solus-atva

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A Short Prayer

Give me the strength

to swim above the tide.

Give me the courage

to let the current be my guide.

Let me speak the words

imbued with their true meaning.

Quell my anxious heart

always lost in its dreaming.

Let me feel worthy of love

in its abundance and delight.

Let our hair catch the stars

falling in the dark of the night.

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I open the door

and climb the creaking stars

into this empty space

where your scent still lingers in the air.

I trace your imprint on the pillow

where once we lay, entwined,

whispering sweet nothings

that painted colours in the dark.

I wander through the rooms you filled,

finding absence in each corner,

your mug beside the window,

our laughter mingling through its steam.

I touch the spines of every book

you gifted me,

hunting for your voice between the pages,

only to feel a shiver, cold as a knife,

slide down my spine.

Without your warmth, without you here,

I gather the echoes of our moments,

holding them close to my chest,

knowing that from space

now turned into absence

I can still look forward to abundance.

— Nick Burgoyne

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'…Let me gather the fragments of your heart, scattered like ash and stardust, falling slowly from the hush of a bruised sky. In the hollow of your chest I will place them, piece by piece, until they become a diamond, a heart that reflects every colour you buried beneath your ribs and forgot how to find…'

For you ❤️

- Nick Burgoyne Painted with gouache

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Let me hold you close

and lay you down into a sea of stars,

where your wounds still shimmer

against the dark tide.

Let me gather the fragments of your heart,

scattered like ash and stardust,

falling slowly

from the hush of a bruised sky.

In the hollow of your chest

I will place them,

piece by piece

until they become a diamond,

a heart that reflects every colour you

buried beneath your ribs

and forgot how to find.

Let me wash away the dust

until the gold beneath your skin

begins to shine again,

without polish,

but raw and real,

burnished by becoming.

I will untangle your hair,

strand by strand,

patient as moonlight

until it forgets the knots of sorrow,

until it learns to dance again

wild and free

like wind through the midnight trees.

Each poem I read is a scar

I long to kiss,

each stanza,

a step in the dark towards you.

I have seen the shadows

And I do not fear them.

Let me walk with you through every eclipse

until you remember,

that even in your darkest moments

you have always been made of light.

— Nick Burgoyne

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For you, for filling my life with art and love. ❤️️

— Nick Burgoyne Painted with gouache on mixed media paper. Inspired by René Lalique's 'The Kiss'.

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We sit in astral gardens looking upon the world, planting seeds with our dreams, hoping they will grow into flowers.

— Nick Burgoyne Art painted using gouache on mixed media paper.

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Circles

I am looking down into the well, at all the circles growing darker as I descend, feeling the humid air against my face and the lichen of the bricks against my fingertips.

I am searching for things that lie beneath the flesh, what I will find wading through the muck, for the creatures in the dark, the shapes that manifest when I close my eyes. My hands scrabble around in the inky shadows, grabbing heaps of living flesh slipping like oil between my fingers. My senses flare at the old truths I had neglected, circles heaped upon circles, those torn from my skin until I knew only the faintest outline of my body remained, etched onto the walls, contoured by eroded, rough lines. I am searching for the most perfect of forever imperfect circles, drawn and erased, broken and rejoined, drawn by my shaking hands. I see them in the celestial bow of the sky, within a sphere of music, casting dull shapes in the sheen of sunlight. Everything changes, everything returns, until the circle reaches the edge of the universe. The piercing ring of a bell echoes out forever, leaving behind a reminder of who I was, and gives me a signal to wake up and remember.

I scoop up water with my hands, holding within it the perfect circle of the sun. I lift it to my lips and drink in the light. Then, my body glowing, I open my dulled eyes to look upon the well and all I have left to linger in the dark. The wheel breaks and a new cycle can finally begin.

— Nick Burgoyne

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It feels empty in this room

without you here.

You are far away from me.

But when I look

I see your ghost

in the ripples on the sheets

where our limbs entwined,

in how the world embraces

the rosy light of dawn

as I held you close to me.

I watch how the morning sun

graces waking flowers

like kisses on your skin,

and dappling light on a stream

glimmers like your eyes.

I listen to the wind carrying music

like the sweet nothings we shared

in a language of our own.

I miss you like the sun

misses the moon,

or how the long night

surrenders to the dawn.

I want to put all my longing

in an envelope,

cast it to the wind

and watch it scatter like petals

over the endless sea,

but when I let go,

they return to me

and fill my chest,

where they grow a meadow

in the burrow

inside my shattered heart.

And I know in that moment,

that wherever you may be,

you are always, forever with me.

— Nick Burgoyne

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In the clouds that cover summer’s home,

through the halls and follies where gods roam,

and fairies hide in rococo illusions

wrapped in golden bands and ancient delusions,

like a tear lost in a tempestuous sea

a lonely painting stands out to me:

of a mother and daughter tending a fire

as if doing so will keep us safe from ire,

passing the torch down through the ages

swathed in earthen tones and shadowed pages,

stoking flames that will never perish,

glinting the frames that myths embellish,

it pulls curtains on fantasy to ground true meaning,

a reminder that even artists must wake up from their dreaming.

- Nick Burgoyne (originally intended for NaPoWrMo 2025 day 27, but finished late. Inspired by the painting Vestalinnen, by Jean Raoux, seen in the Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, Germany).

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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

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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

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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.)

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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