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 us 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

What a cold night to cry on
And I do not even love you

I do not even feel the presence
Of myself in this sorrow

What absence forms me
Jolting me out of sleep

Why do I leave the bed to wander?
Where do I long to be?

There is no remedy for tear
And you cannot soothe me

Here, simply: grief gallops
On horses of terror

It sounds its divine horn
Through the white halls of me
And there is nothing to give
But myself to the breaking

You do not know how to paint
On wall or on heart, my mumbles
Everyday you stray, cold in my hold
You leave the window open for snow
It passes, through us, shuffling
Leaves footprints on our body
Do you think I am dead and deaf?
I hear you singing softly to it
I feel the simple following wisps
That flake away and land on lip
On lip and railing of eye awake

Sun settles, a fading bleak jewel
Atop the smooth hued neck of sky
There is no remedy for lost dream
I chase reckless, clawing inside
Reaching like a tree into time
Of soft rose night and tears like wax
Like flame, like birds, like burning—
Sweet God stumbles, drunk and
A darling, pliant as clay: through hours
I fashion vessels, filled to the brim
With pickles of quiet. God
Is in the wordless wells of rue. You

Are lost, lost, to blindness and
Abandon, out about in search of dyes
So strong the ramparts of black
That bar, from me the remnants
Of our blunt tryst. Come - come
Back to body, now that it lives
Come, lost pilgrim, my plummet blue
Stifle the sun. Paint it all wrong.

Do not yet go
I have to say
Let us run
As one far
Into the sun
Let us burn
Perish fade
And singular
Stay
Never one absent
From the other
Do not go
Do not ever go
I become
A curtain
Over myself
I become
Solitude, still
And no cries
That I fashion
Are right
For the quiet.
Do not go
There is nothing
For me
Left to become

You do not hear it
The lone has a singing
Like silken threads of the wind
When it walks through the city
Its robes draping
Over walls and as shadows
Darkening the noise
Our legs dangling,
We breathe in smoke
Dust and traffic talk
Nothing is beautiful but we stay
Nothing is as we had fancied
Everything gentle slinks away
Revolted and charitable
And we run our fingers
Along jagged concrete edges
Waiting as if
For something
Waiting as if
For something
Sorrow comes
A tender companion
And leads the night away to obscurity
I dream of laughter
Tumbling as pebbles into terror
Clumsy and crude, bluntly myself
I stumble through myself
Searching as if
For something
Doors open and torches are lit
The labyrinth unwinds perhaps
Or starts to, slow and sleek
As if in tune to the song
And almost the spectre of reticence
Is cast aside for rebellion

But then, the morning comes
And I am a tyrant again

What good is all my love
If you wish not recieve it
Use it, use it till torn, cast it
Aside as coat to a hanger
Woolen soft and sagging in lone
When its body be far far

Far is beauty, in flavourless
Riches, halls of boney ceilings
And pillars of God, you
So glorious in your indifference
So irresistible: merciful your gaze
As it grazes me by   myself meek
Cottage, of anticipation and dust

Myself mumble, mug of night-
Old melancholy. Not ten my riots
Sharp enough for you - you
Peppered with grace, of posh
Profoundity, in a manner of spice
Parsley the face of your face, thyme
Your eyes, paprika, paprika
Be you throughout; throughout
the stars

***** at me, waiting for agony
To spill out its reticence
I paint, paint, cheap commodities
Fuel for your warmth in those
White countries. Rag-clothes,
Castoffs, rugs if you may
A fable for a table or two
A momentary exhibition
If you may. Yet I I warp
Over myself, restless in
Scarcity of grief... how you
Play at deprivation, clever
And careless, coy as a bird

Out out out to the blue with
Your pretty laughter and mist
And never again a flutter
To drag me from dream
Violent in your quiet, your
Absent saturation, running
A little red boy, alive as violins
Round and round and round
Me - nothing of you
To boil or brew, no leftover
Sight on which to chew

I just keep reading my own poems
At 3 am, over and over my words
Carnal is she, leaping at me, leaping
One, two three  bee  tree oh ******
Rhymes to thin down grief

No, grief is too fancy, I flatter myself
It is      maggot of the soul munching
Loudly scratching... my thoughts
Are anxious fingers, finger-tips torn
As war ridden boots, my feet make no
Sound in the world.. they startle but
Themselves, they leave no change

I am       wallpaper boiling through
Months of moisture, slowly stripping
Myself cement and repulsive and
Whitewashed... flat as the belly of a table
I lie like a dog with my limbs raised
To a friend

