solus-atva

[solus-atva]

I sit in the last boat leaving,

tied to the shore

watch dying lights on a sea

abandoned by moonlight.

As my withered hands hold the rope,

the shadows of boats disappear over the horizon.

Everyone has gone long before me,

to map out their worlds,

draw new coastlines,

and find their bounty.

Yet, there’s me,

tangled in roots,

buried alive deep in the soil,

lingering with pallid ghosts,

abandoned in crumbling villages.

Candles extinguish one by one

until the last bell chimes its mournful howl.

And then

with a last breath

cupped in fearful hands

and eyes glazed with dust

I untie the knots with shaking fingers

and let go.

The boat creaks with protest,

the water sings a sanguine melody,

and finally

I sail into the endless sea

until space drapes over my shoulders

lifts up my hands

and I draw out new frontiers in starlight.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Some days songs wear me down,

but the silence is too hard to endure.

The melodies swell and grow heavy,

words tear and fall like confetti

and rain down on me.

Some days the sun is too bright

but the darkness hides things I don’t want to see.

Lightning strikes the clocks inside the towers,

and ice covers the silent hours

that devour me.

Some days poems break my heart

But they dull the ache between my bones

I trace your shape in the moonlight,

press flowers on the words you write,

and hold them close to me.

Some days I miss you too much,

and time slips through my fingers…

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

I’m trying to capture a feeling, one of sinking through a moon made of glass. I close my eyes and feel myself floating amongst waves. The currents are a warm embrace, and their ebb like a loving whisper rolling on my skin. It’s a space where I can let go, knowing that no matter how deep I sink, I will never fall, where I may be alone, but I am never lost.

It feels like I spend a lifetime trying to desiccate and flatten feelings into shape and colour. Each time, they slip through my grasp. My lines on the page are like clumsily spoken words, the meanings too rigid, their combination too elusive. But the more I try, the more it forms a mosaic inching towards the truth. Maybe with trying to colour so many variations, decimals of degrees, can I begin to reveal myself in some small way, as a single flower can hint at a whole meadow. Maybe others will know who I am, and who I was. It’s something that drives me to keep creating: to make that lifetime’s worth of work that might begin to give shape to this winding journey, to define me long after I have gone.

- Nick Burgoyne (Painting is gouache on mixed media paper.)

[solus-atva]

Some days aren't made for poetry.

How could it be?

I try to let my mind wander.

On a bus, I pass blossoming trees with petals

looking like crotchets to a million romantic songs.

The sunbaked sandstone releases a haze

like a sigh held through the winter.

So many sheep graze on a hill

they look like fog rolling along the landscape.

The world sings. It dances in a whirl of colour,

but I just don't see it.

A man on a phone holds up a queue,

an airport fills with thousands of stories,

Night falls while I'm in the sky,

tempting me with shimmering stars.

But I stay in a daydream

as I ride the train to you.

And then, when I finally reach your arms,

will it be a day for poetry,

and we will write it together.

- Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Occassionally-ocasionally-occasionally.

Damn it.

I bash the backspace,

scream at the screen

Too many ‘c’s like I’m coughing, too many ‘s’s like I’m sighing.

I still spell that word wrong

three books and many stories on.

How many years have I been making the same mistakes?

Growing older, but never learning,

falling into the same traps,

hurting but never healing,

words falling apart

until they no longer have meaning.

It occured-occurred! to me 

We expect so much perfection

from people only trying to express themselves.

In a place where one tiny mispell-misspel-misspelling!!!

can change a mind,

can make a person think differently of you,

question your abilities.

I google basic words to confirm their meaning

like a child learning for the first time.

Is it a lack of trust in myself?

Reminisce (/ˌrɛmɪˈnɪs/) verb. Indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events.

Did it always mean enjoyable?

Or did I see it as just remembering things?

When did these paralell-parallel-paraidontcareanymore.

Deep breath.

When did these paths part?

and the words mutate in my mind?

The manuscript exhales

and scatters its words like a storm,

dripping from my fingers

in messy blotches

back onto the page.

— Nick Burgoyne (for NaPoWrMo 2025 day 10)

[solus-atva]

I sit here with a cup of tea,

close my eyes and slowly breath,

I will the steam to clear the grime,

that clogs my mind and stunts my rhyme.

Ask a cuckoo to call me from my sleep,

and save me from the mission creep,

of a modern world blurred with studded jewels,

reflecting fractured endless unfit rules.

I only want a simple life,

with my love, make art and write,

happiness in life's tiny pleasures,

build a shrine to nature's treasures,

sip tea by a verdant streamm

until the stars spell out our dreams,

and hold your hand into the night,

and breath until the morning light.

— Nick Burgoyne (for NaPoWrMo 2025 day 6)

[solus-atva]

As a door closes

in the cavern of my heart

I wonder about all that is lost,

the stories never told,

the dust swept away,

and I reminisce

through hazy memory,

like a photograph bleaching in the sun,

through the increasing blur of childhood

and a world half-remembered

a story never written,

and I realise it’s strange to me

how a life’s worth of love, suffering

and everything in between

can be reduced to a few lines,

a five minute summary,

words cherry-picked,

polished and purged,

untangled and clean,

unsaid trauma,

collective amnesia,

so I dig deep for hidden truths,

the trail of my ancestors before me,

their hardships and scars

now buried in the story in my shape

and I thank them

for all they have given me,

for letting me live.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Lift me up out of the past, and fly on wings of starlit glass, to where colours form celestial streams, carrying stars to our hopes and dreams.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Alpha Mensae is thirty-three light years away.

The day I met you in Berlin

I was seeing light from the star

emitted from the moment you were born.

