“Words of Love” © Mike Absalom
. December
30th 2011

A scrap of poetry motionless
in the hedge,
camouflaged,
I thought it was a leaf,
until it rose into the air
and began to sing
and I recognised your voice,
emerging sweetly from the
pile of gibbles
you call your sauntering
outfit.

Since you took me to your bed
I have learned words I never
heard before.
Your mood,
so infinitely dark,
glitters with a sharp grief
far blacker than the midnight caoróg’s shell.

I’ll add in your aspiration,
hopeless as the toy sword
on the arse end of a gary-gowlan.

And from the dusty kippins
as you light a malm of turf
mole,
a rising cloud of bees
transmutes into a hundred
clumsy blue bottles,
good not for honey
but for the maggoty tidying
up of corpses.

And now you want to die?
What kind of a response is
that
from a beloved dictionary?