O God, love me. Overturn me.
I am tired of my stale riots,
Of my resistance, my revolutions
I am nothing to build upon
Nothing to build with, cats and
Cars sound through the walls
Like footprints into sea
I am deaf, redundant abundant,
self-centered misery and dull defeat

I pick my nails and sit
Boat in a stagnant sea
Jigging as if itchy, twisting
Twining tweaking tingling
Even time stops by to tusk

Carnal is she
Leaping at me
Swift and free
Sleek as tea
Whispers thick
And then does lick
Ick ick ick ick
She sticks
The blade
Down in bed
And then she fades
As soul from dead
And fed am I
On nerve and song
And lie I long
Shivering along
To barren currents
Of our ripe night
And harvests she
The crop, and stops
To smile at me
And further drops
Me into fright

Bold is she
Carnival and cat
A mocking flame
To my dear wax
Tumbles my body
In her shrill hands
And lands in mercy
Of her mischief
Then melt I
And fly I falling
And follows she
To watch me come
Alive again
Again. Again she goes
And scares the skin
Tin, as tin
She laughs away
And if sin this be
Then sin we may
Till the sun should come
Alive again

So falls asleep
The clock at work
And still stand staring
All stalls of night
Wander shall we
Or lie down to sleep
Shall we dance on lips
Of thought forlorn
Stumbling go ever
Down in dim
Or lead the leaning
Limbs to the lair
Of dark despair
The dear despair
The shuffled sea
To which we see
As children in plea

Shall we then stop
And hear the streets
Go wading on
Or lose shall we
Ourselves to blood
As bumbling it goes
From us to us to us
For there is no weep
That may we stir
As sweet in tea
And beat and beat
May these shrill heels
Forever and free
May once they slip
And then fall far
Into the song
And may the hands
Yield as we
Lay them rest
On our simple *******
And may the land
Of whsiper and chant
Ever go writing
The waves of sea

But mourn or nor,
Lose shall we
Stale as sundress
In the lap of she,
Loose as tea,
And no comfort coy
Shall hear from us
A single cry
And sweet or sleep
May mend the bleak
But we will not weep
No, we will not weep

Weep we shouldn't
Lest morn should bear
Upon it the stain
Of our meek feat

And weep we would
If but we could
Bear brave the banner
Of fierce defeat

Every night, I walk down to the lips of the my town
Quiet as the stark knife edge, simple as dust
I will get lost, once, tens, a thousand times
Counting meters and turns to the forbidden home
I will waste days and days to glimpse the blackness
Peep by the fence, disappear behind, watch the door
Touch the sweet blue dryness inhabiting the windows
I can stroll a hundred hours, all alone in detatchment
You do not know. You are never awake to see.
Every night, I pray. Everyday, I look for God's fair face
In wild men, in sullen men. In the keen red eyes of hatered
In my own beloved misery. God is in the ashes,
God leaves footprints in the graveyards
Watches the playgrounds from afar. God is in tyrant boredom
When trees shuffle, and all else leave

God is not here. Like a cannon ball, I toss the lowly soul around
I wash her face by the storm, I pull her along into malls
Lights take her astray, music suffocates her
In the night, every night, I am a shady wanderer
Wandering as a worm, looking for sweet
And no one no one no one is here

Smother the torches
Burn down the sun
My young boy has died
And his ashes blown
Stomp on their candles
Shatter their statues
No fumbling mourn
Could bring back my boy
No fostered condolence
No faltering words
Woe to the blacksmith
Pounding on the night
His burning stars
Errupting, errupting
Woe, the moon has left
And no jewel of old or now
Could bring him back tonight
No noise of plea, no agony
No mumbling thunder
In my frail blue body
Woe, the room is dark
And empty and empty
Not a shadow, not a light
No one to hold onto
No one no one no one
There is nothing in me
With my young boy gone

Dance me when they are all weeping
Dance me to the sound of their grief
Dance me naked, pitiful, ordinary
Polished a wood to hold the mirror
Polished a mirror to hold the world
Polished a world to hold me, O
Simple acosmist, dance me thoughtless
To the edge of your thoughts
Dip me faithful, into disbelief
Dip me, trick me, pull me back
Taste the constant revolution
Brooding in me, taste the brood too
Senseless word, tasteless art
Taste that too. Startle, stumble,
Startle me thus - O dimmed Daedalus
Craft me wings, craft me the sun too.

Oh heavens, to have destroyed you
As a mad artist may his work
As a blacksmith may the sword
To have been called for then
To have waded in the tense desire
Of your bleak longing for grief
And beheld you naked, pathetic
Permanently deathless a creature
Tearing at its rivulets of life
To have been loved despite.
To have taken you into me
Tied you to the lone in me
And robbed you, clawing, over and over
Turned you to the flame you stole from me
Oh, to have been loved despite, despite

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.

