I closed and locked the bureau
Shut.
I said it was finished
But, honestly, I never meant a word
The prose written on a misty window
Requiring heated breath to maintain presence
Time would only fade it all away
In the moments passed since then
I have stared mournfully at the blessed white skin
That wraps my wrists like swaddling
A surgical blade in steady hand
Contemplating cutting out that playful creature
Who keeps me dancing between here and there
Trouble, I find, as he dwells not in this soft flesh
But deep within my off beat heart

I left a love letter tucked between piano keys
And still find pennies under the sofa
Blown kisses tucked in breast pockets
So as not to float unto another’s lips
I left a note beneath your pillow
So your head might rest on its soft caress
Sometimes when you’d kiss me to insane
I’d open my eyes to the moon-struck presence
Of true content in your ghost face
I never knew such beauty
Perhaps I made you up inside my head
I often wonder, should I blink
Would I find myself alone in bed
I look into the mirror to remind myself I’m there
Slowly, my reflection shakes its head in despair

We met in the most deceitful of places
Something opaque drew me to your side
I toppled then from the trapeze
And fell into your dilated eyes
I must steal my soul back from you
For the rustiness of my words appals me
Oh God, love is the most lonely emotion
They will laugh in mockery at my aching
For time will heal the deepest wounds
But I, I stress, am a terminal patient
And they, citizens of the world,
The great grave fillers
Do not believe in such a sickly diagnosis
For there is bliss in ignorance
My dying is an art
As though closing the door is the end of it all

I wear your clothes around an empty house
My feet take me to the mirror to stare
Into dead eyes and back
To bed
Where I may pretend
That the journey has not been marked
By the stroke I cut into the life line of my stretched palm
In an attempt to whisper to the Gods
I wander busy streets glazed over
Conscious that our feet once went together
Along these very bricks to memory lane
My shadow sinks to the dust of the ocean floor
Like a child holding its breath
It is clear
It was not us that could not go on,
But me.

Lying as if under water
Eyelids keeping shade
They won’t swim, dear
Don’t you fret,
They’re already dead
Can you drown in holy water?
Some things best left unsaid

The mirror clouding over
Took away your name
Head made of lead
Sink on down
Where lies pile up like bones
Will you hold onto your grain of sand?
An oyster in the gloom below

The world’s white edge
A spinning top
Yet no current in the waters
Heaven’s dreamed of, in despair
A child stolen from the cradle
And does the salt now burn your eyes?
As someone whisper’s their goodbyes

Were you sleeping
Were you dead
With shutters on your eyes
The dead bell rings
Someone’s done for
Can you bring the dead to life?
The wind’s hand reaches for the shore

There are no prayers here
This is where the dead come to sleep
Get up of your knee now
Oh foresaken one
Colour the stars in black
Breathe in a breathe - make it last
Now we'll judge you for your worth

This is the death market
Where disease comes to purchase tokens
The grocers of death
With little smiling faces
Would you like to buy a soul?
How much for a pill box coffin
How much for a child's laugh

Heads stacked up like potatoes
Would you care to buy a few?
A penny for a sinner's lungs
Another for a broken heart
Hands turned up, ready and waiting
Dark magic, it does happen here
Deadly creatures come in weekly
A one stop shop to find despair

The thief that I was,
I stole their souls
Left with mouths gone inside out
These puppets on a string
I'll play with their hearts tonight
A sour note called out in madness
I am still the criminal
Disaster taps his feet and waits
He will have his way tonight

I could not help but drool
All over the milky surface of the moon
Reaching a hand into that sticky bag
Only to withdraw sickly black beans
Little hell babies
Laughing at the incandescence of my depression
I allowed them to ooze in the heat of my palm
Bathing in their own sinful syrup
Bubbling idly in a blissful stupor
As I watched
An eyeball propped between the lids
Of the soil and the sky
Perhaps I should have told you I was lying
Horizontally
On the grass I chose for my own tomb stone

Having swallowed too many pebbles
There was nothing left to do but sink down
To that place in the subconscious
Sewn off in some kind of cerebral bypass
I keep the shutters closed now
Where I let my broken nails pile up
The place where we bit down on our lips
In skins that did not belong to us
Holding no recollection of who we used to be
But our voices echo on like daisies falling
And when I sleep my shadow leaves me
To converse beneath the nightlight with yours
While only the hazy delirium clings to me

With willowy limbs entwined
He lifted that blue dress over my head
Like delicately peeling back the papery shell of an onion skin
******* to the raised eyebrows of the discontent
He said
I would have given you my innocence
Now I will keep it
I ate him up
Another to hang over the mantle
A magpie searching for spoons
Yet fit was never good
So I spat them back out onto the pavement
The moon man’s goo
The confectionaries’ crystals

Your loveliness, oh so lovely
I want to drown in it
I’ve attached the evening's tears beneath my eyelids
Heavy and waiting to drop like a bomb
Make your misery known
Splutter it out at the drunkard lady
The wicked *****
Your discontent is a dire idle
Dangling like dew drops  above the pacifist's reach
The moon knows more than you’d care to confess
In cohorts with the sun as they crossed paths
He reached out his tongue to lick its back
Confessing all but a single syllable
Here’s a question I've addressed to only you
Did you tape over, or would you mind if we rewind?

