Unspool your foggy self-
importances and seize the sheer, visceral present,
or simply ladle and spoon
the strait and narrow. Truth skims
the surface of the mind's eye -
immediacy and brutality (always your specialties)
are to be expected, even pursued,
the loosening of mind and its swindling of body
sifted under opportunistic eyes.

(I imagine tragedies rolling like marbles in your ivoried hands).

‘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.

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.

Is my genteel unaffection
mere lack of movement or inflection?
(though I’d like to think that my reflection shines
brighter in your eyes than in mine)

O lioness,

your head swung low, stooped
on muscled haunches and still,
so still on arid reed -

is your mind swept clean, all sins
forgiven? That ravenous beast -
kingly and untouchable, like a god -

is joined by another,
and bearded like wizened lords,
both parade and bare pride

and teeth. As Jealousy and Lust devour
your scrubbed young, you resign -
fur blending and heart shrivelling

in heat - and perhaps
what frightens you most
is later giving love and life

to someone that has stolen it.

It’s fairly comfortable from here.

There’s a place to lay my head 

And rest my feet, leaden purple

And always tingling with cold.

Now I nurture it,

Like a mother toward a child –
Cloying and petulant,

It wheedles and moans,

Incorrigible. Blindly,

And against better judgement,

I sweep what little

Flaky resolve remains,
Littered 
on the cool linoleum.

And even as I gag
On the thick,

Metallic bit of

Danger (muscles atrophy, 

The flesh strung against bone)

Honesty is something I can

No longer afford.

I was
        on the edge

sprouting tubes, IVs
bloated and heavy with fluid,
monitors tracing
the scampering of my heart,
my wheezy breath.

They wanted to strap the torso
of a corpse to my back,
the mouth hung open,
slack-jawed. I was
so terrified, wild,

and afterwards sat
on the patchy front lawn,
watching onion skins
shrivel and crisp.

Everything was as it
        always was, nothing had changed –

youth sleuthing through
        the heightened wet,
        light gracing stonetop,
                  and a pillowed streak   
                                      on western sky –

and as before,
        sun corrals light –

        amoral, though not abnormal
                        but for
                        its leaning
                                on my weathered
                                        heart

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.

Nextstoppleaseholdhow
areyouicanhelpyouhere
ithinkineedfin­deverything
youneededtodaygoodthanks

pillowed against the brute
fear

of boredom,
of silence.

I was lighter, then -
heavier, yes, but lighter -

the weights newer,
less determined.

Then - before all
turned inward,

fixation outward -
before windowsills

turned old,
and aspiration skyward.

The scallops squat
in their queer little cesspool,
small moon-white
skulls, vulnerable
like bare flesh
and hissing and spitting
in their juices,
gelling on the edges
like late November lake ice.
Dumpy little membranes,
they're applauding! -
percolating and foaming
at the mouth, and quickly,
now roaring - ecstatic
in a watery grave
that looks and feels like home.

At the kitchen sink,
raw hands scrubbed clean
of associations, the untraceable
scent of you overwhelmed me.
Its subtlety was disarming,
trawling nights of salty tongues
and toothpasted underbrush,
of bundled mornings
and the Führer’s glassy eye,
bright blue. Of wan starlight
gleaming on placid lake
and raucous beer-spiked nights
across the water. That light
presaged different things for both of us.

But that night you lingered close
on air, edging the doorjambs wedged
with year-old hesitations,
the driftwould crumbling
the threaden footfalls between
your house and mine.

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 I think that in spite
              of ourselves,
              perhaps we are what we
                     would like to be –

I should like
              to roam,
       to take the pull and spliff of life

                       (and as the lonely railroads
                        and workyards swim in sepia and gray-
                green, in spite of themselves, they too
                               glimmer in right
                                                    sunlight)

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

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.

Somewhere between
Sanatorium and Paradise
it hit me -          
                             how utterly free
                            we are, so free
               it's almost offensive.

Caving and leaking,
I bundle trust and decision
at my side        
                            (if only I were
    capable of artless rhythm,
               of give and take).

For Freedom breeds
athleticism          
                            (listless,
     its muscles atrophy
the gauging of times
           and seasons,

the measure of pass and stow;

                              slacken the meter
                 of intention and desire
to pool and settle as they grow.

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.