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Johnny Halton


an open letter to the girls of my youth

drunk in an empty house
that is not mine, the fire
has died out, and the
leaves again
fallen.

silence breathes perspective
and, pouring my fifth whiskey
i toast all the old loves of youth
gentle & rich with light
who never wanted
what little i had
to offer.

the weeds have grown thick
and i no longer need
what i built in you
to the sad heights
of my own
romance.

if ever i railed against you,
ruined with lager
& bitterness

i hope you understand
i was only railing
at myself.

most importantly of all:
i never hated you.

i agreed with you.

i was a petty and jealous boy
playing a man’s game, and
it's best that we never
touched or kissed
or loved.

i see now what
i was blind to at sixteen:
that beauty must be
unconditional, that
love must be self-
evident.

that sometimes
the best thing
for a man is
agony.

these dismal nights we cannot un-live

my dreams
are still plagued
by the Pontcanna
whore-house
where,
hazy with gin,
i spent the last
of my pay cheque
on forty-five minutes
with a skinny redhead
named Sandra
and the way she
looked at me
with her sad
blue eyes
and told me
with all the music
of broken glass;
anything
goes except
kissing.


Picture

hephaestus, aflame

that night on the sand
the snow roared its way
through the city; we were
alone.

as light danced across the waves;
your lips, stained with red
met mine, in the haze
of wine & wind.

a soft flash of luck
& grace never seen
by this scarred,
twisted face.

in another city,
another world,
another lifetime,
we might have made it.

but the vines have grown heavy
and all my sparrows were
born in broken nests.

eyes closed, hardly awake
i felt your tipsy lips smile
against mine
and thought,
this is it.

this is what
will finish
me.

the anti-depressants, the
bourbon, the razor, the
valium, these are
truly nothing

compared to the girl
you can't stop
loving.

babybird

the night
you let me
see the
wounds

i held you
like the dying
robin

you kept
in a shoebox
at 14.

all warmth &
waiting;

mindless of
recompense.

roses & the sky

deep calls to deep,
sing the roses that sleep
in gardens where the gates
rise high

gazing sunward they sway
as the earth steals away
dreams of growing to the
great wide sky.

sings the sky; i pray
we could meet someday
but we’re each anchored
to our own sad sea

though my light breathes life
through your warm green veins
you could never fall in love
with me.
Picture

Johnny Halton's profile
​
Go to page 2 of Johnny Halton's Poetry

the moon

when she writes
i think of the moon.

the way it casts no light,
instead reflecting stolen sun
when the world is too tired
to notice the theft.

though she is right;
i’m an ugly man, and
entirely unconcerned
by that fact.

and if the knife
wants to call the heart a killer
no sense can
prevent it.

but she did get
one thing
wrong.

i don’t hate
love.

only those
who call it a
commodity.

Autumn

early this morning
in a cracked and dusty mirror
i saw my father's face
for the strange flash
of a moment.

the same large, clumsy nose
the same dark eyes
the same hairline, fading
like used love.

i studied that absurd reflection
shirtless and hungover,
and wondered with a grin
what it must take
to love this hairy
ugly thing.

stroking my six-day beard
with the same stubby, calloused
fingers as him; made to graze
steel guitar strings
rather than
hearts.

and i must concede
i never thought about it much,
but perhaps we are more alike
than i'd considered;

i'll always remember what he told me,
drunk with cheap champagne
on his 50th birthday --

son, if i could do it all again
i would change almost
everything.


​
Picture
Go to page 2 of Johnny Halton's Poetry

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