Kevin P. Gilday

Flatpack dignity, build it yourself
Homogenised style, facsimile wealth
Aspirational living for the faux middle classes
With the Murakami novels and the horn-rimmed glasses

The crude light dissolves amongst the frenzied throng
An amorphous mass trudging slowly along
Traversing a showroom that seeps with desire
Hoarding timber to construct their own funeral pyre

Couples with hands entwined and smiles embossed
Bind their futures together with mahogany albatross
While tired spouses with crumpled faces
Debate which lamp will best fill their empty spaces

Jealousy colonizes the mind and erodes the soul
Infatuation manifests itself in a set of ceramic bowls;
A pillow with arms; a stainless steel fork;
A horrendous ten foot canvas of New York

Matching monoliths of cool angular wood
Granting meaning to rooms that sat so long misunderstood
A domestic symmetry to deflect our pain
From the personal perfection we could never hope to attain

For something to be lost it must first be owned
The concept of our future was not bought but loaned
We lost nothing tangible, just one possible path
The sweet smell of talc, the low hum of a bath
A hazy lilac dream framed in soft focus
A single shoot sprouting amongst a descending plague of locust
That single shoot we resolved to impede
To mercifully stifle whilst only a seed

We exist now in the spaces inbetween
Tormented by possibilities felt but unseen
Not tempestuous passion nor orderly strife
The fragile, unspoken grace notes of life
I traced hieroglyphics on your back as you softly slept
And held you in my arms as you gently wept
Eyes of red, drowned in sorrow
Pregnant with the unfulfilled promise of tomorrow

We lay together, and we count the cost
And imagine the things we could have lost

Love resides here, my dear
Not in elaborate gestures
Nor ornate halls
Love dwells amongst these four walls

It resides in the minutiae
Smaller than a grain of sand
The soft caress of a whisper
The deft touch of a hand

Love resides wherever we do
Wherever we take it
Whatever we go through

It travels in our blood
Indispensable, ever present
Shining in the dark
Bright and incandescent

Whether emanating from a foreign shore
Or the room next door
Love sends a beacon so strong
It simply can’t be ignored

A force of nature, wild and untamed
Assured of purpose, and vehemently unashamed
Complex, contradictory and idiosyncratic
All encompassing, single minded
And barely ever democratic

Streaked with myriad sentiment
Entwined threads so fine
Not a hundred violin players
And a poet
Could possibly hope to define