Sombre heaven, you look just right in pink
Clothed and cloaked, silken limbs of ancient lore
Everything droops round the drape of your lace
My eyes stumbling lurking, running, returning

I will - I could take anything miniscule
Bare minimum, pitiful, pathetic, muggy
Bitter rain - but you refuse to yield, just like me
Is this why our touch fails so simply?
Because we're too similar for revolution?
Defeat has me nauseous, mildly in love

Sweet, sharp, a little painful, a little blue
You leave no scent when gliding by

naivety slips
forbidden down
I wipe away
with sodden palms
I wipe the way
I slip in paint
wipe moody, spoiled,
wipe then a madness
little and brown
it is no one's fault
or no one's bad
it is rampant Less
stood up to life
with machine breaths
and human noise
sweet sky buckles
as it spreads its arms
rampart then, it is
like blindness
like stumble
forgive me
I know it is weak
when you are evil
I cannot help but break

I am lost, and the cave is blue
All facets of it, some faded, some sure
Crystal tears flicker on the jagged
White eyes, the stones speak nothing
Merely blink as the turnings of lights
In keen grey wells of silence
My life, as a ragged brush, paints
The night to be raw and torn
Leaves the canvas blank for a moon
Throughout the sky are pinned
My letters to the world, flip-flopping
As wild wind horses hop about them
But in the day, in its darkness
I can recall nothing of the colours
The walls scuttle away from me
And the cave, though endless, shrinks
I sit down into the shape of an insect
And feel the firm embrace of lone
Of stone, I begin to feel myself of stone
I rush to the waters, they rush to me
Bleak blue turns me over, takes me
Through months, I sail its roudy mouth
Blissfully unseeing and faceless
Until the coin of the sun flips
And blackness washes everything clean
The sea still, sags to rock, entombs
Itself and me. I am lost, and the cave
Is blue

All night long
I peel off layers of me
thinking up poetry
with my fingers and lips

the little moon melts
and melts
purer than fire

in the morning, I am wax again

Winds, whistles
now all is quiet
paint-brush, sea
your lips moving
speaking nothing
your hands
expressive as ever
my words
causing a *****
by your feet
cluttering, cracking
as you step away

there is no noise
no chirps of the city
no tales of sleep
I run but the running
leads to nothing
I run not to run
or to reach;
perhaps to move
or to cause to move

But the movement
makes no change
the heart is far
the hands grasp each other
like mourning women
the sun is empty
the sky is full of it
houses reek of its reticence
and the people
are out of talks

summer is cold
white, dim, dusty and damp
the pages crinkle like cloth
and when I look up
you are headless

just shoulders, neck, arms
torso, legs
a presence, but
no voice
I speak, I cannot hear
You crumble
I crouch to collect
but I can grasp
at the quiet only

Hello, poetry, how did it go?
I used to lean here not long ago
I used to think the night too slow
I'd stroll for hours, to and fro

Stumble in the morning, grimace
Wipe the sleep off of my face
Don my clothing, make no haste
Tie the gloom around my waist

I'd sling my bag, grab a pen
Set my scarf a bit around then
I'd stand, think, and wonder when
I'd come to see the window again

Everyday I came back and fell
Into the sullen, sweet old well
Light a candle, and then I'd tell
Stories of hell, of hell, of hell

Why not of the big white sea?
In which I feared I'd forever be
I was a little bit scared, you see
I'd paint so, so intricately

One could never have told
All colors else from brazen gold
Still, I could never be bold
I fumbled, prettily, I was never bold

Why, I wonder, now that I'm blind
There is no cold sorrow of any kind
Is there now no hue left to find?
Why is there a silence in my mind?

I am completely, utterly lost

Don't sleep
Don't sleep
I begin to
Like you
A little bit more
I shift and sigh
Say your name
Fatigue rolls
Somewhere by
But, alert I
Imagine
So many paintings
To make for you

You mumble
Childishly
Your laughter
Is glittery
I wish
For so little
I wish too
Intensely
Dont wipe me
With a stiffened cloth
Soaked
In turpentine
And a hundred hues
Dont stir me
I might be disturbed
Out of skill
Out of thought
Onto a burlap scene
Grotesque
Picturesque
And so, so true

Don't move
Or I might too
I might too
Become a facet
Among the facets
Of your horrors
I might
Become art
Might become
Beautiful
In that strange
Black way
Of art

