She rolls the paper
with a kind of ease:
like a silk dress falling
on the eve of her skin;

or the delicate sips
taken from her glass,
delicately held between
curled spread fingers.

Then maybe as tongue
presses to the lining,
it looks as though
rice-paper become lips

her kisses sealing
this tube filament
mantled in her smile,
lighting up the room.

A thin, red trail
slaps the pavement,
becomes so swollen,

strands trip around
the neck and cut
deep where there,

in the slick trickles
pulled to small floods,
sinking out, a tip

of the tongue cry
never quite confirmed,
stays strangled. Drips

and ebbs with bottle
in hand, a scarf
in the other. Like ribbon

it weaves into spaces,
drenches the ground
until everything is art.

You would cry like there was no end,
tears dipping in the broken smile
until they clung on the very outline.
We were sat in the morning shade,
sketching me with your lead
in hand; you see me. I’m empty.

Across the field the thickets were empty,
the crisped, golden summer would end
as though the teeming life were mislead.
The sun would fade like your smile,
then only a glimpse would escape the shade

and stay with me as a furtive outline,
inescapable in nightmares. This outline
leaves my bed covers breathless and empty,
waiting for your hand to guide. You lead.
I question whether this will end:
When will you stop taunting me with a smile
unable to slide, sketch and shade?

I’d try to broach the shadow of the shade,
yet my eye cannot catch you. Just an outline
of that torn heart is left in the smile
leaving the space more than empty
until I decide to have it end
by picking up the scattered bits of lead.

Across the golden fields I would lead,
looking back onto the folds of the shade.
The tall grass would make my gaze end,
leaving our tree grazing over the outline.
The field’s thickets were undoubtedly empty.
I head on home. I can still see the smile.

In our child I can see your smile,
as it was before you were misguidedly lead
and left me here feeling alone, empty.
I see on the walls how you used to shade,
how darkness clung to the drawing’s outline.
There I see that you knew light would end.

You always seem to end with the same smile.
I am the outline that you embrace with shades
until the skin is lead. You left me empty.

peeled back eyelids
splay venous binding;
snake skin exoskeleton
though not brittle but
woven like rope
stretches its casket,

though tenuous, its
compound dimples
gaze as pupils not
sure where the
sun is meant
to be

I leave
a jilted shell -
afterbirth horror! -
as forgone lifebearer
so that by contract,
unspoilt to be ridden,

a progeny delights
in its own delicacy.

Smile like you mean it, I titter
with tongue in teeth. Bite the end
and hit it across the consonant. Cry,

abuse! Beater! It’s part of it –
to do you good. Tears trip pity.
No, I know those weren’t meant;

you’re here for my rapture.
Caught between tines a *******
brands you both illicit and curious,

clings to your skin as blood
and *** is alike to smoke and fire.
I’ll teach you to be felt contented.

Take my example. Look, note here;
the slant of a lip, eyes just taut,
the jutted chin—look! Copy in delight:

‘Smile like you mean it.’

I ask if you want to
escape
when maybe we're only
synthetic
bound together by the
wire
slipped between our
skins
filching at each other
inside
these metamorphosis
cocoons,
waiting for one to come
outside
of our shelled carbons
nearing
the brilliance of the city
lights
as though slops of rain
dancing
off of tall windows was
like
the sky setting itself on
*fire.

Snow melting when I left you, and I took
the kite you sewed, stitched and saved.

I’d never left you before but, as a kite would,
I would explore and soak the sky in colour.

I would delve and dive, swoop in crescents,
then save myself when at my lowest.

There were times when a kite should fly
and so it would, were there a breeze to sail.

Many others plunged and plummeted,
shot through and down with a brash snap.

A holler raised for another sent down,
saw red splayed on green then blackened-brown.

It was then my friends did not play anymore.
I saw how the colours were black and white.

Only a few kept a strong hold of their string.
Those who didn’t, fell. Tumbled. Tore.

Red flushed our fields when I wrote, though the
tides of scarlet set silence in all man’s heart.

Swards settling when I returned, and I saw
my kite that once flew brimming on proud lapels.

air-goggles clasped
eyeing up slickness
like a gull hangs over

bright airy gasps
brings arms up
feeling the tilt

toward water-sky
kicks up then down
to earth-pull push

I was doing
something
when a flash
smashed out
to every corner
of the room.

