Ascension Poem by Oliver Roberts

You take me up into a sordid heaven,
a soft space of wet choirs and fizzing stars.
There, in your eyes, I find burning angels,
and a pack of smouldering white veils glow beneath me.
Somewhere in the city our sweat satisfies the silence,
somewhere in the city there’s us cut open and captured,
and among the haze of lights are your dark wishes and spells.

As a dangerous tree or a memory of olives is how you appear,
rising and posing for me inside this daring bed.
I want to imagine that we’ll both die like this,
that our eyes will never open again,
that the last thing we’ll see are our pleading faces tangled together.

Sit with me and we’ll think up names for our nudity,
we’ll decide on a smell and suppleness for all our parts.
I’ll lie down and send letters from mouth to breast,
a deep and secret correspondence between lonely spies.
With your last whole breath mist us up and heat my bones,
then slowly arch and spill your love out in that slender way;
through my veins you’ll spread yourself, bursting open inside my heart.