A poster leans gaunt
against a lamp post,
its translucent skin
hung in its plastic film
coat pinned by corners.

Her face has seen better
before the wind and rain
had crept its fingers in
to caress her youth;
half of her is smiling,

the lipstick a smoulder
of tone black chaste,
the eye catching yours
in its fine-lined frame.
But the eye on the face

next to her is smudged,
ink drowning the socket
like a welt of a bruise
down her cheek, the lips
dribbling down her chin

like a cut, and the hair
strewn over in curtained
bleed as though she'd cried
tears down the image that
prophesies to her end result.

A leaking clock keeps you
nose up with eyes peering
through night-flooded sky
towards glow-in-the-dark
stars, childhood mementos,
to keep those other shapes

from seeping in, like snakes
slinking over drawers when
they were socks left hanging,
or a hand haunched achingly
through the wardrobe door
was only a shirt sleeve, but

now light escapes the curtains,
becomes a silhouette of a man
out of the second-floor window.
It's ok, you remind yourself.
You roll your head over to
drink, drink, drink in the ticks.

The kid’s quiet
then she teeters in,
all glamour and glitz.
The Ritz is asking,
Mademoiselle, for your
curtain call dress,
a glitterball gown,

dragging by your feet—
oh, but her shoes!
Duty bound cardinal
red swim in the eye
like the carpet you
ought to premiere on.
It matches the lipstick

rub, your lips a yolk
as though you had drawn
over the lines, a smear
having caught the pearl
shawl around your neck.
Those your grandmother
passed down, you say?
She would be so proud.

Carpals, knees, elbows
scuffed. Cement carpet
freshly sears the fabric
then cuts, but a bruise

silhouettes the tear:
start Saturday raw, soon
swells a red ruby gulp
charring to black coal.

By Monday it slips
into a nebula of purple
constellations, a drink
of red still remaining.

You'll wish it never
faded – a jaundice
dulling swims palely
like the fated colour
of that new bike.

I'll follow you through
sunflower cranes, stood
straight up on one leg,
tiptoe-heads above. Thick,
trunk stems support eyes

as though a field of giraffes
came to Loiré on holiday,
a tower of swinging faces
basking in a summer breeze.
Sepia yellows peg out

like eyelashes, shine
against that blue wave
of ocean sky, barely
frothing a cloud. Atop
your shoulders, I'll try

pinching a bud to keep
for home, looking back
a thousand suns echo
a staining rust, autumn
reds sinking as they set.

As you open this book
pressed flowers lie still,
dormant veins of cherry
splashes and scarlet
pools for their faces.

I was told that they grew
for such a beautiful head
to die a martyr, their vain
silk of a skin pulled apart
like lips on a gun barrel.

I caught them with wings
spread out, yellow stalks
for their eyes seeking
a summer sun. I wouldn't
let them fly, so I stuck

their lovesick in a casing
bound to hold them down.
Coffin closed, box sealed.
They sleep a winter, raw
as the day lately picked.

Look at your spider legs

clambering out like that
as though your crab cage

has stayed too still, sat
too long as a street tumour
spat up on the pavement.

You must miss the frailness
of the skin that sheltered
your birth, the patterns
strewn across the sheets

in blurs of stripes and dots,
colours and tones. But now
it's a sickly sight, those ribs
scuttle like limbs pushing
through a shell that suited

your broken spindles just
fine. Maybe you need a fix
of a skin to get you in shape,
web the joints in the hope
someone will hold you again,
your handle gripped in hand.