It came like
ominous bolts
of lightning
had leapt from
the light bulb
bursting inside,

as though
storms had been
brewing slowly
under a muzzle
of glass frame.
I regarded how

strange it was
to be fed up
to a thrum of
75 watts
in its lifetime,
to finally break

its broadcast.
I look to a
tungsten tongue,
see the ember
flick into the dark
and say,

*I lost my religion.

Choson dynasty,*
you utter from a stub
on the stand's neck,  
your eyes admiring
pimpled spaces or
the bulging curves
of the moon jar.

It is imperfect like
papier-mâché,
the hollow centre
surrounded by
a slumped figure:
two bodies thrown
as lovers, where,

noticing a crease
stretch the belly,
the mating halves
fuse to function
a wholeness like
the moon we make
when we hold hands.

My heart leaps up when I behold*
a skinny-lit vein split even the sky
and I am held, scared as a child,
by the wonder of its roar, my cry's
like that of a lint quietly set alight
in the large of the pitch-dark night.

I would not move from the bed
and yet, I cannot help but stare
through curtains like a coward,
pared apart by curiosity to where
I wish to slide open the window
and see what the sky did sow.

The Child is son to the mother,
and should he ever need forget
he only need look to a shatter
in the sky. The crash on his head
that follows goads, “You know
where your father goes to crow.”

We'll start the fire
in morning streets
with a flick-clip
on a matchbox
and light a trail
we made to steps
headed for a bed,
this time with no
extinguishers or
hanging fire exits.

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

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.

Opening my hand,
you read the lines
rooted in my palm

before

taking the fingers
to crook them.
They splinter

new

spines, grow
tall steeples
ringing out

like

church bells,
or wind chimes
once your fingers

touch.

got a pink bulb
suckered in mouth—
spit it out. dribble
gobstopper sun,
pause motion to
explosive creation
cake the surface
rubber dumb, POP!

sharp tap like a
snare bubble
vacuum record
in recycling bin
you had it made
su-per-ma-ssive
try again a same
chum the chew
begin renew
anew anew review

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.

After the pay toll
I go down steps
to wait for a train
heading one way.

Glances reveal a
demon eyed glare
searching through
the dark tunnel,

a waft of air pushed
up against me, spins
the time I wait from
seconds to minutes.

I'm going underground.

It's warm, clinging
to soaked skin -
everyone is the same,
drenched in a fatigue

like tired ghouls
smothered in oil,
their bodies caskets
lined up as the day's

catch. We shuffle
into a viking funeral
riding the current
for the journey home.

When we grow older
and friendship blooms,
let that golden ring be
a shade of evergreen
and then we can say
"We didn't make us,
we were made for us."

leaves fall from
tree bark shoots
left some pellets
scatter the ground

spatters of petals
lying across them
like stains marking
a once vibrant floor.

We hold onto
each other like
teeth trapping
new wisdoms,
heads crashing
through agony

as the jaw scrapes
and screeches like
demolition derbies.
We'll battle it out,
but who will last
until one is left?

No, drag my teeth
out of contention:
lasso a noose, yank
hard until whipped
numbly off track
to bleed the oil.

Yestreen, the night cried like a flying circus,
with belts of hoots, laughter and howls.

Thumps caved walls like a drum,
seeking full attention in the early morn’s hours.

A shrill would chirm a space,
as a soul would burrow its place to hide.

The moon turned searching spotlight,
bawled mumbling  groans like a child gone snide.

Screams were thrown in disgust,
like a temperamental mother in a sunken heat.

A whip-crack tore at the sky,
as though it swore I could never be true or right.

The rain had sounded like flittering lashes
against reddened cheeks cold, beaten and bruised.

It was quiet as though the right words
were not for the night’s embrace to ever be used.

The windows did cheer so wittily
like clapter belting the colour out of a smile.

The sky cried and wanted me home,
although I would return and never leave her side.

I hold myself together here,
for fear my eyes may never close.
A pocket watch ticks until I tear.

You left it on the table there
just for me. I stood, froze,
and hold myself together here.

I took hold of a chair, made it steer.
Crept to the edge like a recluse,
as the pocket watch ticks until I tear.

I wanted to end the dreaded nightmare;
you made the choice I’d never choose.
So now I hold myself together here.

I cry as I realize you had made it clear.
My words had slowly become the noose,
like the pocket watch ticking ‘till I tore.

Though if it were so much to say I care,
or even say, “I need you, heaven knows”,
instead I hold myself together here.
My pocket watch ticks ‘till tonight I tear.