WE WILL KNOW LOVE

we will know love

how can you play an instrument

that is no longer held in your hands?

in the stillness of your presence

everything radiates

beyond disorders, I once cherished

for the calmness of your wake.

after evenings of ultimatums

plates thrown against a wall

you stood tall

over lies you told yourself

when young enough to care

less. and how easy you acted

around older boys, half as matured

as you once were, twice as vacant

in milk fed eyes. years later

it still reminds me

how easy it was to be someone else

with you.

your disguises were not the lies

told to concerned mother

about how incense can so often

be mistaken for the smell of cigarettes.

are you present now? lost in regret

over boarding on nature sounds

born within you.

ocean waves, they came and went

like the lovers

you watched batter one other

along the pier. on winter days

you remembered your father.

in his ways he was much younger

than your youth. fed on the guts

of childhood addiction

tears came only after his departure.

over years and inherited fears

you spread legs and consistent lies

across the foreign lands you ran away from.

only a cruel wind return

in homeland October Scotland

could attempt to express

everything that’s been left unsaid

about your destructive ways.

In the hour of departure

I watch wind form trees shape of sail.

Once, in the fragility of tender youth,

I boarded with the brutes, hungover on rot of whiskey.

But they accepted me, despite my inabilities.

I was out there with the toothless men

who were born to be lost at sea.

On an ocean of adventure, we rowed forward

neither together nor apart. Unknowing

we rowed across swell towards fate.

Alone, out there, I saw Shelley drown

as blood-eyed men dreamt of land barrels.

A thought of his verse gave prayer. Unspoken fury

I raised fist, wrapped myself in a trawl net

sent overboard. We worked until we met the moon.

Somewhere along sea floor, a search for treasure

went on where no one knows.

I want to understand the first time again, and pretend

I was the seagull who swooped from hill

through valley, into a field full of mud

broken by farmers who, up since dawn,

fed on what they bore by hand.

A banker’s life, before we knew the scars of war,

led the poor to work away from shorelines.

Drunk on fury, the promise of employment

for as long as seasons would harvest

was enough. I want to know the boy

I was then, before she knew the man who drank

and thought alone in a stone walled room.

Sheets as thin as whispers.

This year would be less kind than the last.

Wanting anything from the shops?

Gerry’s cheque won’t be in for another week—its aw totally fucked man

defo that Jobbie twat Colin at the centres fault. Nicola thinks

her little one has the norovirus, been going around day-care

like a rumour. Speaking of gossip, Johnny and Sue are back together.

He’s promised not to drink when the Old Firm are playing,

we’ll know if he kept his word, next time we see her.

Did you hear about little Annie overdosing on skag?

that one’s always been obsessed with Trainspotting.

They took her oot the housing scheme, put her in the mental hoose.

What those silly cu*** at the chippie been up to lately?

fish batter tastes like soggy cardboard, it’s no acceptable man.

Tommy’s going out tonight, on the lash before sentencing,

pri** will probably get himself an extra year.

You wanting anything from the shops?

Good, got sod all money to buy nuttin, any-hoo.

David Moran: Previous poetry and fiction and articles have appeared in: Adelaide Literary Magazine (AUS), Cleaver Magazine (USA), Edinburgh Magazine (UK), The View From Here (US), The Dundee Anthology (UK), Curbside Splendor (US), Tefl England (UK), Litro Magazine (UK), First Edition (UK), Litro Magazine (USA), White Wall (Canada) and The Argentina Independent (ARG).