It could possibly be magnetic
Something in the caligraphy of my actions
I cannot control
When the wind blows
I follow

If the word had not been abandoned
I would swear this was perfection
My marauder
My undoing

Speckles of tranquility settle
At the bottom of my subconscious
Like sediments in a lake
Slowly it thickens
Slowly I am no longer the fraud

Now I open my eyes into miles of sand
Looking to the sun with eyes closed
An insect sheds its skin so delicately
That he appears a ghost

And if blue were blue
I would already be gone
The twisting kaleidoscope of colour
Confused for one shade
Again the corners turn in
Becoming a cocoon

I'd been trying to write a poem
Just one ******* poem
But he said
Just **** around
Swallow down a bowl full of squares
Let’s play games with each other’s minds
Spend a night lost in a house of cards
Where the joker cackles despite your begging
A reminder of what I could do without
Shouting at the world from the white pavilion
You suckers!
With your skirts hitched up and tongues hanging out
Gagging on a lover’s loneliness
All I see is your undergarments crying for attention
With a liquor solace barely down your throat

Eighteen silver blades
Smile at me with their perfect teeth
One to mark each year that past
A nineteenth will not be necessary
Ready to drag
Like the man trailing his head on a string
Across the surgeon’s winking knife
Tapping their toes on the bathroom counter
Anxious to mingle with my flesh
I’ve already scrubbed in
The survival rate looks dismal
The cotton reel loosens and my halo slips
Down - the noose around my neck

He sat across the room in plaid
Remarked upon the crosshatch of red
That drew the crooked red grin on the white of my thigh
Like loops of raspberry liquorice
Seeping out sticky tears
He misses handling the vegetables
Who ordered cocktails in lurid colours
Well, I’ve a mélange of my own
A collection of prescriptions from the doctor’s office
Stored in a heart shaped box
To swallow down like jelly beans
I’m waiting for that deadly sugar rush

Death’s been dancing on my doorstep
Absent minded as I sit at the dinner table
Head in hand, foot in grave
There’ll be no morning migraine
Perhaps a little mourning in the peripheral vision
Swept up from beneath the climbing frame
Under a soil blanket with a tomb stone mattress
Coughing up the sand in my throat
That I emptied from the egg-timer
Those darling quadrilateral crystals
Blissful in their ignorance  
Disturbing my quiet complacency
Drowned in a glass of tomato juice
That I poured from my skull
Death holds my hand in the dark
And I whisper to pass on the message
Bury me with pyjama’s and a pillow

Tumbling lunar inspiration
Early opens the vanilla trap
Of insanity
Barefoot in his maze
Someone before my ocean
We consume the dizzy raindrops
That eagerly loom towards the forest
Catch up with the windows
Roping in lackadaisical strangers
Hopeless and homeless
Grateful for a quick descent
Store away the tiny pieces
As feet walk weak like hopscotch
Gulping down so much water
Like yesterday wont come again
To play

You threatened to spoil it all
You sweet disaster from the night
Blowing kisses like black magic
The dead lake that never sleeps
I’ll fix that problem of perfection
Though I don’t know just what will happen
Please sir, did I make you go insane?

Eyes go black from outer edges
You retreat inside your shell
A cold bone grips you in the darkness
Your mouth is made of clay
You’re words are taken but
Write me from the grave
Please sir, did I make you go insane?

Number my sins on a list
Take me to the grocers,
Let me buy back a moral
An apple for my evil
Book me in for double
Let the dead take aim
Please sir, did I make you go insane?

Did I make you jump from the window
Break the lock and call you in
The bomb opens like an eyelid
The winter comes on pouring in
Thief that I was, I stole your heart
Yet you kept ticking off the beat
Please sir did I make you go insane?

If what is real is what I see
I am far from madness
With shutters closed
Eyes sewn shut
Wednesday I may own the world
Thursday, darling, lose it all
In winteriest moods it all turns sour
A negative, a hollow shell
On brighter day’s I’ll hear the choir
Someone whispers out a spell

Should I stay sleeping all life long
Another world has been created
Behind the stutter of my eyes
Are nightmares
Yet fear not, there will be no harm
They say
Yet I’ve been known to play with hearts
Dangle puppets on a string
Pull the noose a little tighter
Wounded one, please step right in