Night crawls like lizards
with tongues of opalescent horror

Sleep is a blanket on someone else's bed

and I jolt and gasp like she had

connected by that plastic tube
to a life finally withdrawn

Sleep is torn from my lungs which choke on fears that close around me as coal dust

and all I see in the dark are the
worst things she suffered

from cancer's tongues of horror

Then radiance reaches from your woken soul and you recite Quran over me
like a Southern faith healer

with laying on of hands

They slither away from the light you've conjured and I sleep oh I sleep

Daylight memories appear as camera flashes

petty poltergeists easily banished

Yet darkness always follows day as an anxious housemaid

Memories slip their skins and crawl from discarded scales again where they shouldn't

The Good Lord drowned you in dreams of our best times

I couldn't save you from that clutching thing that had stolen far too much

yet I am caught in the happy moment when you bobbed on the surface for three sunlit seconds

saw me from eyes that had closed forever, I swear, and blew me a kiss

with a hand from your lips that had forgotten how to sound even the smallest words

before sinking back into the depths of the peace that enclosed you as a shroud

Uselessly I watched you
glide with her
holding her tightly
while she sank into your embrace

You drew her breath
made her heart race
placed a hand upon her shoulder

It hurt

You cast me a you-can't-do-anything glance
and I winced at how light-footed you are

It was obvious
you have done this often
thief with a devilish grin
crusher of hopes

When you left with your arm around her
you looked back smugly
You're used to getting what you want
Your gloating broke me

I curse you cancer
brutal romancer
irresistible lover
****** good dancer

You noticed that I was torn
and began pulling edges together
Stitching them
O God it hurt

Stitch by stich You closed wounds
while I looked away with gritted teeth

but said, more more

They say pain is the well of wisdom
I have drunk a full bucket
and am quenched

but I want more … please

Great Healer most merciful
see my older brother

take Your needle and thread …

Sleep disrobes
shyly with the
coyest eyes

Tonight she is early

She takes my hand
and we waltz

kisses my eyelids
my forehead

I am unglued

We are one

lost

I reach for her
before dawn

I feel the warmth
where she lay

She is gone

I wash and bend
to pray

to thank  

She kisses my eyelids
breathes on
my neck

Has she sensed
that my mind is
with another?

She slips from
the room again

I feel her

close

gone

A caliph trembles at the sound of aircraft
like a dachshund beaten too much while
his pack snap and bite and **** their legs
to *** on a better world

Their state is a chewed thighbone
covered in flies yet they mint coins
in gold and silver and praise God as they
throw effeminate teenagers off rooftops

A Turkish fisherman with a large shoe
stuffs cash into a pregnant pocket
and crams frightened souls into the shoe
which sinks on the horizon like the sun

Assassins have the crescent moon
in their left hands ***** pictures
on their phones and tight vests
leaking lava

She searched for tips on eyeliner
the day she erupted as a volcano
leaving her sheer blouse to mourn
at home on the ironing board

The world has become as mad
as Napoleon in stiletto heels
cross-legged on the back
of a tortoise singing Hey Jude

My soul is an empty crisps packet
caught in the sour mood of a shouting wind

She snarled and I careened
— a drunken trapeze artist

That moody spirit let me fall upon a mountain top
at the feet of a brick of a black man shouting

he has seen the promised land!

My heart cracked as an egg that slipped from the bench:
his people still stumble in chains

My shouting mistress carried me aloft and I fell
in the slit of a rock upon another summit
where the finger of God scratched Hebrew into stone

The wizard’s face burned as the Lord’s shadow
passed before him as the orange tears of a volcano

I know, I heard him call up to the Almighty. They’ll
melt their earrings and innocence and cast a calf

Beneath the roar of my mistress’s temper I heard the
wizard plead like a lawyer, forgive them Lord

They don’t yet know

That temper carried my dizzy soul to another peak and
I beheld a young man slap the Devil on his left cheek

Get thee hence, Satan, he said, rejecting a throne
offered by that beauty with the stinging face

I heard the wind hiss and I cringed awaiting another crash

I broke my fall like a child off a bed and marvelled
at the sight —Oh God what a sight!

ten thousand prostrating candles hurling shadows from a cave
and ripping sleep off a man with the bugle command, Recite!

My soul my soul! I am overcome. I begged the wind to return me
to my home and she took pity and swept me in a final gust