Lemon dose

Sniff your blues away

in the electric evening light

Burst gold all over the sky again

like every other night of late

There’s not much 

music in it left

Give me a sky of muted grey 

& distant television noise

Say to me again you love me

or did before you lost me

Beneath the crescent moon

by the jetty

When the clouds blocked 

the sun & other stars from view

Before it rained,

we were surrounded by little plastic cups of red wine. After the rain stopped, we gathered our things and ran. The fundamentals of lived experience are such that one cannot do without speculative metaphysics, the very fumes of grace. Also laudanum. Also green fairy. Also bohemian nights by the cathedral doused in burnt orange light. In the past, people thought the world was filled with magic. All the moths and tiny butterflies, the little flowers, the weirdness of trees. After cleverness, sense is overrated. Emerges from the mists of time like a hobgoblin, then scuttles off again, leaving us fearful in its absence. “Simon is a fatuous pauper.” What was it yesterday you were telling me that I was? Also, why do you look over at me like that lately so that when you leave I’ve felt forced to look back and stare a while after you’ve gone? And what is it about the absolute particularity of the way two people look at each other that leaves these inexplicably filigreed little bonds?

Simon Ravenscroft has published poems recently, or will soon, in Osmosis Press, The Inflectionist Review, The Penn Review, Heavy Feather Review, Atrium, Apocalypse Confidential, Full House Literary, ē·rā/tiō, and other places. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, and his website is: simonravenscroft.haus