Orange earplugs, pill-shaped, one pair:
for use when pretending the neighbours' furniture-dragging is comforting invariably fails.

White humidifier, cylindrical, spewing vapour:
twenty minutes per cycle. Each manual reset is a life lost and there is no Player Two.

Day curtains, thick and heavy, one set:
to evade the pincer of lunar Cyclops' glare and unblinking orange streetlights.

E5:E2: the projection clock spits on the wall, fresh red and upside down:
it's almost midnight. I shall feign death until the whirring in my head dies.

The jogger stops a while to catch his breath,
a sweaty grimace painted on his face.
Perhaps in half-light it appears a grin
to others - actually he feels like death.
With averageness as his only sin,
he thinks, how apt to go in such a place.

Her memory is blank beyond this place.
She draws a rasping, thin and ragged breath,
inhaling scents of forced carnal sin.
The caked make-up is falling off her face
but all her thoughts these nights have been of death;
a cigarette will reapply her grin.

The old man looks around and gives a grin
at all his children gathered in his place.
For months he has been waiting for his death,
his lungs to finally run out of breath.
The ghost of life still lingers on his face,
a long, benign existence free of sin.

Bejewelled silky hands still slick with sin
support, neck-like, a head which wears a grin
that looks like it's been stolen off the face
of mannequins and plastered into place.
Her role in hastening his final breath
still haunts her. So it shall unto her death.

This industry is headed towards death.
They think intelligence is just a sin
and try to cut him off at every breath.
He finally allows himself a grin.
With this he'll put them in their proper place
and wipe that smug expression from their face.

The kiss of malnutrition on her face,
a souvenir from those merengues with death,
lies testament to horrors in this place.
Though poverty may be a fatal sin,
she bears the burden with a toothless grin
and croons her lullaby under her breath.

Behold my face! They all know I am Death.
But truth is, there is sin in any place;
I'll grin the same before I stop your breath.

I return once more,
to where the rivulets run dry,
the horizon flattens into nothingness
and the ravens cry.

I tread back across
to where the waters once ran deep,
and watch my feet sink while I hear my
winged companions weep.

Scrabbling in the dirt,
I become painfully aware
of every inch of my exposed skin under
the naked sky's stare.

There is nothing here,
nothing but the wind's icy bite
gnawing at my cheeks with the frozen breath of
overflowing spite.

Then, the distant growl
of thunder from just beyond sight;
it knells for all these dust-swept dunes I've built yet
whispers of delight.

I may have returned
to this dead oasis again,
but now after all this time I'm finally
waiting for the rain.

sonatas soulful, soothing, softly somnolent:
i kneel in surrender to their swells —
slipping under the spray, slow submerge of sound

soaking my eardrums
sealing sight
the sea’s silence deceives, concealing

songs so solemn, solace’s sorcery suddenly suspends:
sorrowful solipsism sublimates —
i seek stupors soporific as soliloquys

the slumber in the coffin of my dreams
is restless. weary whispers of the past:
black box effluxion, bursting at the seams
(they rupture violently until the last).
sometimes i feel perfectly fine alone,
accustomed to the comforts of the bland,
without another soul to call my own,
or living warmth to press against my hand.
is there a need to fill this cavity
with that which everyone proclaims is love,
as insurance against depravity,
a last reminder, Aphrodite's dove?
meanwhile in here there is but space for one;
hold just a while more - soon i will be done