Like a patterned rug
Beaten to be rid of dust and
Flopped over a balcony railing, a leopard
Hangs her hefty hands beneath a bough.
Head lolling lazily, she awakens.

Fingers like silent meteorites dig
Craters in the loose, dry earth.
From the grasses emerge many warm black eyes, unseen
And vicious: floral pockmarks on
Her carpeted exterior: cruel camouflage.

Deftly lugging her **** back
Into the branches to feed on its flesh:
Patterned rug stained.

Ears ***** and whiskers twitch
As boughs creak and twigtips reach
For the ground: the impala’s weight
Has weakened her arboreal home.

She panics not.

She slinks softly back into
The grasses: better to sidle away unscathed
From immediate danger.
Pride and body intact, she will **** again
Elsewhere.

The Earth was ours.

We filled its fertile fields full of
Plants of our own choosing: our own design.
To provide for ourselves we drained the Earth
Because the Earth was ours.

We populated the islands that
The Earth had built for us from its own skin.
Like parasites we kept it alive for our needs
Because the Earth was ours.

Then one day the Earth spoke:

You who crawl over my face,
Unthinking for the blemishes you build.
You till my skin and plough my bones, you drink
My tears and feast on my flesh. Slowly, my fiery
Vengeance has brewed, bubbled upwards
And wrath shall be known.

It will begin as a rumbling.
You will think I tremble with terror at your might
But the movement of your monuments is more my
Laughter at your lowliness. The hallways of your houses
Will be hewn by themselves as my body convulses to be rid of the
Sickness of you. You will sound your two-tone Armageddon sirens
In vain as my thunderous thoughts tumble your towers
Fragment your foundations. Break your brick walls.
Stone on stone will spark, igniting infrastructure
And your cities will burn.

But it is just the beginning.

I will bury you.
I will bury you in the fire of my fury.
I will bury you in the ashes of my anger.
You will solidify, screaming, into silent stone.
You will choke, child-like, on my smoke.
You will die by my hand: your home.
And I will bury you.

And this to me is easy.
I am greater than all you build from
My body. So I use my body to wreak ruin:
Reduce your greatness to rubble and dust
Because the Earth was always mine.
I was always my own.

Opposites equal:
Sonic similarity
Of rainfall and fire.

My sunlight flees around these withered walls.
My starlight glints no longer through the leaves.
The water through my fading fingers falls.
The shadow in the corner sobs and grieves.
The tether round my heart has been untied
And from it floats away a white balloon.
The sea stagnates in absence of the tide:
Held still by silent mourning of the moon.
The whisperings of memories and dreams
Like ghosts are tugging coldly at my hand.
They’re picking at my bones like ruptured seams
And crumbling my castle into sand.
She is a thing of beauty whom I love
Together we’ll be lightning from above.

Like rivulets of rain on a window
Conjoining into pools on the sill,
Or like lines of cement between housebricks
Converging at corners,
These two families, separated by an aisle,
At the point between two softly shaking hands
Are colliding.
We of the confetti and white roses,
We of the jewellery and pressed trousers,
We of the suppressed tears and aching smiles
Are considering
The beauty of a moment when gold envelops finger:
The signal that an uncertain journey through love
Is concluding.

Unread correspondence lies in despondence
Gathering dust on the shelves
Journal subscriptions of countless descriptions
Piled on top of themselves

Confirmations of blood donations
That never will be attended
Leaflets unnumbered, the walls are encumbered
Far more than was ever intended

Postcards from the tropics discussing dull topics
Like “them ****** foreigners” and rain
Parcels were ordered, were barely afforded
Never to be mentioned again

You’ve got something yourself, squeezing onto a shelf
That’s as packed as the Vatican’s coffers
But it’s weeks out of date and you’re several days late
To respond to the business it offers

In oil-painted brilliance their stunning resilience
To shame upon canvas is bound
As Jack the Crustacean expresses frustration:
Says "Terry! Stop ******* Around!"
He's spared all his blushes 'cause these ***** brushes
Can't capture his voice or its sound
But the sad situation still needs explanation
'Cause Terry's still stuck upside-down!