nobody reads in between the lines

or maybe everyone does

the day she removes her wig and stands

bare skulled for all to see the shroud of mud

her halo, her halo, he is four feet under, he is

not still, neither she, neither we

the ancestors who

fallow the earth, when heaven is closed

from their potential remains, beauty emerges

like a song setting the vibration in your pores

a string instrument without music

pushing back to the day before you

realized you were weeping uncontrolably

as you cycled along overgrown tow path

in search of blackberries, to stain the urge

a badger or a fox would do

something with color and freedom in its movement

take me, take me, I am not content or part

of this stifled world of pretend

I cannot even stitch straight

I see in the glassy eyes of the stuffed, pressed

hotly behind restraining glass, their silent

screaming visage

please let me become part of your make believe

I would live as Mr Fox did, beneath the earth

and brew my cups of magic there

as the irregularity of goodness atests

there is nothing worth waiting up all night for

not now you are broken, not now they are all

left, their footprints ash inside my mouth, a

late form of christening in Winter’s lament.

I miss you, the people whose faces I knew, part of me

part of nothing anymore, they are the last of my kind

what kind is that? When all was pinching and no more intact?

I am broken in ways, mosaic cannot even repair

there are chinks in my armor so raw, unpolished, without spit

sufficient to wipe the dread

they weep blood before I know they are there

no oil, nor prayer can save , no benediction

nor virgin kneeling in fecund earth with all the days

of her life ahead like fresh laundered sheets ready

for their slaying

those with eyes to the sky

they see not gods, I fear

but the winged parallel of our loss of mercy.

I am tired before I am awake

my eyes open to the sound of water

drowning is like the advent, it proceeds over a series of

days, as we attempt survival, urging ourselves to dress, button by

button, the tender details, crashing like hungry waves

against recalcient rock, what will bleed when it

is devoured? What will remain whole in spite?

Remembering your touch, electricity galvanizing

withered skin to longing, growing restless beneath

layers, your reach of me, the place no one finds

I dreamed of you, leaning over, a painting in motion,

your small hand

tethering me to the furnace of your eyes, a language

I couldn’t hold faith in, Je voulais tellement te croire

who is to say, you do not possess beneath your

candle light skin, the fur of ravenous wolves?

How to sustain faith? The thirsty plant, gaping curtain,

the light that gets through

falling on our faces as we watch dust particles

collect like lovers in ever shining quiet

whilst we grow old with the fatigue of loss,

its shroud a warmth against cold nights alone

thinking of the furvor of youth, its glossy coat

shaking off trouble like a lean legged hooker will

stand straight backed even in snow. Our tempest

for life, an appetite, whetting, scuttling blatently

down deserted roads, the roam of longing,

I tie my hair back, pinch my cheeks redder,

watch the violet play of day and night run

her unwashed glass through my eyes, leaving

a smudge of blood, a tinge of what’s to come,

the descend of love, as it bursts full and redolent

throbbing in our ears, like shells pressed tight

blocking out the stifle, hearing her thinning,

each year, a chink of life, apportioned into past

a transaction of dying in
silhouette, the boy swam

against the tide, his muscles straining, ever deepening

wade of escape, we all

keep to our tea stained hour

the rustling moment they were there and photographed

haltingly and aching behind inherited furniture

their eyes like mine, covered over with

old coin

sent to another realm, behind, stand behind

time and her exquisite fangs

drinking the lost salt of this land

her daughters

her sons

they grow weary of watching

and turning slow like dials

in dusk

their shape sharp

against the ochre

bleed of diminishing

sun

elongating until

their form is

altered ever

more.