Light creases the pavement
like ruddied cheeks on a pillowcase,
warms the scrappy reeds,
the goldenrod bunching
on hillsides,
the tired, waterless crop
and their juvenilia tenacious
and cambering over field -

(and with present as marked past)

all realigns
and is overwhelmingly

                        simple

and on the highway that night

(city lights like honey combs
quivering in a black, cool indifference)

I felt at once too large
and too small

                for this world to contain me

Heavy,
like molasses,
sweet
like buttercream,
syrupy,
more-ish,

and boy,
those chilied
rhythms,
piquant and hot
on the tongue.

Your voice is
cut clean
like crystal,
crisp yet full-
bodied,
light dancing
on merlot
or rosé.

Bare skin on dampened green,
arms pendent and the heavy,
near-sighted swing
of dull metal in the pit.

As I loosely ready myself
for another miss,
you call me an anarchist -

the word rouses
me, and I try it on,
gingerly checking
for fit, style and colour.

And yet

I haven't had the time -
or the ruthless abandon -
to learn and befriend it,
to humour and then
ignore it.

No, I haven't had

the time - something I know
we both measure
in cups and baking spoons -

brash spoons sound
anxiety and precision,
or the death-knell clang
of hollowed metal on sand.

What is the substratum of each day
but mere

filler,
the in-between?

The contours roughly
pencilled in, we simply

flesh them out,
gamely connect-the-dots,

paint by numbers.
This, that we wake to

each day, that we reconstruct,
dumbly enacting

each scene, each encounter,
actors

simply wanting
to please, to cover the cost

of each curtain, the ushers
to soundlessly herd you out.

Every last one of us
apprentices, frenzied

cattle -
the grand performance,

back by popular demand!
Fodder for our

flighty
attention

        spans, meagre

senses of self.

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areyouicanhelpyouhere
ithinkineedfin­deverything
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pillowed against the brute
fear

of boredom,
of silence.

My body has taken on a life

Of its own –

It keeps a motley crew

At beck and call, its many moons,

They rise and fall

In orbit, attending to 

Its whims and fancies

(Or maybe lack thereof).

The attendees, they wax and wane 

With furrowed brows and second glances.

And yet hindsight magnifies
The margin,
Mends these cool, amnesic distances -
And there I scoff, detach,

And the thing itself seems laughably small

And inconsequential.

‘Are you all cured now?’

Oh, darling, if only you knew.

(But I’m a monument of
Self-restraint, whittled from
Rotting wood. Ragged shards
Chip off, jagged splints.

The eyes deep wells - an imperfect
Effigy, of sorts. Even now
I’m burning up, and awfully so.
Thick and stifling, the air bates

And provokes me. As the season turns,
I’m patched with canvas sacks -
For a time my steely gaze
Kept the birds away, but now

I’ve gone to seed, flaking
Dry brushwood and sown with doubt.
I grow strangely bulbous
At the centre, starlings nesting

And feeding near my abdomen).
I have questions of my own,
You know, and they all beg answers.
But yours, well, it came to me

Innocently, cut clean and smooth
Like a butter knife. A token
Offering, an afterthought.
I’ve preserved one half our

Peace of mind. My satisfaction,
You see, is a solitary one:
It tastes pungent, sweet, and
Maddeningly powerful.