Tag Archives: Life

your field of reeds

i don’t think i’d ever have been old enough
to be the equal of you in our younger days
to the fullness of all our summers i lived
i know you have tried to remember them all

and of course we could never have been forever
here merely for the term of our natural lives
the naïve hope was to simply not die
how’s not to reason why

for as long as my shadow’s here at your side
your regret will be a coma of dreaming
and that blanket of night will smother you
so that all you’ll feel is the pain of now

love is a beautiful hideous thing
i miss you my dear, and thank you for trying
if we could we’d kick the whole damn sky in
i’m nowhere forever and you’re haunted more
grief is a beautiful hideous thing
miss you my dear, and screw me for dying
but tomorrow things will work out somehow
you’ll smile again in the reeds at morningside

we thought we held all the keys didn’t we
to lock all the doors to mutual oblivion
but no matter how far and vain you wander
in this hall of echoes you’ll never find me

and of course you remain to remember now
how we railed at the stalking geist of death
though i wish i had not crumbled, dear
you should not yearn to have died with me

and you’re old enough now to be scared of forgetting
but the end, as we’ve seen, is a broad church
and the road there is an arduous song
so for now be resigned to the sunshine my dear (i won’t mind)

love is a beautiful hideous thing
miss you my dear, and screw me for flying
if we could we’d kick the whole damn sky in
i’m nowhere forever and joy will return
grief is a beautiful hideous thing
i miss you my dear, and thank you for crying
but tomorrow things will work out somehow
you’ll smile again in the sunshine at morningside

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

GUEST POST // Ghost Letter 53 by Mark Renney

I have managed to abandon the City yet again but there it is; the point that rankles, a sharp needle stuck in my side as I walk, the fact that I have done this before, that I am doing it again.

I rarely think about my former existence, but I remember now how my past life had also been filled with repetition. But the rituals then had been more intimate and my connection with the places I frequented much more deeply ingrained and that these places had been rife with memories.

I wonder, is this what I am running from, am I trying to forget, to not feel this deeper connection. Drawing to a halt, I turn away from the busy road and, gazing out across the open fields, I realise that, if so, then I have failed.

by MARK RENNEY
© All rights reserved 2020

expiration date (copeland can’t cope)

the oncologist called
said the tumour was benign
i returned to my laptop
an open tab beckoned me to proceed
looks like i’ll be transitioning
from mortal fear back to dull career then
but, damn, even if the tumour’s benign
why should i continue this drawn out
malignant metastasizing existence?
so i click ‘yes’ and proceed
to my merciful mail order death
by stoning and virus coroning
they ask for the expiry date and cvv
i type six six six and laugh

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

regret

heed the silence that follows
truer than any promise made
the sound and fury of a hidden life
you cannot dream this into submission

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

saoirse

at the beginning of time there was a girl
in a melamine bowl
she had no family, no friends
and was on the dole
she was sat there in a corn flake swirl
a milky, sugared doll
her belongings were mere odds and ends
oh, what a poor little soul!

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

at noonday’s predoom was a woman cold
in a gumball machine
for the merriment of boozers
in a stinky shebeen
she would shiver nude and candy bold
a pert and tart cuisine
a laughing stock even for losers
oh, buy her a tall glass of poteen!

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

at the end of all things there was a crone
in a bottle discarded
fighting her battles all over again
in weakness, unguarded
she inhaled a black wind through her bones
and all she’d once regarded
her last sigh was for the land of cockaigne
where life is ample tabled and lardered

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020