Old friend, I have forgotten the ocean
Sailing restless on my fidgeting boat
Keen blue makes my meek blue weep
Sky is an atrocity, descending all night

The unsightly faces of men
Become my only comfort
As I lull myself to sleep
Counting down the stars
Crawling nearer, nearer

Do not come to me to comfort
I am strange and I can say nothing
I can say nothing as might soothe
Your electrical worry or doubts

I am a chocked word, suddenly
Teary. The lip quivers, the eye
Crinkles, and hands begin to move
To try and hide a thousand things

I am shuffle, snort, stumbled
Through the hard-edged streets
Shadows curve upon me, but
Move unstopped nonetheless

Do not stop, stare, ponder kindly
I may break to a hundred bits
Of sordid limb and red, I may crumple,
May thin, I may really begin to weep.

The madman watches from the pores of the city
Housed tightly like a life in the confines of chest
Sky howls and lures it outwards, bulbous and beating
The windowsills loosen their grips, hang pitiful
On the precipice, as a blind disquiet looms
Silence yawns, and then chaos sneezes
Opening wide the madman's heart
Then, a big rumble wakes the streets as he prepares for riot
People-pupils jig in their pools
Exuberant at the disturbed show
Almost, it seems, that a thousand past sunsets
Might flip over the world
And walk unleashed as man upon man
As man among men in song has done

Almost, but the moment sags again
And the sordid stillness bars everything-

Have you yet heard the painting
That the baker's daughter yester sold
That bears the bones of a day of old:

It dragged on streets, nearly gratting
The stillness that turned all eyes above
The farmer gave the farmboy a shove

And home he racing fled to tell
A war had come and it called for fight
Out skipped children bleating and bright

So swirled a red in sky's blue dell
And keen blew ancient horns of doom
As upon a frothing dark then loomed

The battle in rows lifted its heads
And far was heard the whistle of sword
As forth in silver might the horde

Came dancing right to our door-beds
For hours did bold a circus ring
Of cling, clang, and clatter and ring

And then, fair pilgrim, woke a slip
A stumble in storm's slim discipline
And down went warriors one by one

Quick passion gripped on sky's red lip
And sank a sinking sweet defeat
As we welcomed home the rain's bare feet

Quick, since home
Peeps in view
The oscillations
Become familiar
The feeling
Of conclusion
Fills the body

I am watching
The rear view eyes
Deep in scrutiny
The poor sky shuffles
Its feet, cloaks
Itself

Swift tides move
And the laces of the road
Move with them
I fidget on my seat
Hear the violent music
Rise behind us

Quick, now, the storm
Is on its way
Soon, the world
Will start its run
Trees are looming
Already, and
The door to home
***** like a wing

Stop, now, stop and
Rush through
Bar the windows,
Blind them, shake
The fireplace awake
And, little fly, bake
Your biscuits and read
Your books, till the edge
Of day breaks
And clever dust
Lulls you to sleep

Quick, quick, quick.

But the rear-view eyes
Leap upon me
Precise as leapords,
Prying, plying
With sharp disquiet
Cold rain tusks
And I speed
Reckless forward.

I begin to end where the song begins
Little rain plays the earth, birds learn
Little facets light to mimic the sea
The crumpled sheet of the sky
Seems to sink slowly upon my land
The fortress offers a generous view
But my people are busy in their work
And I am busy in the watching

Sweet. Sweet. It is a stumbling
Sweetheart, walked up through the night
I break down, I break down altogether,
I stutter as lightening within the clouds
And the thunder of my disquiet
Pounds against the sun. Everything
Everything, everything incites me
To climb up the watchtowers, invites me
To join a hand onto hand, and
Scream myself open to the world

White as a sordid awakening
Hollow, shallow, swallows
Me like an aged cavern

When mother comes in
She is scared to find me
Pale and blue

The window is a hole
Curtains like bedraggled women
Clutch at themselves

She stumbles through a gathering
Of talkative charcoal
And pastel on the floor

Scattered and sallow
Turpentine twists in sweet sashes
Round and round her neck

She calls, wavering already
Diving obliquely through the sea
She reaches for me on the mattress

In the bookshelf,
Behind easels,  pallete
Beneath the bridge of the table

A thousand gales of hues blow
Ruffling a thousand shadows
Thousand murmurs decieve her

Into breathing relief.
I see her heart a flickering flame:
Waves of my deathlessness

Shove her around.
Mother, mother, come closer
I call from the lean wooden

Parapet of the canvas
I dance her about in the sky
Stroke the hair, as

She cries, holding my solidity
Thin, bony; her hands shake
Like factory floors

Rancid blooms of a stubborn faith
Scotch her oak-brown skin
And all the walls watch our show

Disintegration occurs
As she searches for me
Kicking clatter and dust around

I a pebble in the pebbles of me
She picks, examines, throws
Picks examines, throws

All while tumbling
Into into into the stench
Of my keen blue decay

Brushstroke, word, scream and plea
She takes all the noise along
Into the beautiful world

Gaunt, I crawl clawing out
I am monster now
And she is painted.