I Remember My Own Insanities… Poem by Mark Heathcote

Oh, what presence attends to our emptiness?
I've dived down, drowning with these daylight thieves.
Falling deeper and deeper into their stone-dead sleep, in this
Angel Enclave: We dug, dug for all our lost fairy souls.
Like a ghost listening to anchored ship wind chimes.

Oh, the lightning bugs laugh with our love above the mountain heather.
As we run with our jam jars downstream forever.
0h, I feel like a fly in the corner of some thoughtful lost feeling.
The feeling of lung's fragility, the fragility of flying sails, or not

Oh, I remember days and years in bedsits, just sleeping, hoping each day never—began.
Oh, I feel hunger, loneliness, and anger; they are always tugging within me.
And neighbours that I wished would vacate, go astray like a dog chasing a bitch.
Oh, I'd wish they were all hit by a car and left in a graveyard ditch.
With beating wings that just twitched forth and back.

Oh, I remember cold November days, till the dawn uncoiled and lifted up, its anchor.
Like a unicorn's horn in mid-mild March through the red neon light and neon-blue air.
Shivering like a bird, like a skylark flying in frantic circles, still as a sphinx
Oh, and the hoofs of the rash that do all their curtsies in the shadows in candy waves.

Oh, I remember rotten friendships that started so promising.
I remember the anointed yellow-amber grease left there.
By the flies trapped beating wings, closing spread on the window pane.
Oh, I remember the moon-milk-white mosses growing on the kitchen walls.
Oh, and my pale bones each day barely echoed, put food in me.

Heart, I don't want anyone; I don't belong in this ageless atrium.
In this angel's enclave, living on cornbread and sleeping again
Oh, I remember my insanities: feeling saintly, sinking, and vainly
Full of ladybirds, winter shelved grief. I've dived down, drowning.
With every breath, intake is crushed like a cockroach.
Oh, I've dived down, drowning with these daylight thieves.
And I crawled on my knees, and it was all anchored in windchimes.
Hanging on a wave; hanging on a note of the fortuneteller's harp.

In that harbour of honey, wine, and bread in that angel enclave, we dug
For our entire lost fairy wisps, our ship's bell drowning soul's laughter.

Oh, I remember cold November days, till the dawn uncoiled and lifted up its anchor.
Like a unicorn's horn in mid-mild March through the red neon light and neon-blue air.
Shivering like a bird, like a skylark flying in frantic circles, still as a sphinx
Oh, and the hoofs of the rash that do all their curtsies in the shadows in candy waves.

Till we danced, the angels united, and we kissed by the fires that hissed in ruin.