the asteroid came
unexpected unheralded unprophesied -
it didn't think, it didn't have theology

it put a hole through the earth
it implied: "I'm in a hurry;
not going anywhere in particular though
and all of you making all those plans
you got all those birthdays
and your Grand Days
and New Year's Eve  to celebrate -
you can go, you're just dust"
and it waved goodbye with its tails as it left
*"goodbye, spoilt brats -
you can go, you're each just dust"

It starts
in the quiet
itching in the fingers
like new skin knitting under blistered burns.

I have always written.
Before I had my letters
(before the lessons
with stubby pencils
curving sense out of the air)
I would scrawl nonsense waves
folding and boiling
in a crash of senseless surf
onto pages meant for pictures

I scribbled a whole Atlantic
before sense and sound
delivered the waves to reason.

I still find it hard,
when writing,
not to let the rolling sea
scatter into fragment waves
that whisper into the breeze of my fingers.

I have tried many addictions,
I have spent people like money.
I have tied my hands
to stop from fussing at the leaves.
If I ever loved I left it still spinning,
but I have never lost the itch

a pen to scratch its bleed of ink
into a sweet clean ****** page.
To scrawl my feint history
in every broken harbour
of her yielding skin.