Johnny Halton - 2

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my friend, the manic depressive

my therapist told me that i should write you a letter.
i wanted to share something real,
maybe something nostalgic about
those summers of beer and roses
 
but all i could think of
is the way your heavy eyes used to burn
for the love of a god
in whom you no longer believe.
 
tonight, let us harbour no illusions.
i am not a poet; merely a drunkard
with a fountain pen and time to kill.
 
i know that some days
we are like bonfires that forgot
how to burn, that some nights
the emptiness becomes so great
that even the crows fly weeping.
 
i know we had an agreement
but there are only so many ways
to talk to a god
that never talks back.
 
now, as you sleep in another city
a child, smiling, hands me a white feather,
night falls upon the ocean, waves reach for
the city like fingers for the bottle, there are nights
when i can hardly stand
with a head full of bluejays
and a heart full of
bad ideas.
 
and if there is such a thing as love
it won't be found in the whiskey bottle
there will be no light in the nicotine and valium
no matter how adept they are
at keeping the wolves
at bay.
 
i know that some days,
fuck it -- most days
rising from the bedsheets to square up to an unfair world
is like looking for a needle
in a stack of broken bones
 
but if i could only bring my heart to scream
as loud as your condition
we could make kites out of vacancy
and wait for the wind, prevailing
from the days when we knew
what it was to be alive.
 
i know it hurts beyond imagination
but sun is good for scars,
and one day,
like a phoenix rising from slumber
we will set traps for the tigers
disregard these bitter and ageless ghosts
like dropping an anchor without
the chain.
 
there will come a day
when you understand:
those mornings of blood stained towels
and the ghosts in cider cans
will be worth it; that i will be there
through the nights of broken song
to hold your heart in my weathered hands
like an unlit candle
dreaming of flame.
 
i wanted to write you a letter,
because you understand better than
anyone i know:
 
ink
is kinder than
speech
 
as the bluejays lift up their colour
forever dreaming of
love.

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​our father

when i was seventeen,
i was arrested for the first time.

the cops told me they understood,
just doing their job, they were sorry,
as if they knew the first thing about suicide,
as if they understood the obscenity
of their sirens
screaming towards my failed departure
with all the music of broken glass.

i would hate them,
but that stream has run dry
with all the memoirs
engraved in my bones.

those days i was so scared,
i went to church to confess
that i was an atheist.

weeping in the pews, my priest
not knowing what to do
but offer me holy water.

“no thanks, father. i never touch the stuff.”

eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.

i put my ear to the sky
til i was fluent in disappointment
put my nose to the books
til the sun rose, laughing;

and i realised that if heaven exists
it’s in the smile of the girl
who kissed my scarred arms like shattered Christmas decorations
and helped me to remember
that it’s okay not to be okay

that there may be a use for these nights
of pizza-box ashtrays and snorting speed at 6am
with sleep blooming in the shadows
and crucifixion singing in our blood.

if we are empty
then we are blessed,
not defined by our absence but by all
that we have yet to hold.

we are birds that taught
each other to fly
armed with typewriter ribbons and regret,
we are not the boys our fathers wanted
nor the girls our mothers raised.

eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.

honey,
this door only opens from
the outside.

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