New Poetry by David Ades

I Am Yours Forever

Even if you never speak of me again,
if my name never passes your lips,

you will not be rid of me:

I will be the genie in your bottle, 
contained within the hold of your silence.


- David Ades 2013


Turning Back After Turning Away

It’s a trick of the eye or sensibility: 
turn away and the place you thought you had reserved 
for yourself in this life, the place it had taken 

so many years to reach, vanishes.  
It isn’t that anyone else has taken it – it’s more 
that you were fooling yourself whilst everything around you

moved at different speeds in different directions,
whilst you let yourself forget that constancy 
was just a construct, a way to absolve anxiety.  

You remember that now and wish you didn’t.


- David Ades 2013


Waiting at the End of a Lit Fuse

Contentment is a kind of death.
Let us have a little, since we’re dying anyway,
a little break from our constant wrestling, 

a rest to stretch our bodies, ease our muscles.
Observe how we ask from others what we cannot give
ourselves, how we lean in, as if towards a secret.

Observe how we want to know  
only what does not confront us
with what we seek to deny, how we look again

to the mirror, how the mirror lies.


- David Ades 2013


David Ades is an Australian poet currently living in Pittsburgh.