at the furthest
                        reach from me,

somewhere on the other side
                        of these lucid hills,

a box of sun has been
                        opened,

cut into manageable
                        pieces,

and given to all the young
                        dreaming denizens,

to blow with all
                         they have

inside their strong little
                         lungs--
                               ­     up,
                                          up,
                                                upward
into the sky,

circulating light
                          until it dawns as us all.

I'm standing straight
But there are maggots in my marrow
And I don't know how much longer I can pretend
that my spine isn't about to break
that I'm not about to collapse
My bones are rotting away
And there are maggots in the marrow
And it's just a matter of time until I fall
And the flies spill out of my mouth

it’s raining and there are four people
huddled in the living room under
a tin roof, and the rain droplets
pound down like our hearts,
thudding loudly, this friday afternoon

there isn’t enough room for a fireplace
and i think it’s growing colder with each
breath i shudder to take, but i like to
imagine that if all the broken pieces of
our hearts could be fitted together into one
a spark might, in the dark, ignite
enough to keep us warm for just tonight

we are the ghosts
the machines are just emissions,
nocturnal emissions maybe, but
machinery all the same
and we,
and we
are not free,
we
are trapped in the fugue
we
think that it's music
but
it's actually madness.

Toward the end of it all
my knackered earth beds
sit dishevelled
like a mother’s rushed haircut

tufts of the next growth
brace for another brown-grey winter
while the last redcurrants hide,
blood dark rubies
tucked in dying leaves of neighbour bushes

in the middle, the supermarket spruce
of three years ago
waits its turn
growing done in the throng of all
while the sun played favourites

soon, in the cat pad darks
the ground will be given back to rule,
cold, empty and silent