7.03 a.m.

A random poem from the archives to start off this blog - I suppose something's got to be first! Here's a poem I wrote in 2008, unsurprisingly at around 7 in the morning. After debating the merits of artistic and romantic endeavour through poetry for some time, I finally reached a blissful and liberating apathy with the matter that struck me as sweeter than the topics themselves. Raping the sonnet form was great fun - in the commentary for my portfolio I described it as a 'bastard of form' - though I also mentioned my 'strange and frightening impotence'. Don't know what I was talking about? Don't worry, neither do I...

 

7:03 a.m.

I am still awake

Bone weary, dawn’s clarity

Breaks upon my chest.

You still sleep – I picture what I cannot draw –

And in a few pale hours you’ll start the day

Another person.

But before I can faint again                                      

Into a frayed old question, love or art                                                        

Revitalised into this cynic’s brain,

There’s sudden sweet exhaustion; when alert

These jumped-up arty hands will not begin

In case rough transit to the page

Damages the weak idea within

But hell - enough! - with poetry’s wretched dirge,

Now falling in, now out of love with form

It doesn’t matter; I’ll cast off the grey

And grasp with inky fingers at the pale blue dawn

That strokes my hands and colours in the day.

Beyond the night’s taut focus, lines are blurred;

Familiar shapes are not what they once were.

And though I cannot be sure that I mean it,

That I can really mean anything at this moment,

I somehow trace the velvety words;

I love you very much…

Perversely, it feels right.

An ending.