It took the same time to reach us.

and when I first looked into your eyes,

you were shining in its radiance.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

When I was young I could only whisper

against a world that would never listen,

in the pelting rain I now burn inside,

a sturdy rock against the crashing tide,

as time wears on my skin has hardened

into bark, a tree, inside a garden,

I’ll stand up to the frowns and ashen faces,

the shattering bones and fallen graces,

I can change the world like clanging bells

ringing people out of their dream-like spells,

I’ll sow fields with flowers of our kindness,

grow it into a forest with roots that bind us,

then be a mountain against the thunder,

forming rivers to quench our hunger,

i’ve been through too much now to burn out gently,

let the wick snuff out with no friend or sentry,

although my wax is mottled with scars,

I’ll burn as brightly as the stars.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Lift me up into the night,

high above the world,

where your eyes shine bright as stars,

and our bodies entwine with the heavens,

where our lips create new constellations,

And silver chalices pour starlight on our forms,

I hold onto the echoes of your embrace,

and wait for night to come again.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Ten-Thousand Birds Sing

There was a child who lost his voice

without warning and without his choice,

as the opaque of winter transforms into spring

he could only hear ten-thousand birds sing.

Pulling every last brick from the fireplace,

embers quenched by the tears from his face,

in the soot and the knots is an old antique box

and he fumbles with the latches and rusted old locks,

he opens it up to find a childish thing,

a dull imitation old wedding ring.

Feeling a chill deep inside his bones,

he lifts up his gaze to the cracks in the stones,

he sees listless bodies with hearts full of holes,

a world of isolated and wandering souls,

lonely ghosts burdened with their sins,

trapped under the shimmering of their skin.

The grandfather clock strikes upon the hour,

the empty nursery wails inside the tower,

where portraits frown from the past to the present

beneath chiming bells calling out for repentance

for the midnight lie scratching deep inside,

exhuming the bones of his lost pride.

What frightening creature returns to the mirror,

reflection sinking, eyes torn out with fear,

he tries to sleep but his feelings are cheap,

he cries out in the orchard where devils will weep,

‘Don’t make me regret, I’ll befriend my sorrow,

let me embrace the sunrise on the morrow.’

Only they couldn’t see and or ever believe

That ten-thousand birds weren't singing for them.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Howl

I run upon a road of fractured bones

black wings pressed upon my eyes

heavy steps turning to ash

to choke the fog behind me

I fall through the trees

down into the orchard where lost souls grieve

where birds no longer sing

where only ghosts whisper my name.

I fall to my knees

look up to the empty sky

and let tears drip between my fingers

like burning stars

mourned by tortured lips

ready to burst

I tear open my rib cage

and howl at the sky

at the whole world

where everyone is a liar

where spider webs catch moonlight

and spin it into dust

to cloak my splintered frame

a howl that roars like thunder

that will steal cursed hearts

on the weeping wind

and spill their blood on my feet

it sinks to embrace the earth

and grows thorns to lace my wounds

until only scars remain

as scripture for the dead

I will brush the leaves from my eyes

remove the mask of stone

rise as tall as the trees

until I am born once again.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

In fierce dreams of violet shores,

In mountains where spirits sleep,

I walk in valleys of hesitant verses,

Where we will rise as colours of the sun,

To find our voices once again.

— Nick Burgoyne (from novel The Colours of the Sun)

[solus-atva]

Watch the Stars

As the sun settles down

to his bed beneath the sky

It's too late to share what I'm thinking.

For your eyes are on the night,

watching ships floating in the glow

of the radiant constellations.

It's a gallery open to all

curated by the sighing moon

thinking how much

she could have charged for our visit.

And see the faces of the world

cast in brittle specks of light

fused into the image of those you love.

As our eyes burn up and fade away

and scatter across time

we are bigger than infinity

and our thoughts travel with it across the universe.

In the shining in your eyes

I see fields of crimson gold

with silver mercury seas

and melting florid skies.

And across these flooded plains

I see shoots tied with blue ribbons

picked off by lost phantoms with lost faces.

And as the minstrel tunes his guitar

we sit back and silently watch the stars,

and when it's over and he slips away

silence consumes us,

there's nothing to do but

Sit here and watch the stars.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Winterbird

I am the winterbird

hanging on to this old tattered dream

that never flies away.

You are the only bird

running away for that setting sun

you watched every day.

And as I pack my things into a bag,

I see scratched on the wall, the words

'Never forget your name in this world.'

I am the winterbird

holding my breath in the thinning air,

choking away the sound.

We are the only birds,

life starts again with a tattered seed

buried underground.

And as we silently watch the swaying door,

our blood, pumping through our hearts says

'Never forget your name in this world.’

I can't live anymore in this haunted place,

the ghosts outside the evil inside,

caught between the living and the alive.

I am.

I am the winterbird

searching for you through the smoking streets,

where silhouettes look the same.

And as eyes pierce through high wooden boards,

words at the back of my mind read

the names of all we've lost,

the names of all we’ve lost,

the names of all we’ve lost in this world.

— Nick Burgoyne

[solus-atva]

Paper Rose

This paper rose that you gave me,

fashioned and formed it opens half-bloom,

it smells of your perfume,

when all has wilted and falls away like dreams,

I ask: what made you think of me,

when you cut that rose out of your paper heart?

This paper rose that you gave me,

I lost in a sea of flowers,

and I searched for hours

for the one that holds no nectar,

so I ask: what made you think of me

when you cut that rose out of your paper heart?

This paper rose that you gave me,

you held out on an ink-stained napkin,

sliced the pulp from your skin,

and let it fall on the open canvas,

so I ask: what made you think of me,

when you cut that rose out of your paper heart?

— Nick Burgoyne