John E Marks

Made in England. Live in Manchester. Previously lived in Harrow, Aylesbury, Willesden Green, Iver Heath, Lancaster. Married to Martina, an Irish woman. Father of five and grandfather of four delightful children. Enjoy reading, snooker, cricket, travelling, stout, gin, swimming, walking my dog (Woody, collie-spaniel cross, see above). Believe in ghosts, experienced the supernatural twice. Like canals and tow paths. Favourite city - joint winners London, Manchester & Dublin.

The Unsaid

Wind cuts through this January night

Slices like a knife through my meagre clothes.

Signs on the road hidden by an iron fog

The cry of the wind is all in vain

Nothing is the same.

I kiss you across this black hole in time.

In the old be-jewelled spider-webbed

Way we kissed tender to kiss long,

Frost-filled graveyard-remains

For the happily insane, a song.

Yew trees shadow against the moon.

No trembling now from scattered runes

Eviscerated by all that time can do to human blood,

And hearts and lips and eyes and brains

In earth-infected graves there is no point in lies

No pretended disguise.

I had once kissed you on a night like this.

Held you close. Toasted you with my eyes.

Shared an ancient consciousness of what it is

To be a woman, to be a man.

Trapped by mortality:

Nothing prepares us for this emptiness.

I stand alone in this freezing unghosted space

My insides squirming like a snake

As I try to make out a palimpsest of names and dates:

Unsoaked in perfume, unattended by lips like raspberries;

Tears do not leave my frost-whitened eyes

There is no disguise….