Trash Prince Poems – Miles Coombe
June 28, 2020
HEAT
He is the residual ache in your soul
Maybe it is enough to anchor me
This heat makes me gasp for air
The days are dragging into one
Fuelled by careless whispers
Even the sun is yawning
Red behind his eyelids
He can’t remember why you abandoned him
Fading dust in the summer light
Stifling warmth slows everything down
Time crawling like a Sunday afternoon
Memories etched in pastel colours
The world keeps on coming in without asking
I feel like a ghost in this heat
Like melted glass under an indifferent sun
Just like the stories from your childhood
Flowers grow inside him
Please make it all mean something
The scorched ground is so hard
We are all alone in the blessed silence
Petals wilting in the solid air
These journeys take us far from home
You were just wishing for the end of pain
Bruised clouds gathering overhead
Some things can never be made right
There is change on the horizon
The air smells like rain
Pupils wide as the summer sky
Hands clasped in the sweat of early evening
Choking on our prayers
The very last rays of sun upon your face
Let’s build a blanket fort in the living room
Our blood will stain each other’s hands
Sometimes you will find it hard to keep going
But you will anyway
Watching the stars burn out on your way home
BLIGHT
At night we dream of birds on fire
Late nights with a touch of nostalgia
The ache of adolescence
The sound silence makes in a vacant house
At night we dream of road kill on a leash
And thin, crumbling windows
Repressed narrative arcs
Inadequate scrapings of memory
In daydreams we are the blood eaters
It tastes of foxgloves and bone marrow
Lingering on the lonely concrete
Starved of meaning, weakened in the sunlight
We paint over the mould on the wall
It looks as good as new
But the blight is still there underneath
Rotting
WHITE
The boy is clothed in feathers
Little white bird, freckles on his cheeks
Tender flesh showing old bruises
Demented from the mania of the thought of growing up
Ringlets of hair brushing his neck
Showing fresh scars with pride
He wears a skull like a crown
Nothing good will come of this
The land sends messages of hook and claw
Patron saint of youth and rage
He carries our sin into the wilderness
Obsessive prince of his very own playground
To save himself from the horrifying ordeal of being known
He steals the souls of lost children
This brazen vessel of murderous fixation
You are the only witness to his violent crimes
He is the Lord of dreams and unfulfilled prophecies
At night the full moon burns under flowers bathed in blood
In the place where the clouds end
His cries of loneliness keening into the dark
Second star to the right and straight on til morning
His is the land that borders your creeping sadness
He waits outside all the open windows
Praying on fabled stories told by damaged mothers
—
Many seasons have passed
The air grows thick with dust
The windows are now closed and he is all but forgotten
Entropic decay battles with numbing sameness
You have grown and yet he is still the same
Sick little bird, clothed in white feathers
Trapped in his own make believe
Forever