THE BLACK WATCH
Nobody will remember
The places I cannot forget
They shall remain untouched
Beneath this black heath
Where my own youth lies now
In its long afternoons
Of nothing to do
But skimming stones and counting ripples
Of changing seasons chasing days
Through my frame’s tomorrow
Its greying bones
Weighed down by the sobriquet
Of an old and now deceased clan member
Who lied about his age
To fight in The Great War
And whose very own lines like these
Have long since found their place
Underneath this barren ground
Where nothing but the gravel grows
Raising the bottle
I drink to him and to the shadows
Of all of my own personal saints
Who shower down from the nearby steeple
And start to pound my mind’s observatory
As it starts to turn and spin
Around the circle of time’s mean line
From their then
To the emptiness of this present passing
It does nothing but sit there waiting
As it did for them and as it does for me
Aboard forever and its phantom clipper
Beneath the black watch of this heath
Beneath the soles of these feet
MON COEUR
I will not lose you
Not to the illusions
Painted on
This fleeting dream
By the misinformation
By the fake news
By the conspiracies
No – I cannot
Control the ignorance
And – no – I cannot
Overthrow the suffering
But I can focus on you
Infinite
Timeless
Forever present
In this eternal morgue
The fire will not burn
And the ashes cannot scatter
The perfect diamond of your heart
Unexcelled
Unequalled
Beyond the system of this mind
Beyond its words and images
I could never lose you
∞
J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Read more of J H Martin’s work that was previously pulled from the void right here.
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