John Gerard Fagan

the ones left behind

I read that no one really dies we are just energy and energy doesn’t go anywhere can ’t go anywhere just transferred into different forms I read that over and over every night for a month for a weak taste of comfort I sometimes got the train to our old place and walked that familiar route past the supermarket we went every Sunday past the donuts shop past takoyaki street food stall I stood outside and took in the scent of what was what would never be again and when I finally got back to my new place alone all I wanted was to slip into greying dreams about you about us and I didn’t want to wake didn’t ever want to wake and still I live only for remembering there is no cure no moving on no someone else there is there was only you.

returning home after seven years abroad

back in Glasgow a skin of myself still in Japan crawling around old memories stretching over the worst years and the silent lonely hours beating dust my mind sinks 5,763 miles into a former life as days, weeks, months keep on rolling until soon all will be forgotten the store where those memories lie will one day close as will the rest of me as will we all.

wind-picked sky

like us, this land was once alive saltless waters vast valleys of green the old fire beneath the trenches sang its ending night after night in the silent grey of winter and the ground she trembled those who carried the flames lay under bullets and smoke and could not hear the wind the skin of frost that covered the ground never melted she opened everything that ever was ever could be gone death breathed and took all we listen to that faded echo the last to hear the last to return, my son to the rot beyond repair and here we shall live out the last of our days.

waiting on waiting

airports put me in a trancelike state as if I’m just returning from another 27 hour journey from Tokyo as if I’m still split between two worlds but my flying days are over and I’m only here to pick up another my mind still lingers in the past of dreams long dead and dying yet here I stand same Glasgow same airport and changed still falling in that habitual trance never to escape.