.

She stole my heart
and tried to hock it,
but the pawn shop
wouldn’t give her
anything for it
because it was
broken

Feeling bad
she tried to
give it back,
but when she did
I stole hers,
she still has mine –
it’s fixed now

...

There on the corner it stands
Black thicket jacket
Tightly fitted nightmare
Hemmed in borderline madness

Dancing on a fractured curb
Slightly off balance
But never falling as its prey
Watches on, hypnotized

Wavered movements
In sprayed graffiti howls
Wrench a stoic moon
Against fevered night skies

A coin is tossed,
Shining under the streetlight
Rotating on its edge
Carved lines fluctuate

As steak dinner lockets
Hang around the alley
Whistling at red painted fingernails
Leaning in open car windows

Waste finds its place here
Among the silent, the grey
Brick faced contractors
Belly up for the feast

Table cloth capes
Splattered with last week’s gravy
Brown stains sliding past
Iron gate exits

Yet there is no exit
No entrance, no sidewalk
Or city street to sleep in
Cardboard box condos

In this realm nothing exists but it,
Clutching the unsuspecting
Drinking fear on the rocks
Icy glares in frozen glass

So, wander if you will
Past the crow’s stare
Beady eyes searching
A crooked pathway, and you will see

There on the corner it stands

Her spider eyelashes intensely exude,
an irresistible charm though sinister-
when they flutter, desire in waves spread,
it's gleam, he the hypnotised moth seeks,
dashing straight in to her invisible web of deceit,
seeking an instant nirvana, only to dissolve  in darkness.

She's always Writing.
Always in her notebook.
She could be Pretty.
But
She never looks at People.
Always her face straight.
Her deep blue eyes glazed over.
Always in Another World.
People always Laugh and Whisper.
They Don't Understand.
They Don't Know.

i gave up on writing
the first time i heard you speak

now
     even my own words mean nothing to me

no pen could procreate the sweetness slung by your tongue


what's left to be said
     hasn't even got a proper spelling

if i could write anything beautiful
that didn't have a thing to do with you
     i'd have written my way to the moon and back
on a path built of college-ruled yellow lines

I could talk about the fallen.
Pink blossom

lying on the green grass.
As if the fall of something

beautiful
something

you might cry
"innocent"

meant
something.

Or
I could talk about the flowers

"smothering the branches of the tree"
thickly. As if

they symbolize love.
Or something

like it -
fecund

fulsome
bright. We

could praise the Lord this way.
Some King

of some Heaven. But
that would be an image.

A pale reflection of our hope
for the wind-

fallen seeds.
But

it's just a tree.
Not a glance upon the face

of some deity;
a piece

of eternity.
Why

make an image out of love?
Isn't love

enough?

Snake skins
slough-off

in the dark
- each

  the friction of living