EREBUS

You could just as easily knit sea-spray
into a fluffy white sweater
or capture the wind in a butterfly net
as banish exquisite recollections
from an overly nostalgic mind
that appears hell-bent
on creating it's own personal Erebus.

You need no electronic picture file
to resurrect once more the angles of his face
in life-like colour, or to preserve in time
desire's frenzied flare for intimate touch.
Emotions eject their darts, dipped in thought's poison:
no matter how you sweat to cling to hope,
disillusion still creeps in.

Now in the early hours his voice
envelopes you. Listen to his ballad of bliss:
a lover's cruel lie, preserved forever
in the archives of bitter experience
for future perusal. You struggle
to conquer gut's wrenching in the eternal now:

that final promise fossilised...haunting...taunting...crushing.

Oh how the two of you once loved!

And how the remembrance of it blows you apart,

as if to recreate from your atoms a new Universe

composed of endless frenzied yearning

to catch and tether those fleeting impressions

that nightly come in racing heartbeats' blazing wake

and within seamless vivid dreams.

But this dawn banishes the ghostly images,

and although searing lust so covets immortality,

last night's fever gradually subsides into apathy.

However fiercely you're in denial,

obsession recoils from the clarity of the rising sun

that highlights reality in stark relief, and blinds

the deluded eyes of the emotionally naive.