The first year of blood  was drowned in the ocean
matted steel lined the straw chaff's brittling downs
the cracks in the pavement enveloped the world,
and the call centres melted to sand
\
    you      speak
             through a hole in your chest
                      ah, no , not missing,
        more
                just
                             estranged from itself
           (don't worry mines bigger)
\
the second was garrotted on the sinews of cloth
its body dumped by the bay
the opaque gloss in its eyes shattered to dust,
as the blue and red lights echoed away
\
      your smile's apodeictic,
                  dressed in your stretcher of red
        the world   tumbles
         round your kneecaps swollen kisses
                        dripped out of glistening thread
      \

the third took seventeen bottles of pills
and breathed heaven through a canal of rolled mortgage bills.
It swallowed its repayments through a rusted spray-can
  and  swam
                              in bleached birch trees by the sea
             \


   i had a theory that day;
                     “it's all a false dichotomy,
                       one side to two coins:
                       eat the apple, be banished from heaven;
                       eat the pomegranate, be imprisoned in hell.”
   you made fake retching sounds
   and we laughed at the esoteric stupidity,
     but when the bus arrived at the gas station early
       we found we'd left the tickets in the hotel lobby.
                      \

                           \
the forth died in conception
never to know the carress of the real
while    the fifth
                          was born a billowing desert
                          but died a still field of glass.

          /                  
  

     my lungs are chocking on empty air
          they just want to fly,
           but I keep them trapped here.

/