How dare you cultivate
something with her that
we always dreamed of;

our aim now a parody played out
in your collective garden.

A family, super sweet with
sunshine smiles and Daisies and
birds singing at the dawning
rise of the sun as I wander

through rain clouds and embody
each sunset, anticipating the edge
of night and you

you and her and this pinnacle
that I dreamt up
create our future.

Only I never could have imagined
that it would be
one without me.

Anya sings words I would
rather she have not spoken
and decimates what little remained
between us all.

He looks to me and I
pointblank-sawnoffshotgun refuse
to meet sight of sapphire sky eyes
now too singing along
to her song.

My mother always said
you were two sides of the same paper
and you will both slice me the same.

But scissors always win;
laceration's chorus croons to all.

Origami smiles
so carefully cultivated as
I kindle our final swansong,
a celebration in flames -

simultaneous ignition of
friends to lovers
and that irrevocable rendering; razing
lovers to ash.

I feel like the white lion
stuck in a cage for the rest of my days
feet set to tread a path barred and dusty
from all of those who trod before it.

The only excitement, the jangles of
keys from the keeper who runs to
throw carcass of rabbit, turkeys
through my bars for me
to render sustenance, incomplete.

I fear the white lion
hear my lonely roar and wonder
at such talons, canines now stolen
and feet dismembered, claws ripped
from their shackles, top-of-the-food-chain
fear desecrated.

And a genetic time-bomb too
ticks under my skin and theirs
as I sit and I listen to the lies
your children now share.

My line also ends, a mere stutter
in the sand, as the tides flow steady
and the last lion lingers.

And I am, too, held high like a beacon,
a warning, a message spanning
centuries, look, children, look!
See the mistakes of your ancestors.

See how her coat shines so very bright
that it reflects all seven colours
of the light? See how lonely and low
the last of a manipulated, mistaken,
misconstrued species can go?

She was drawn from her mother
mixed with her father, no she doesn't need him
and the others, why yes, all left
are her kin!

How wonderful, how quaint, you
know only ten now remain?
None in the wild of course, where
their life cannot sustain,
better here locked under our
constraints where we have
so much wonder, so much recreation
and education to gain.

And true, from this bleak place
they can never migrate
but look at her, no where else to go
this man-made mistake.

Don’t worry about the pacing,
the maddened, gleaming eye
the freedom they miss
out there? They would die!
And they know no other way
than this.

I know she looks sad, but
that’s just your feelings projecting,
they’re just animals, my darling,
you’re innocent, shouting in consternation
save her in the name of conservation!

But we are all white lions
all now endangered, our steps
are no freer, our lives all
subject to external changes and we
cannot move but for the cage
they have constructed, their
lives are impacted but our
wonder is not deducted.

I feel like the white lion
this ambassador of our greatness
this one mistake, so very clever,
engineered to engage us, these lives that
were wrought solely to entertain us.

I feel it, their future entwined in mine
and in humans across the ages.

Meaning of life designed, its sibilant message
dangerous, a dumb animal wandering
a set path, disregarded, destructive, aimless.

Under your skin, I will rest, elevated
on ribbed, rigid cages of ribs containing
that one muscle confounding all;
here I will perch and observe

such a beautiful rhythm, concept of
constant contractions as my fingers will to
wrap around the chaos of capillaries, each
vacuous vein and every attesting artery

screaming as I squeeze, nails painted
ebony as rivulets exercise against my sins.
Your body is my rapture, yes every manoeuvre
fascinates these prying eyes, I will prise apart

the seams of your internal markers and search
secrets stashed in genetic poetry, discover
paltry physical proofs, truths of what went so
badly wrong that your mind drowned so readily

that you chose to diminish, turned off all navigation
headed steadfast, sure and glorious towards rocks
everybody warned you about; I must vivisect

this paradox, venture deep within the places you
refuse to look; inside your claustrophobic body
covert are the ***** secrets of sea sickness, of why
you chose to sink in love with me.

I think I must be dead and my body moulders, rests
imperfectly in a carved wooden tomb. Secreted

beneath the malted mud, a restless corpse twitches,
mind set on deceiving; images of alien fingertips
skimming supple skin.

Truly, I have never been more content, as my pieces
decay and dismember and chest rises with bloated gas

breathing such sure imitation against
bleached white weaving whale bones as

the machinations, these movements of worms
whisper, vibrating your words within each unseeing ear,
surely, yes, no heart beats now to hear them.

You love me, say my worthy companions, and oh
do I love you too, most magnificent apparition, sweet
spectacular spectre, conception of minds greatest trick.

I must slumber eternal.
I must lie beneath shaded trees where the birdsong and
shafted sunlight and sweet taste of dewed grass lends

life to decimated, deceased thought of what was once
concious, forcing disbelieving perception, fabricating
a phantom, forging the incredible wonder of you.

I think I must be dead, for I think I drew you up
inside my head.

I don't believe you.

I don't subscribe to your thoughts
and the words that trickle out
of your head, to fall ******
on the pavement and disappear
down the gutter when
the rain comes.

I hope the rain comes soon.

A raging, rampant monsoon
to flood me dry and clean away
the raw, red finger-prints your diction
imprinted, a blood-red necklace ringing my throat.

I don't care for your intonation.

You, heedless of the power
of speeches simple sounds that decimate
veins and rupture explosive, ebony vessels,
setting me adrift on Moses' sea.

But, despite all, I reply in kind.

And
careless words leave me;
cutting you open.

Your body is the ocean
rippling and unfathomable,
eyes a wavering, wandering, azure blue
set always to be drawn away
before rushing back; sending
salted spray slaps against my skin.

I wax and I wane
and you're set, sometimes, to do the same
as this your tempestuous tides do echo,
with your ebb and your flow, our highs and our lows
but when we're both at our greatest height
there's glory in our gravitation.

you shiver when you look into my eyes,
these beacons of sharp, darkening grey,
and sometimes, only sometimes, just
as the spring tide exults,
it seems like the oceans in love
with the fickle full-moon.