Anniversary song
My love for you is so strong –
it’s fathoms deep and furlongs long –
it spans the continents and disregards all borders.
My love for you is thick as soup,
it never dries, though it may droop,
it stays past closing and outlasts last orders.
My love is this and also that,
it wakes with me and comes to bed,
it feeds on laughter, tears, cheese and beers.
It lasted me through thick and thin,
it’s in my heart and in my spleen,
and here’s “Cheers!” to a lot more years!
“Oh my Luve is like a red, red rose” – Robert Burns
My love is like a red, red rose
the flowers and thorns combined.
The vivid beauty intertwined
with sharpness. There is no repose.
The colour of the velvet petals
Evokes blood, subsists in blood.
Ambivalence that never settles
existed there from the bud.
My love is like a red, red rose
it’s in my blood least petals dry.
In me, with me, as me it grows
and if it dies the I shall die.
Your voice lulls me to sleep.
Your snoring fails to keep me up.
Your moving in bed does not wake me.
But when you get up in the night
your absence screams in my ears,
it prods and pokes at me
and I wake up with a start,
finding a loud, obnoxious empty space
interfering with my sleep.
I don’t lose sleep over you –
I loose sleep over the empty space
where you should be.
It is not in lost and found.
Maybe on the underground
I forgot it on the train?
Maybe cold autumnal rain
washed it off – down the drain?
Maybe, in the daily grind,
it slipped out of my mind
and, with finished magazine,
I just dropped it in the bin?
Or, in fact, it wasn’t binned –
maybe restless urban wind
blew it off with fallen leaves
to be caught among the eaves
in the gutters up above?
Where is my epic love?
You imbibe of your desperate loves to get over the voids,
forming rickety bridges and narrow paths in the clover.
He is happy and chirpy, who covers, sidesteps and avoids,
but the longer you do it the heavier is the hangover.
We’ve been together so long –
I don’t know how to be without you.
Your anniversary and birthday presents
are always crooked.
I am rubbish at wrapping them
because they are the only presents I ever wrap.
But I can learn.
Even with a bit of luck
I wouldn’t be able to laugh all the way to the bank
because I have no idea
where it is.
But I can learn.
I wouldn’t know the first thing about
fixing a boiler
or getting a loan
or booking a hotel
But I can learn.
I feel uncomfortable sleeping on my own
and wake up often.
But I can learn.
What I am terrified of is that one day
I will have to learn to breathe without you
and I will suffocate in the void.
And once again – let’s talk about love.
The spring had sent our hearts and lips aflutter.
Wild pigeons coo, cats scream, girls preen, men mutter,
while cupids in the clouds up above
adjust their nappies and pick up their bows,
with whoops of joy they go hell-for-leather.
It’s their season as all heaven knows:
they hunt in summer, they are dressed for weather.
The cupids bet who’ll bag the biggest number,
intent on their prey they push and shove.
They rush to live before their winter slumber.
But I digress… Let’s talk about love.
Let’s talk about sharing what’s dear
and feeling awkward when the other’s gone.
The dread of loss replacing loss of fear
and sense of joy replacing fleeting fun.
About warmth amidst the deepest cold,
being a distance runner, not a sprinter,
your stamina replaces speed of old.
You know joy in spring and love – in winter.
I don’t believe in fate
and yet my fate is sealed.
Before I knew myself
you sealed it with a kiss.
I fought my self and yours,
but open wounds re-healed
until the flames of pain
extinguished with a hiss.
Alas, secure fate
went quickly off the rail:
you sealed it with a kiss
and dropped it in the mail.
