You have the wary crackle
Of radio in war time
Uncertain of whom listens, and
Whom exactly speaks
In formal pronunciations
Desperate and resigned
As slowly burning ships
What do you recommend
For half-life —neither exactly
Celebration, nor lament
Mostly, perhaps
At resolve’s inordinate delay
A smirk, exasperated
With brown sugar and cinnamon
Baby’s breath, aspidistra, nectarines
Gone overripe —soft
As waning summer—
For the intoxicating scent
Arranged in a chimera
Of cellophane as nauseating as breaking glass
Well, we all have something to sell
The static hard dismay
Just perhaps not quite
Drunk as wilted flowers
Pretty but
The stain indelible
You say
morning people
aver the sun
spilt homilies from
hands bent to dismiss
for too long
I refuse to let things pass
jealousies, an arc weld heat
the bronze, once globulous and molten
rigid in that deceptive, ugly shape
of desert rivers
I will lay here
for a thousand years
inconsolate as sand
until I almost evaporate
still, that mica glint
when you pass and
almost catch my eye
Is
as bright as drowning
once again
The rumours have you, anger brilliant
At my peril, I of course misdoubt
Rain falls like wolves
Chasing lithe bare earth
In gouged ochre
Upraised in spirals
There is a smell of rags and cans
Of death and lightning
As if the carcass, ripe for burning, summoned storms
We cross in the weft, to a greased unconsciousness
Hollow where the water
Flows through mouths like fishes
A jar of reeds to catch
A kind of stillness
At last you come
Out of a yellow evening
Leeches bright on your skin
Offering in swollen fists
Broken pomegranates
Not for me, not, for me
A cattle stink
The dragonflies drone out
A passing train
i have come to watch you drown, not catch a fish
Hungering
For the reassurance of your face
Jaw thrust forward, a monstering
Marionetted palsy
Of strings and pinions
Inexpertly manipulated
I met you once
In another world
Ate a stale biscuit
Threw it up again
The sky in soot and butter
Curlicues and approbations
When I was a dog, for a while
Glass house, all lies, no windows
Barked at the moon
At her silver mockery
Barked again, in the dark
When she was gone
Stars like tears
The poet said
But I was just a dog
Alone and
Not done howling
The wound is sunset
volcanic glass
the sea
between the cradle
in the lee
a swell
stretched in a glimpsed hiatus
The cigarette burn you left
still brightly watching
from the harbour
of my chest
A ship with nowhere
but this destination
You said sorry, how you slumped
burnt copper dreaming slept
the way old lighthouses do
The fabric holing
with that mesmer’s grace
Spilling ash and flickered thoughts
the glare clenched in the spasm of your fist
gone wave break lax
Afterwards
for salve a sting, the glassy shine
of long past knotted healing
The grain of sand
in the isthmus of your eye
all that remains
Watchful
in a different glass
(still wide awake)
Of the beach I dreamed
I thought I saw
In the dulled cement
Of your sink
The reflected ire
Of death’s autumn moon
The fading red
Of haloed leaves, and last summer’s fires
As if the light
Had slowed to a dirge
But, your windows were opaque
Rippled glass, an upraised sea
The spilled chalk of erosion’s residues
Just me, and a hand-sized moth
Tenaciously still, against a drunken tide
Knowing, I am almost dead
While you disdain
Our silent worshipping
Today I will forgo my mundane raptures
Just to say
Torn by duty
Worn by care
Daubed in blue and yellow
By the welts of savage and grace-full arts
This constellation, needle marked
I am lost in wonder
By the way with all such wounds
It still holds me
