Thunder over Karl Marx’s grave
here comes night
running at me with scissors
dangling sellotape
half finished art projects
still weigh heavy on your mind

like all those missed opportunities,
a C should have been an A.

Pastels not paint. The smudged trail of a finger
across ****** feelings which
surface back to tentative fumblings
with a sister’s friend’s Barbie

the smooth plastic bendable limbs

the positions configured with a one armed Action Man
eagle-eyed and
watching

and if I ever feel down
if I ever feel low
I think back to a story I once read about a woman
who had her face ripped off by a chimpanzee
and as she screamed
the chimpanzee leapt up and down
primitive rage grinning.

Not a pleasant sight I can imagine
but when I feel down,
that’s what I think about,
a woman
and a chimpanzee
ith a face hanging from his primate fangs.

when they are forgotten?

He felt their death worthwhile, even enjoyable
whereas his light and oxygen were dead and forgotten.
gone

he wanted to speak to buildings but they looked redundant
instead,
he offered to converse with some benign God who was staring at him through the rumble of yesterday

couldn’t remember his childhood
only scaffolding could hold him up on
normal days when
phones melted

he dripped sweat and feared the conquistadors of death

he would disintegrate into a dust
a human sacrifice in a hot country his heart ripped from his chest and shown on a screen.

his throat was constricted,
sitting at a cheap mass produced desk

he had been invaded by a majestic warm light but alas
he was just a bricked upman in a suit

his body felt like a memory. this scared him.
he sat in a corner and offered the invisible God of indifference
trinkets and baubles.

Time will tick by on a watch,
attached to a skinny wrist,
the hands rotate casting small shadows over roman numerals,
silhouetted behind bonsai tress with eyes that squint tight in this end of summer light.

Phones serve no purpose until they ring,
and in hospitals life support machines beep beep electronically
as people are feed through tubes that gurgle
and words get stuck in their throats as life constricts and
in these ***** municipal corridors death stalks dressed in a stained uniform.

Men in ties crunch numbers and say, ”There is no way to say this Mrs Smith, it would just be cheaper if your husband died.”
We can turn off the switch and you can take him home in the back of your car.
You don’t have a car?
That’s ok, a bus stops just outside.”

Leaves are falling early this season turning the floor brown.

It was a rainy day
when he sent off for a pair of X-ray specs
he had seen in the back of a comic book

Days passed slowly like they were stuck in glue,
outside, a bike, chained to a leaking pipe,
rusted.

Weeds escaped through concrete.

Upstairs, the rattling bones
of skeletons in closets,
ghosts under the bed,
spider legs,
electric shocks and books already read.

Finally, one day,
slack jawed the letter box opened.

A brown parcel, tied.
Postage stamps and ink.
His hands carefully unstrung
the string and the paper fell open.

If he had X-Ray specs
he would have known
that the package was empty.

Lets go to his party later,
I don’t’ know the address
I never have,
but I know how to get there.

The house has a blue door.

We can dismantle the hosts bike
and throw the frame up a tree
let nocturnal birds fly off
with pedals in their beaks.

We can padlock his fridge,
and when no ones around
we’ll place a pigs foot under his pillow
then we can **** on the coats in a dark room
where we shouldn’t be.

We’ll ingest pills and potions and have epiphanies
under paper shaded IKEA lights.

Midnight is staggering down the hallway and
she was keen to remind me “we are appendixs in someone’s story “

carried buildings around
in his head, not real buildings
just un-sketched plans,
you understand?

He had always wanted to build a replica of
the town where he was born
not from mortar or bricks
but from spaghetti and matches and
lollypop sticks.

He wanted to build the fire station and a church
and the supermarket where he would make
tiny shopping trolleys and scatter them over
the make believe car-park where tiny
people would be carrying on with their daily chores
holding tiny bags and thinking big thoughts

He wanted there to be a spacious park for
imaginary children to enjoy wholesome picnics.
And ponds where geese, ducks and swans would
glide on the surface
near broccoli sized trees.

The town in his head would be better then the town in which
he walked but he had one big problem
he spend hours wondering how he could make the sun.