It slips,
this new surrender,
past the rusted locks
and caution signs
and crumbling roads
of cul-de-sacs
and vacant lots
and open tracks
to freedom;
where conundrums play
and secrets huddle
and bodies lie
and youth decays,
retired past expired days

Engraved in time,
cocoons and shells
and nests are hung
and quartered for a chance at love;
the way ahead,
receding,
half behind
and part enslaved
(a mask of promise worn from birth to lucid grave)

And,
like an avalanche,
it falls in quick pursuit,
this multiverse of
filthy guise
– of liquid paths and dangerous eyes –
and ruby coloured blushing cheeks;
where every lover’s
heart of sponge or stone
descends to meet . . .
heating,
for another touch
beneath the fraying sheets

And all the while
in rush and glory,
time,
******* moments
as it passes, flies away –
manifest instead as flesh,
(again)
with wings that only beat
to re-transcend
and scar
and mend in
pounding,
swollen,
rhythms,
c
l
a
w
i
n
g
for the warmth of smothered distance:
roaring
for a welcome end

So,

spaced between
the tics
and tocs
of darting pain
and thrusting *****,
of ***** aroused, abused, and shamed,
a silence, near, deploys again
the ever caged
and emptied song
and lusting shame
of mouths and tongues,
inclining, fast at last
to go
from whence it came
to soak the mind
and strip the soul
and blur the lines
of time and toll,
buried,
in surrender, whole