i don’t know why you
told me not to die;when the
quiet settled, i thought i heard
your agony. i asked the
(moon to
hold you/instead of rising
like you do. instead of dying
like you do.

i shattered;
docile, sweeping, the sun rose
in misty greys, greens, and you
looked like unravelled yarn/ i want
to wrap you together, press you close,
knit your branches in the cold.

two centres of
you:

they pulled me like
cats. they pulled me like
carriages.

the roads were
muddy: worn and
muddy.

the sky was grey;
the world was ready to
rain.

seeds) buried
in the mordant sunshine;
they) told you the sun
would hold you—setting the
soil and the moon.
they) told you the sun
would bury you—cutting the
glassy afternoon.

impermanence was
traced
in flowers;

in clouds below
the highway

the hills thawed;
the night cried on.

you carried
space and time
in little dots,
like jackals, you thought,
like autumn starlight,
dotting the sky with their
cold, curdled howls.

pointedly blurring in colours
and tones, you captured your
strokes in brittle clay fragments

we were consanguineal—
we were blood and oil—the

whirl of
your canvas sounded like a thousand
raindrops.

Some days you can only paint in blacks,
midnight, sage, mulberry sometimes—
the shades of rotten meat. An artist
can only make of what is given.

Some days smearing violent
Crimson, scarlet, florid visions
is not enough. A painting is a mind
captured by a moment. But moments pass.

One day riotous chartreuse,
vermillion, the full spectrum waltzing
across your iris will not fatigue you. You
will brush dawn across your skin.

your indignant snow seemed
so wasteful,
so condemned:
i remembered
your halo calming me as
the stage lights trembled;
i remembered your unabashed
stillness, the defenceless apathy of
corpses—

you lay wan,
abject, an object of
blank disposability,
howling in the roundness
of dust.

/your                  love is a
flimsy wick/
I,—         a /ready gust....