Friday mornings I'd slip
the little bones of me
into the big skin of you;
the bags under the arms
spaces to fill. My head
dives under the seams,

finding encrusted sea-salt
swept into nicked threads,
fresh surf cast in nostrils
like delving into wafting
depths of a second-home,
painting the skin rough.

I'll pretend I have your eye,
search for fish in the dark
as you do when away,
and I'll explore with hands
as shimmers fade between
soft holes in cotton waves

small fingertips touching
gasps. They slick the sky
like breaths in the night,
their smear of scent
a welcomed reminder
until you come home.

I'd like your opinion
on the state of this
building. The state
of this building.

Did you compile
this boarded nest
made of bricks
and metal twigs?

Can you not feel
the cold weeping
through open pores,
or the cries at night

when the summer
wets the old bark,
roars of young blood
screaming past you?

All you do is gun
a gaze down streets,
a survey in envy
as the new cribs

beat up the block
with a freshly carved
skin. A freshly carved
smoothed flat skin.

At my father's funeral
my childish hand suckled
my mother's wrinkled fingers
as though kissing a wound.

Looking up to her, I found
such a raw flesh of fear,
so hard in the face, so soft
in the lips, glowing dark red

against her cheeks like
blood on chalk-bone,
the rest in a second skin
of a black bandage dress.

skinning a lemon
he slips the rind off,
cradles a pulp

drowning his hand
The taste is so bitter
The taste is so
bitter. His face

looks blenched
white, lips pucker
like a child's first
love's kiss

Tears on his face,
a sour smile, lips
wrinkle one more
It isn't too bitter

In the nights
are sculptures
in bleach colour,

their soft shapes
huddled together
on street corners.

Like Pompeii
as tar flooded,
sunk into spaces,

they stood so
still as though
alabaster angels.

Down the garden
sits a small water,
sunk with moss ink
floating its own

second skin like
a face left blotched.
Hands peel away
the tumour lips:

under dank flesh
splay young starlets,
gazing sirens lost
without their ceiling.

Their eyes are bright
in the gloom - plates
hunker foolish heads,
anchored by the stem

to murky pond-floor,
they cry up to a night
begging to be taken
into the jet reflection.

By God, when the rain
in summer nights
spat into jam jars,
I could hear the pots

swallow the slurps of
pitter-patter raindrops
tumbling down in slips
on small panes, as though

starlets plunged like
pitted pips torn out
of blackberry skies;
the morning jars

left with shining tears
waiting to rise as
darkening blossoms
of the night again.