There are more kinder ways to forget
then to trace the heart of things
I see so vividly  on your arms,
your public frightening places.

I want to tell you
that the lingering circumstance
of your alcohol lipped kiss
is not the only way to bathe,

not the only way to wash the night
from its gargoyles making fine young
love in the streets; the  buildings
pressed green from your slipping

absynthe hands.
I want to tell you that
you should eat more, you should
sleep more; the worry of my touch

a grind of bone turned to dust;
your name lost in a piece of cloth
held up to your face
coughing up the evening meal.

I want to say that
and yet I don’t,
the sneer of the mirror
allowing nothing yet.

More milk hearted; a timid stunt
of drifts and thieves distorted,

the silks of a grave surpassed -
a  lay  unchartered, where fray

and wound next glory became
a khaki hill without a name.

The tame of each dread root
thwarted – the tip of each snapped finger

larked and dipped its fever
into parts of men long since lost -

a thousand yards of misspent youth
martyred in the frost.

They would not defend it -
dangling over the gate, split nosed –
the fall I watched from inside,
so jealous.

They would not reason it;
splint in the accident
of the wasp pumped crimson
lip, nor my lopsided

forgiveness for smacking
the backs of their laughter
so. They would not look
away

from the wind that ripped
my threads of hair -oil
slick - the slate of
what became so readily

an excuse to cry. Their
eyes became the
grinds in my cheek;
a pummeled day

where fists would grace
and I mapped my desk
with what they wouldn’t
do; the lines of every taut

lesson  I held thick,
the thumb pounced athletic  
nib of my pen
crawling my arm

with schools of red fish;
itching arithmetic.
How could they know
which colours I use

to dot the I;
that spot
being so readily marked
with their X?