so good to see you
smoke-eyed stranger in the night
with blood on your teeth
when you spark that talk
sly fruit bloom on sullen trees
starlings fall like snow
I remember you
burning sweet Ballachulish
heather by the lake
in a hotel room
shadowed by the Three Sisters
and scented orange
we hoped our extinct
volcano might come to life
in that flash of light
Atrocity is a wall of thorns artless
Bluebottles smashing against glass fall
Comatose to my window ledge making
Death their next great adventure
Escape to shit scented nirvanas
Filled with lost winged kin and divine
Garbage heaps piss-fountains free from
Human malevolence effervescent
Incandescence and decay so promising
Knowledge is an act of sabotage not
Limitless power but a weapon
Mother warned me about the elitist
Noah and his treachery for not
One soul is more holy than another
Paradise is an orange wasteland where
Quicksand and alligators devour
Revolutionaries with their fiery
Socks and fondness for the insignificant
Turtle neck sweaters may be aesthetically
Unpleasing but they conceal the frogs in
Virtuous throats destined to cause alarm on
Wet Wednesdays when there are no boats
Xpected but gin is being served at Erith
Yacht club as waves lap and lightening
Zaps the three wise monkeys at the door.
You come and go with the darkness.
I never see you leave but after snowfall
I see your footprints across the lawn.
You sleep alone at night in the shadows
under my exhaustion, a luminescence.
You keep one golden eye open
just in case I forget myself.
Your eye seeps around my raw edges
like cyanide, like a cloud of mustard gas,
like radiation in the house of the apocalypse.
I’m sealing myself in with duct tape,
pulling down blinds, wearing dark glasses;
a hermit with only Transcendental Meditation
and a half-empty glass for company.
If only you were a little kinder,
I would welcome you with my blood.
Go and close the door.
Maybe inside you’ll find another
woman in a secret room,
the one who once loved you
naked with hair as long as winter.
Go and close the door.
Maybe you’ll find gold
dust behind the revolving book case,
gilding the spider who weaves
your future from the uneaten
crusts you leave on your plate.
Go and close the door.
Keep out the fandango wind
or it may dance
your dreams to smithereens.
Go and close the door.
Maybe something high-rise
will grow in the sour air.
Your house will become a castle
with log fires dazzling
in caramel halls.
You are nothing but a clatter of bones in a dressing gown
coughing up phlegm over our breakfast table.
You are nothing but a slither of liver, lungs, kidneys, brain,
faithless heart pumping white crimson around and around.
You are nothing but a hundred billion neurons firing arrow
thoughts about yourself into a mist of grey.
You stab the butter knife in the marmalade.
I want to stab it in your eye, see your ego bleed out.
Suddenly you look at me and describe a dream
you had about building a house from Plasticine.
As you turn your face and smile, morning sunbeams
glow just below the curve of your cheek
bone, the place I kiss before we go to sleep
that tastes so deliciously of tangerine.
we gather at the edge
white feathers falling
in the dark
staring into the void
we are alone
the children wave purple lightsabers
kitted out in knitted hats
adorned with pom-poms
there’s a sense of urgency
mother and child move quickly
the wrong direction
teenagers pace and stiffen into poses
words fade with the wind
the burning of wood
the Ivory Tower
the crackling of flames
taking hold the awe
exploding the shock
we gasp smoke
sparks rise shimmering bat-wings
it is beautiful
the stars weep green roses
silver snakes carved
in the perfect dark
a father thin and tired
carries his daughter
to the edge
holds tiny pink hands
in huge gloved fists
nuclear dots burn
in the emptiness
we hold the fire
and only the wind
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020 to all my friends and supporters!
December morning
slivers sky through my opening
death in slow motion
