still hear me? Are you here?
The Poet Armistead 