Dont sleep
Talk to me
Speak to me
Let us be
Normalities
Let us
Hold
Technicalities
Forget
Sentimentality
In the silly blue painting
Of an eyeless pretty
Smooth and porcelain
Perfectly closed

No night
To mourn into
Dissolve into
To stumble,
To tremble into
Don't sleep
I become too much alone
Shrivel, burnt sienna
I cannot move alone
I become the paintings
That I fear to paint
I become the sombre
Debris of your laughter
Cold, blue
Featureless
A moonlit night
Nothing but red
You don't know
That I like you
In my head
Come back
Come back

I want to talk to you, now
that the sadness is thickening
in the air, now
that I begin to flee the night

Sombre rue settles, ergot
of rye: i feel a blackened wheat,
I feel contorted,
and worn, crumpled, contaminated
crude

now, I am past again, i am
faint, fossil, begone from the city
I roll in little tremors
through sandpaper streets
a

franctic brushwork of the winds
I am canvas, paint, the face I hate
a feeble cry
of the stray cats in crooks
you

you make me so, so thin
I buzz a wasp in my sleep, i begin
to hate the sleep
I dont... I dont want to sleep
I want to disappear tonight
I want to talk to you

innocent blue
it’s not the truth
it’s just the story I tell to you

say, gone now
all the old times forgotten
we flicker away in bliss

roll the dice
select this, forget then
never let it go then

I was just bored
watching the night
I had it all, I had it all

I need it now
covered in fade, taken from me
rolled up and stored

artefact of old
I want so much to hold
I become small again

I begin to hear too much again
see too large
speak too thin again

now it sits by
in pieces renewed
pretty and gold

hope that you find it
hope that I too
could find it for you

I begin to hate all art
why do you love me,
why do you not

I rub my fingers mad again
I make all faces ugly, ugly
why do you flee me,
why do you not

then I make strange things
I share too much,
in my strange things
then I boast, then I gloat
then I hide, hide, hide

then I want to clothe in paint
I want to burn all art
why do you wait,
why do you wait

It is you for me
Through the summer winds
The winter winds
And colours else
That may curl and go

I linger there
I touch your hair
Two sweethearts
In the good blue room
Tip-toeing
Like my brush
And twisting
Like yours

Two painters
In simple linen
Turpentine, like
Your hair
It is you for me

Wordless? Could I write a  poem with silence?
the skid-slide of the road
the burden of a sudden night on me

Sometimes, I fall asleep
with the pen uncapped in my hand
little book open... it may seem so lovely
look at her!
huddled up with her little thoughts
a true writer, that child!
but- but I preferred sleep!
sleep was pleasurable and it did not run
I preferred pleasure to poetry, madam!
please take the label back

But...
sometimes the pen runs out of ink
and the ballpen stutters
and I get teary-eyed in the dark night
I engrave the paper with the ballpen nib
trace the words out in the morning
sometimes I tear the paper with the ballpen nib
and then weep

Sometimes, like this time, the lamp dies
I press the buttons of the AC remote
every four seconds (I counted)
write in the light of its lit-up screen
Sometimes I write on my hand
and when the hand runs out, I go to the arm
I write on pants, on tissue-paper pieces
Sometimes, there is light and pen and ink and...
and you know exactly what.

I could never call myself a poet
the word stuck, a jumble-mess
of all my literary inadequacies
rolled up to hardness, taped to throat
I... I roll up like a cat or a rug
words come by on a conveyer belt
and I stamp each with 'unoriginal'
unoriginal, unoriginal
a moving queue of unoriginal
so many words! the page is empty
I become unoriginal
other times...
so little words (like this time)! the page is full
I become unoriginal
Then I get so upset, I toss poetry away
like crumpled paper, roll over on the bed
an upset lover; I keep an arm back though
for some little touch


Oh my
I think I'm going to sleep
with the pen uncapped in my hand


Or maybe...


No, put it away
we are done for the night

Some admiration, please
something akin to a pill or
a sudden welcome warmth
I want to be put to sleep

a sleep of no tremors or waking
but not death, not quite
like satisfaction or tea, some instilling
of the sea in me
I thought I had quite grasped
a thread or two
but I am paper now
I have no word to write
no light to write in
I have no thought, and I cannot think

some affection would do
some small touch
some bowl to melt into
some flame as well

I want the night to stay
I want to sleep it away
Poetry is for nothing now
I write to satiate
to not weep, or to not fiddle
to remember, or to clear up
to love poetry
or to gather myself up

But the bed is warm and still a pond
and I wish to weep
I wish words were there to stay
I wish they could pat or touch
stoke my hair with an inhuman presence
some song would do
some voice/whisper/word
some sigh or solidity, some affirmation
I am so lonely
I will eat myself up

