No ceremony
Or invention
Convention
Ever stagnant

You, foul Country
Are my skin
You are not tunic
Not shalwar

Not the shame
With which I
Stiffle my chest
Not love

Fleeting,
Fumbling, flapping
Forced to sit
And forced to flee

Your tongue burns
As a curse
On my tongue
Your hands

Are *****
With my guilt
Your crime
Was me

Your tears seep
In pillow and they
Weep all night
On my face

There is no grief
In me to spare
You bring with you
Everything hot

You beat
As a breathing
Heart of fire
Your feet

Are defiant
Stained with a Henna
That is red as souls
Your wounds

Are flowers on my
Palms, your laments
****** in my wrists
In beauty, I

Return to you
You, the grotesque
Soil of my sprout
Your sins my scars

Your songs my scars
Your violent dances
Alive as tulips
And the love

That you make
Is borne of silence
Whispered, crime
Your law is grey

Your child looks
At me forever
And it moves
Like winds, it moves

Me, it disgusts
At me, and in there
It examines everything
The streets

In your stare
Are quiet and shut
All the jewels
Are jewels of shame

And I do not
Wear you like a flag
I do not rejoice
When you are green

Release me
Or do not leave
Tyrant, I love you.
You peasant, you fool

Your kisses are petty
Your weight frail
You sob like a railway
And all your people

Are dead.
They were running
To you, their homes
Behind. They

Were all running
For you. You reach
In the quiet for me
But I am bleeding

I have killed the sun
And the dawn is you
Sweet, haggard, lover
Of brisk touch and flame

Your massacre
Is my massacre.
Your foul decay
Is my blood.

Now
The thunderous joy subsides
And I am out of breath
Cheeks hurting
Do I wear this face of self
Everywhere i go?
Do they see?
The confliction in creases
The smallness
The largeness
Of things
The disproportionate
Incapacities
I am no sombre-eyed bird
They say I smile sweetly
But I do not like my teeth
I do not like my joy
I am stiffled by my
Beautiful
Self-acceptance show
It is terrifying to appear
To be seen, twisted
Moulded over and over
By the eyeless mind,
Ever unchanged and
Impossibly me
I am open
For all but myself to see
And how many faces
For how many watchers
Am I to wear them all?
By God, am I to become them

Father you are not far from crime
I used to think you a better God
When I heard your footsteps pound
And shake the house still and child
But you are just as small as I
And timid you turn from door to door
And yell out wild in the void
You do not seem to see that we
Have so long packed up and gone
And left the door unlocked should you
One day see and follow through

But you are frown. You snore for long
And wake up to yell. You yell and
I think, is this all you will ever be
But no, my father is soft at dawn
When sun is blue and we are torn
Between memory and yearn
Nay, I say, with my shake of head
Father's his father's scared child
Give him a prayer, my God is kind
But then a gust of wind will pass
And fling at him his muttered curse
And we watch again the tempest rise
Above as flames about the sun
Then violin, whittle, wind and whale
Then generous lot with his love
He caresses so beautiful.

Porcelain becomes fear, but
There is no room for flight.
Father, you are not far from crime

You turgid, pompous, twitchy, you leave
No room for word. For thought, for
Silence violins, for tip toeing quiet
I am paltry poet, a woman of pursed lips
And body twined like a thread between
Your thoughtless finger and thumb
I was to dress in weightless garments
And skip a cricket about the greens
There was nothing in me contained.
You fill me up like a memorial wall

And dust me everyday before dawn
And you polish the hundred frames
That hang with mirrors clean as sun
Within which peer the hundred eyes
Of people who mourn themselves sweet
And a sag of roses red as me
Mourning itself about my feet
You bring me no gifts but a sorrow
That is not mine. With kisses sharp
As lemons, you soothe me then
Into the night, and you wipe the faces

Clean and you love me till I am
Mirror again. I was no dream
contorted in memory to a clever liking
I was to dress in simple garments
and write off to the seas, I was silence,
Simply, slow and tender, come
To lurk and stray in senseless song
I was word. I was word. I was word.
You with your hundred eyes of love

Swift with hands that move like flames
Flicker, stone, sand, stars, applause
You fatten me up like a suitcase
With your hundred other faces of me
And it burns like music, it is daisies
And sugar, you - beast, bountiful,
Beautiful and blighty, I want to
Clutter myself up with you - by Lord,

But, need I get up and go
And twist and twist myself till
It's dead. Then turn and bleed in peace
For long - then void and white - love,
You will. You will not kiss me again
To sleep.

In dream, abundant
As roses to a girl
Whirl, pool, whirlpool
Wool, wisps, tickle
Taunt. In dreams, awake
Wide-eyed and red
Haunting choir, your joy
Multiplied, magnified,
Colourised. Shimmering,
Hung up to dry, to drip
In beads, as grief
On ground. In dreams,
Alive. Rattling, rumbling,
Merciless as a train
Touchable, unstoppable
A body of metal, of human
Full, of child, man, woman
Well, I – I I stand
Like a beehive at work
I – I – I curl my toes, my fingers
My bones. Contort. I am
Gyre, turning, turning,
Gyre, astray. You sigh
And it spreads like a scream
Hot, smokey, the steam-engine
Churns. Limbs move, move and
And the sky moves with them
The sun blinks between
Your windows, the ground
Mumbles, disturbed, grumbles.
And I, well. I – I do not
Give to the flight of soul
I do not limit myself to
Sweet. I am full on sweet.
On infatuation and yearn.
There is no music, no disection
Of beast. The violins move
Without their kin, and with them
Moves the world. I am
No pilgrim, O pilgrim love.
In dream, instilled, a storm at work
Red. Blue. Green. Red.
Blue. Green. You move
the birds. You do not
move me.

I am slowly
Quietening down
The day does not
Shine as lively
And the nights
Are thickening
As if squeezed
Or boiled
For hours on end
I am

Thinning

Now, alone, unbothered again
O mourn in morning dressed
What becomes of sincerity
Laid bare to us in nights
Do you wander as pilgrim
From hearts of men to dove
What agony bleats in breast
Of that little bird of woe
What agony bleats in breast
Of our little hearts of woe

**** this ****, so pretentious