Dan Taylor

Second in my series dedicated to Southern trains. Thanks for overcharging me all these years! No not quite…

Back southern.

End of the Nile
These fool men
Didn’t realise
Romance is predicated on
A degradation of lying, being
A degradation of feeling.

And what is meant might be
What begins no more than
I like you, no bullshit,
And what I mean is
You would never learn to
Like anything, unless
You were in danger of losing it
Less us or me than an it or you or we
3am moon I knew –
That romance is predicated on
Love-loss strategy
Lose or seduce,
Same old trajectory:
All roads lead south

End of the Nile
These fool men get lost easy
Bad strategy see
You can’t play a heart game
When it’s all end and never means.

Means nothing easy.
Winds thrash the trees.
You only see me when I renounce you
And maybe you were good once
Though now it irks me
I hurt you and you saw me
Though less a fatigued pregnancy
You were dull until
It hurt to see me
Then at least there was some complexity

Little else til some foolheart game
Now you hurt less to see me than to hear me.
Maybe you felt that once but
It’s become cloudy.
And you talk a while –
And once I wanted to feel you
But I know now you can’t feel me.
Skin is the deepest distance.
And all our words a garden.
‘Truth’ is far too busy
Nights are long and hungry

…
Same old night
Friends mistake brutality for comedy
And we come around.
Blue is the colour of memory.
Old friend I felt you
Knelt before your outstretched legs
Then I knew you

Perhaps a decade longer in bed
Bad job and postponed revery
Then I’d’ve earned the key
Some maturity connotating respectability
And you’d’ve settled
Not for me but
Your mother you saw in me
Bending now to clean your feet,
Brother and sister in the
Bruised love of family

Back southern.