Sweet hands, half-concealed
in bright red sleeves
you are so cute when you weep
orange-cheeked and blue
with anger that comes from small lungs
and shakes the chest
Stubborn moth, I like to stub
you, just to see you move
you move like water
when it boils, when it breaks
You are gentle beauty
in thin blue arms, sniffing with the clock
and trying to stop, oh
always trying to stop. You weep like Icarus--
a gleaming smudge in the sky
I want to break you over and over

minaret, matte in haze
an illusion of detail
you, Impressionism
your bricks clasp each other
intricately, intimately
without hesitation or sense

lips of red and suave craft
tilt:
pyre suddenly

I step back

I can fathom you
from here only

Silly old papa with a head of stone
A heart of stone, as he wont say
A heart petty, poor and grotesque
Table unturned - noise and show
A jagged black stone - I pick you up

Debris and Zeus - I pick you up!
I throw you to the streets
There you kiss, you kiss - you foul sag
Of a naive wish, you bland-brown day
Out, please, to your beloved grey

You! Pitiful - huge - huge
Huge with arms of steel
Brazen love, burnt scent, naked sculpture
Chipped and art, you are the museum
Of yell and watch and monotony
The crease I will never paint
Gesture that will tear the paper
You disgust my pencil. You hold;
Crumbling; crumpled a poem
Cold, sold - sold. Sold, Papa! Sold!

Alabaster hands
I paint like I know you
but I am afraid
I paint like I know
the hours of holy songs he sung
when chip by chip
he broke his David
out of stone

but I mumble with a brush
polluted a tomb
with thievery and doubt
if I return to you
I will do so stollen
rolled up in bay and --
my Florence! I couldn't see you
I was lost

I could not be him
he unleashed, I hold
and now you wear his hands
like a beloved scar
and then you haunt my sleep
with your eyes of old

I am sessile, sterile - I doubt.
I cannot speak.
stone carved inadequate, for
I do not know hands
the venules and the etchings.
I could not learn

fiddling like a cricket
in the arms of leaf
I see him leap through ages
to come and observe
I am an artefact flaw
and him the sound perfectionist
he inspects fingers
as they stumble in paint
ever-looming, giant, bearded
with a broken nose

you, Florence! He steals
movement, instill it, gifts it
you wear it, then you watch me
with museum eyes
Good love,
I am no David
do not ask that of me, I may weep
stone in my hand
I sling stutter over my shoulder
and watch the forever tyrant grow

1.
Hibiscus rue.
citrus.
cataclysm.
but so gentle rue.

2.
A cappuccino night
eavesdrops,
the lamp sleeps slouching
its jaw slack,
my clock's monotonous cadence
is loyal as always

4.
A quaver
from a cadaver
that is what muttering trucks
do to the night

It is like startled birds:
they never sit back just right

5.
Insomniac mosquitos
have a *******, I think

The night sky
moves like a swarm

I watch it like a friendless owl
but I am happy

3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write

Privet! You are that
puerile, puffy
no longer the outline
that they had cut of you

Bold like a spider
smaller than the white spot
on my nail
I slam the book shut
you are faster
you skitter about on the table
mocking as if
but I like to play too

Morrow, morrow, city of dreams
Turpentine, slowly sifting
Invades here in sashes of silk
Sounds through bone, bone
Fluid, lures the brain:
It follows coy, curious
Shuffling its thoughts, like one
With fingers, like you
with seasons— blue, and then bold—

The crows shift on the wall
Linseed a moment, and then acetone
I can only overhang and see
The stretches of the city
Forever overspill, overkill— overt
And covert— sounding through
Its buz-busses and snorts; crickets,
Cats, night, white, night
An ox-y-mo-ron, you
Are an orchestra, a tryst

Sweet mo-no-to-ny, a
Platform in a plaza
A plaque on a platform in a plaza
I ransack the dictionary in search of you
The road to lead to the relic of you—
Feed the retrospect’s imagery away
Then the crows look at me
Like I killed their maa
Lit up a June solstice in the beautiful light
Pollution and sound pollution, you
Are homecoming, I say
I say, nothing blinds like home, I say
And I cough the air out like a slang
Your city is ****, a skullduggery
To last the brazen evening
And sag by the night, you are slant
Static, ruthless to the stone come for moss
A slap on the face
Of my sentimentality
How I love to draw you: this way,
This, however I like, since you
Are sightless like a TV, hive of bee
You jig like rain, like sun, woe to me
Like sen-su-a-lity
A satin city, itty bitty pretty
Silly, let me study!