Another Side of Andy McKinlay

A stoic softness
Fresh playful lightning
In your eyes.
You tiptoe streets
Like an absorbed child
Excited by the dangers
Of noise, laughter and girls.

Rooms of books
A history of visions
Dirty smokestacked past
And a life of jagged rhythms,
Mind wrapped around
Beauty’s hidden curves
And the sky’s shapeless puzzles

‘British women are fucked up’
No sense in chasing warmth
Where there are only icicles
No sense in combing back
Your weaknesses to impress
All those loose naked shadows.

Lonely old struggle
Keep the ghosts tied up
Keep the monstrous wind
From your face
True warriors know true gentleness
A muscle that cannot be strengthened
Only shaped in the lengths of darkness.