morning bleeds in
then blazes
the sky pierced open by one hot star
night melts away, slinky black cat

a thousand restless fingers
pluck along my nerves
and crawl swarming bees
over my flesh
******* dry honey
and I as a comb am empty
waiting on the waxing moon
to bring in the tide
exposed and littered
on the cracked seabed
lighting beeswax candles
impromptu runway lights
for those aeroplanes
who always fail to land
and wasted afternoons
fade into wasted nights
tossing to and fro
I sleep
under the cupboards instead

Her novelty has faded.
The stars hang back, distant ladies-in-waiting.
The night sky, their palace, is eclipsed by cities
Exploding with neon lights and grotesque trees.
She is too romantic.
Inch by inch, the black sheath is drawn back,
Revealing her smiling crescent.
She keeps a faithful orbit, and stirs
Blue oceans with long white fingers.

In her full sphere
She is a perfect spotlight,
Turning quiet snowy fields into
Illuminated empty stages.
She plays peek-a-boo, uncovering lovers
Gleaming whitely in the mouths
Of beds.
The beauty of entwined limbs
Exposed in her milky radiance.

She is the sun’s soft reflection.
He is never dim, and the black
Silk bag, a sort of corset,
Is ready to devour her again.
The wine is drained from the glass.
Her smile has become a slit.
The single pearl
Gulped,
Cloaked in shadow again.

You could never picture me in the pockets of my West Coast.
I flew out of your story and into another, and then
Even into another, always the phoenix.

No longer yours, but his.
No longer his, but mine.
Perhaps I suffered these little deaths to forge a heaven with him.

A king, he’d follow me to the ends of the earth, thrice over.
His queen I’m still too shy to let shine through,
A star stubbornly obscured by cloud.

Though before I complained of rain,
On the Island it never bothered me.
Even in the dead of winter it kept the grass emerald-green.

An emerald city:
Ivy shrouded trees; moss fluorescent.
Our castles were those green giants.

Siamese blue to denim blue.
Betwixt the Spit & Seabroom.
It was all I dreamed and ever wanted.

The only thing missing was the garden, the garden,
Sheltered by walls made of cob.
Or a whole house, the air inside delectable.

Tendril of dream,
Is a cinder girl deserving of bees,
Turning honey into mead, of wild things?

No. Exiled to a foreign land,
A barren land; the ghetto forest.
Those halcyon years now only a memory.

Ridiculous to expect the bald
Rocks to yield to a surfer’s paradise, of
Blue-green ocean. Long hairs cannot thrive under puritans’ eyes.

Green things tremble for sun.
For all the rain, I remember the sun,
Filtering down through the forest canopy,

Upheld by the cathedral’s true pillars
Rather than these thrifty spindles. In reverence of true
Beauty, all is quiet & hushed.

The birth of a princess may bring us back.
Pioneers, we’re still in search of our happy ending,
To live lush in nature’s majesty.

I know the Pacific is still out there
Roaring somewhere,
Crashing itself onto stony beaches.

Mists wreath those mountains.
The drums beat.
That muted boom, my thud of heart.

There is nothing to pinpoint of the strange beast.
Only images,

Blurred and refracted,
Fleeing down a hallway of mirrors.

O maestro of conditions,
It is you they are in love with,

A dark sun unaware of its own orbiting planets.
They are the cause of all of it.

Every comet, every lack
Leaves a trail etched across your sky.

And in their eight eyes
Something seemingly whole becomes distorted,

A piece cut out made separate from the rest.
From this gulf appears a war engine,

A bite of venom,
The desire to **** what they can’t.

Darling of judge and jury,
Blame absolves them of all responsibility.

You are the sole carrier of their weakness.
They fill your skin with their nightmares.

Flesh as fruit
Is strictly poisonous,

Bleaching the sheets of the saints.
Now no more –

Vanished,
Like what was found and then lost.

Like what was married and
Soon divorced.

Still, notoriety is a phantom
Floating in cages,

Star player at a masquerade,
Costumed with your own face.

comely, maybe
but not beautiful
my features are as round as vowels
and I carry the moon in my hips
I am an unpolished beauty
smooth pebbles resting at the bottom
of a cold clear stream
with an empty purse
imagination
my only currency

in this world
I am a shrinking violet
occasionally a rose
february-white
caught in your button-loop
long-stemmed red roses
stalk runways
hollywood bombshells
are bubbly as champagne
and full of flesh and light

but *** sans love
is still an empty bathtub
whatever happened to pin-up girls
long cigarette holders
and muted photographs?
I am distorted
in the fish-eye view
of the modern lens

in my fantasies
I am no longer sand and loam
I glow like a tall slim candle
though I am often numb and dumb
and my girls are as absent
as long lost unicorns
I am the bohemian princess

I travel through foreign lands
clothed in exotic costume
a jewelled headdress, and
indian pyjamas coloured sapphire,
turquoise and cayenne-red
my feet are near bare
and my hippie hair
is a mass of blonde curls

I take a sojourn in
southern california
warm desert air
soft against my skin
I surf in the salty sea
held buoyant by the waves
a sunset stains the sky tangerine
the palm trees
black against the orange light
click teasingly in the breeze

Could it have happened any differently?
Perhaps. But which fork in the road was it?
Where does the path start to unravel?
A change in the way things are
Would have changed everything else as well.

For all the mistakes bemoaned, lessons
Learned – unless vanity stands in the way –
Or the same error repeated
With different actors playing the same role –
Hero and villain alike.

And the split between people of insignificance and
The people that matter – faces splashed on
Tabloids and magazine covers –
The invisible reduced to mere shadows
Floating on the fringes of light.

Shadows have a way of defining the light.
People have a way of shaping our lives,
Setting in motion our trajectories,
The way banks and boulders guide water in a river –
The wind, a fallen tree.

No absence made a hole in the day of someone
Who was never there.
What’s out of our control – people,
Sequences of events. What’s inevitable –
How we choose to react.