Arthur H Rowley Poems

She tells me
‘the issue is I am too eager to save myself'
perturbed, I pull poems of woe
in the darkness
...

She tells me of the boy she almost married,
she is older than me but not by much
we sit in her car
beneath the rainfall that finally broke the heat
...

I've spent a lot of time missing your home recently
and all the ways in which it becomes you
or rather you became it
considering it was there to welcome you into this world
...

Have you ever noticed how sometimes
If you're really still and patient and good at holding your breath
You can lay flat beneath the water in your bathtub until it appears like the surface is perfectly still?
...

It has been a decade of this, yet I am thinking about it again
My house has no electricity now so I know that upon my arrival to my bedroom
The silence will begin to swallow me like the whale in Pinocchio
Mouth wide and warm and welcoming
...

Whenever you think you have ended life as we know it
I can offer this:

although it has been a burden
...

I spent years imitating cruelty in the name of personal growth,
and yet this mind still shames its own audacity
for having allowed this pain to create a kindness out of me.
...

I was happy then, I think
although it was messy
and the memories it left are fuzzy at best
...

There were darker times than this, I know
when the heavens poured white wine
down the throats of men who claimed me
when Hades pulled porcupine quills from my open wounds
...

The night sky's clear, here, where I'll go
and eastward wind is known to blow
this cliff face where I find my thoughts
belongs to us, my love, my foe
...