And the way he stroked the roses was enchanting,

As the pint glass full of water was decanting,

And I felt as though I’d known that stroke forever,

As though he’d touched me long ago to soothe an error,

Like he’d fondled me before to watch me bloom –

But when I spoke, he just retreated to his room.

I’d never seen anything

like your flat.


It was ******* freezing

and your welcome mat

was all worn away.

All it said, was

‘COME’.

What an omen, eh?


You’d pinned Magic Trees

to the fireplace

and stupor hung from

all points of your face

then you made me lie across your knees.

Your legs knocked beats against

one another,

as I locked my feet,

one over the other

like beatific hands.


In the silence my eyelashes

rustled like fans,

and my forehead made furrows.

I clicked off my sorrows.

I recalled a scene by William Burroughs.

Click them off like

rosary beads

with accossiated prayers.


Smudge the dreams

into the eiderdown,

And divide them down

in ironed out

layers.


Line them up and

gobble them with listless

tea.

I am your prediction!

(said in shushes,

quite benediction)

I want to drop like stingless bees.

I am Addiction to Tranquility.


How jealous I am!

Watching him fall on his ****

as I begin the solitary farce

of trying to close my

eyes.

I watch his chest slowly sink and rise.

How beautiful -

to be cut down,

like grass.


Flophouse drapes of

cigarette smoke

hang from the ceiling in

billows.

A headache clings and

holds me close as

daylight stumbles

like a ghost,

and settles her questions

on my pillows.


The tragic thing about each morning

Is that I greet each sleepy dawn

with the dry and

pinkened threat of tears.

Sleepers – do you know the

might of what you do

each ******* night?

The oblivion in half your years?

The fiction of your wild frontiers?

The obliteration and presentation

of all your garbled

Freudian fears?

Do you know the glamour in what you do?

Do you know what I’d give to be like you?

To live and somehow not be here?

To close my eyes?

To disappear?