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.
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hephaestus, aflamethat 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. |
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.
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