At night the stars seem far away,
But through the dark is light and day.

My poem's salt comes from the sea
Awash with flailing kelp
And absorbed light, hidden and sweet
Like me.

It rakes the gravel with its fingers
Cooly rushing over its skin
Absorbed and intended back again
When the sun blushes ruby red.

Little seals dot the waves
Mirroring the clouds
Chuckling through their whiskers, beckoning
At the dogs on shore, faithful cousins
To these rotund sprites.

The dried up fields are far away
They gasp for the rain that's closing in
With the prettiest grey clouds
Crickets jump from the Terra Cotta
And spill the Summer air, little breaths.

While ores seep into the mass of blue
Rather than be claimed, and turn the bottom muddy
In pinks and oranges dulled by the jealous green.
The fish enriched begin to talk
And their blessings pip pop upwards.

I think it's beautiful that air goes down down deep
and finds the things that need to breathe.
If only I could follow it
And be consumed by some crease
And become the ocean too.

Kiss me with deflating lips
Beach body beached on my mind
Fated errors in our minds rejoice
At distance confirmed and hammered in

To lift a veil and see the wolf
Corrugated eyes blend with the sea
Of unthought masses watching TV
Of the dark road, the foreign path

It's hopeless when your sleep
Loses its pull, its fire to be
What happens when legends draw their maps
And don't mark the road you knew they'd make?

I know I'm too young to feel this desperate
Never found the days that would keep the nights warm
Never saw the glint to the Tigers bite
Never saw the moon above the wave

Too old is an expression lost on eyes
Glassy for timebomb putty
Artists weary become manufacturers
When ignored, when declined

Beach body, that's what I had, a belief in clicky thoughts
Understanding caved in to knowing
And knowing fell to fact,

I've built my way, carved in gritty stone
That as sand my footstep knows
I'll crawl forward, step by slip
And follow the path up till the ahead.

Sitting in bony wood
A seat to watch the prickly world stand still
Poised.
Reservations in iron clashing
Gong waves that drown

I can sit here silently
Smooth and clear as the varnish beneath me
This room has white walls
With ***** streaks like vapour trails
Across it, instead of human faces
In little square coffins
Nicely decorated, by, shaking, hands.

Questions don't need answers, I reckon
If my silence gives grey thoughts their place
Neat little rubix cubes make
Cult parodies
Of me, ironically bad.
Hee hee.

What a curious question
Whether instinct wants what is useful
And to trust it
Or shut up and simper
With the strength of women long jobless by
Liberty

In all things
Agency's just a mask
Worn by actors whose plays
Use up the muscles

My words can be recycled before me
Repurposed, simplified to fit new slots
Hard, to be a useless orifice
That wins nothing scarlet when it is ******.

An honourable account
Of sympathy 1, 2, 3, 4, deferred
Finally something contained but
Lastly nothing.

I fortify puddles night and day...
That ***** grass grows by
And willow trees that twist and knead
Into crisp faces that
Pose for me.

Oh! Wood Coven!
Questions 345
What unknowing awareness they show, what membership
My cobbed old feet can't follow.

A successful heart with fearful veins
Taken lore-y blood for bishop doubts
From chambers of marbling fat
On a ****** run.

I found online that
People were scared of me
But in person they didn't care
I wonder if they dream so hesitantly
Or if they sleep just to wake up
On a pillow that smells like their wife's arm
Neutered, like feathers clipped short

Perhaps with that I'll choke
On a wishbone of some bird
Or my bones, brown like civilised wheat
Will nourish some fat lip
I'm not sure of that

O, an honourable account.

That's not who I am
I'm built of burning wood
And hacked off pieces of granite deemed
Too coarse for cobble stones

That's not who I am
I'm nobody's child
I built myself through a muddled
Community of moth wings

We never tasted sugar, never felt the rosy clothes'
Crushing flesh, blushing chosen lyrics
******* swallows and cheating sucklers
Cold, sunken, green with no choice

That's who I am - my own monster
Stitched from what I liked, stuck with our greasy wick
I blended myself, found my backbone
In the granite sifted and spat away

You can't name me, I get that right
To bore myself in your thick skull
You gave me over to the frost the day I forgot what
Stupid people said I should love

When grease turns, kettles scale over
Rusted innards show, red in the ground
T, TB, AA, PSA
What can I do?

When you catch the musk of defeat
Bleeding out your crusted dearest
How soon before the years since stutter?
I forgot them already

I can't be what I want to be, without your hateful consent
Tides of cradled love and rotten ****
Wash over me and I
Take it to heart

When it all loses spirit because no whim is trusted
From a signing bearded beast
When you realise it's not going to stop
Until we all fall down the molehills
Fastened and swinging
The only firm hand I ever knew

When it comes back, sweeps your Victorian progress away
Leering, you're not recovering anymore
You get to call yourself it now
You're the addict's child
Slip in that and curdle.