Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:

each lovely lady
who peers inside
take on the body
of a toad.

Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer's
burning darts

turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.

I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch's face?

So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.

I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

for Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to ****

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux ****
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
***** girl,
Thumb stump.

Compelled by calamity's magnet
They loiter and stare as if the house
Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought
Some scandal might any minute ooze
From a smoke-choked closet into light;
No deaths, no prodigious injuries
Glut these hunters after an old meat,
Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.

Mother Medea in a green smock
Moves humbly as any housewife through
Her ruined apartments, taking stock
Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery:
Cheated of the pyre and the rack,
The crowd ***** her last tear and turns away.

Poetry taught me ******* myself
poetry taught me why I shouldn’t
poetry taught me that sometimes
a laugh is a whole lot more than a laugh
and poetry helped me get back in touch
with all of my long lost tears
poetry taught me that girls at a party
love a poet
but girls at a party
don’t know a ****** thing about poetry
poetry taught me that that doesn’t matter
I’ve got a **** and we’re all just animals
poetry taught me how to talk to girls
poetry taught me that I’m the type of guy
who strikes out way less on the page
Ermmm… yeah. Do ya like music?
poetry taught me that getting high
results in crashing lows
and it’s the ascent/descent which breeds art
passion comes from the destinations
poetry taught me honesty
and how to make a lie sound truthful
poetry taught me life and death
and made nihilism seem hip
poetry taught me that my Mum is on occasion
a crazy woman
and that my Dad is more like me than I’d like to admit
poetry taught me that that is all okay
poetry taught me how to be okay in the passenger seat
but also when to take the steering wheel by force
poetry taught me how to make the glint of
a neon sign reflected by a broken forty ounce bottle
into a dazzling beam of lunar light
poetry has taught me a lot
and I’m eager to learn

It was the eyes.
The eyes that first drew me in, as they went back and forth
back and forth,
back and forth.
Never ceasing, never pausing.
Line by line, down my body as they observed me.
As the eyes craved to see me and understand me;
But not me, not the real me.
Because though they were staring intently at me
and watching me from left to right, left to right
It wasn't me they were seeing in their mind's eye.
The eyes observed me, and somewhere in the translation,
The optic nerves produced a picture of something quite different.

The hands. Oh! The hands.
That held me, and stroked me as they moved through me
Gently touching me, holding me, and loving me.
They were firm and sure: I was safe in these hands.
I was not these hands' first, nor will I be their last.
But for now: I am theirs, and I don't care what will happen next.

I can never express how much you mean to me,
you who see and study me, but never know me.
You will understand my clothes of ink,
Cry over the character my clothes produce
And fall in love with my fabric of words.
It is the burden I bear:
to be the carrier of heartbreak and sorrow
anger and rage
laughter and love
But to never receive these emotions in return.
Not for me: not for the blank pages of myself.