His Notebooks (Poetry)

We have gone through all his notebooks
we have squeezed the paper dry
of those little dregs he left us
that are fading by and by

All those old ideas and doodles
in the margins of his mind
jotted here like small reminders
of the promise never signed

There is love and hate and cruelty
accusations and remorse
there are passages of beauty
where the muse resumes her course

There are thoughts too existential
for the lover to explain
way too deep inside the longing
and too coloured-in by pain

Each a diary formed as memo
the long shorthand of his life
for the muse was both the mistress
and the ever-nagging wife

while he stripped his body naked
on smooth pages of desire
and walked willingly on embers
tossing words into the fire

Read the humour and the anger
the opinions that provoke
the predictions hardly hidden
in religion’s wicked joke

too obscure for unbelievers
truth survives the poisoned flood
passion’s wine betrayed by water
yet we taste the tang of blood