Will the world look so beautiful again
as sunset through a broken window?
With greasy hands I try
to capture youth as
a leech with a camera.
Will the light fall on her face, like it did
in the festival - like it did
when her eyes caught the sun.
I don’t like myself when I’m awake.
I, in the absence of dreams where the coaster spins
and the smell of sugared doughnuts lingers,
was the sweaty hands in hers.
Wet knees, wet boxers, wet grass
Backs to the sunset and skyline high on
plasterboard roofs, spotted chimneys. The fire and
the smell, the screech of the tubetrain -
the squirm from the darkness.
Gravel tracks, picking away the small stones
from pinkish tramlines on her thighs.
The tightness of her skirt on her knees, glitter eyed,
blush eyes, fosters cans stamped in the bush,
Bad ****, every bad smell-
the light we see is
plugholed but free from the sewer.
Sewered but free in the ocean.
Love bottler, the skinny fingered
Love bottler. I stamped on the cans.
I don’t like myself when I’m awake.
Dreaming the sickness of my thoughts.
Memory-sick, it hurts til it doesn’t.