****** spittle drips from your lips
where once I tasted the proclivity
for hand rolled cigarettes and whiskey;
my saviour incarnate in a stranger’s fist.


I wear your words like welts upon my back,
five lashes, unseen by the eye yet palpable.
Lesions I pick, agape and weeping
like the feeble mouths of infants screaming. 


This was never mine to mourn.
I’m licking your wounds now, your finger in my own;
and back to you again I’m bourne.

My days are engulfed by ennui
that I cannot eradicate.
As though I were buried alive
and the undertakings of my
past,
my vices
my sins
my failures
enervate me.
Smother me. Weigh down on
me
like so much dirt.

Memories exhumed like creeping camisados

are out here stalking once more. A cacophonous attack

of unsuccessful repression, screaming

of the foregone,

of the degredations you spat from profane pulpit,

and of my tongue, jarred, a malign antiquity.

And of what you left, burning from inside, that was

to emerge, in time, from what you liked best about me.

A fruit blossom blooming; a rose potted in ****-

I put that out after thirty-nine moons.

Tip toeing towards tremendous plains,

a few times tripped, but never tumbled.

The cacophony’s eurythmic now, now

that I recall where the screaming first stopped.  

A blossom, a rose (or something greater)

given to me to put things right.

My black turning blue, improved and renewed,

a parturition extinguished through love.

And now I bloom, faintly, in the shade of you.

She was thick, erubescent.

Advised not to give her my eyes, I stared:

she was haloed by the diaphanous seat

which held me when she shifted.

Flourishing fiercely, defiant,

she glowered, staining porcelain

like pink tipped damasks; a Fauvist impression.

I believe if she’d had a tongue

she would have screamed,

scolded me for my selfishness-

shrieking as the sorceress’ slain offspring.

My heart cringing, heavy lids like two tomb doors

shielding me like from her quiet contention,

I summoned the scrubs to put her out.

Wednesday 18th:
Should I be working?
University at 25 seems
so redundant when I stare
at the soft skinned babes,
who skirt the car park
in drunken bliss.

Should I quit?
Get a job? Maybe retail or
office work.
Some say I could seek stability
between the pages of spreadsheets,
sipping coffee with Susan on the
9-5.

Should I marry?
Set a date? They're all engaged.
Stones glaring back at me
like Polydectes eyes
from Facebook pages.
25 is the 'right age',
or so I've been told.

Should I?
I suppose I could.
Maybe I should. Or I could
perhaps
just do something else.

Threading tapestries

the tethered sparrow

laments the absent scream.

Imbrued admissions

of his Oedipal anguish

clenched in callous fist

spills claret. Erubescent sobriquets

and uterine trauma

blot leaves, and the pale palour

first kissed, then rouged by rancour,

a blush rose

blooming faintly

in the shade of vitriol.

Symmetry deficits call for chiaroscuro.
Highlight the summits,
and diffuse shadows at the vertex
of cheekbone and mandible.
Colour the apples, rubescent as newborn flesh,
and soften edges for a gentle definition.

If you paint claret from bow to corner
it can create something fuller; induce desire-
Valencia can bleach the blemishes.
Liquid or matte lies in pesky furrows
and rots like carrion in warm weather:
remember to blot excess sebum prior.

Are you pneumatic? Applications can support you-
with enough you can acquire
something ample for a decade.
Look to the lens. It winks;
raise brow in a clean cut, diagonal
from nostril edge: the playful frame apertures admire.

Flash.

Share with friends:
refresh/close/open,
and sigh at affirmations.

The agony of your absence arrests me.
A wave that consumes. I cannot clutch-
you simply slip straight through my fingers.

I’m thirsty yet drowning as it washes the wounds
which you licked clean for a time; but no more.

Blood courses, velveteen.
Alabaster & bistre limbs
inosculated, drawn up
by a methadone sun
to flirt with July skies.
Vertigo fails to fool-

we once loved at night only, scoring rind,
moaning premature world weary woes.
They appear now like blue-violet trail blazers,
defiant against the doubt of heady heights, 
guiding me to you:
my codeine haze, my shoegaze rhapsody,

‘Close my eyes / feel me now':
ours is the real thing,
kissed by the fervent fire.

Three syllables should roll easy,
yet sear acidic the tongue,
refusing formation
of empty expression.

The sun shines no brighter
than the struggling bedside light,
and rivers flow no fresher
than saliva leaked in sleep.

The malodour of rank roses
drifts from every kitchen,
where flies **** on dishes
of all the dinners not savoured.

Inside we search for desire; in drains,
under beds, between stale sheets. 
The arid well resists fornication
as we ***** for absent frisson,

the floral miasma lingering,
as if to scoff.

The relentless clock ticks
like a pseudo heartbeat,
prattling platitudes
of sententious pity.
Two decades summons pragmatism:
a mouth to kiss,
a place to eat, to ****
and shove like lambing ewe.
Set it in stone at twenty-five;
a diamond glares from Facebook,
a Gorgon eye, a quick click analgesic.
Marry overborne bricks
and surrender nature’s piquancy
to kitchens where flies ****
on all the dinners not savoured.
Probe for passion in drains,
Tupperware, between stale sheets.
Aridity resists fornication
in a ***** for absent frisson;
a stretch across oceans,
portenous as premature world-weary yawns,
Three syllables ought to roll easily
yet sear acidic, two tongues curtailed
and bourne back into silence.

That's quite a shame about your personality.
I'd otherwise have liked to
shrink myself
and curl up in the nook
under the arch
of your alabaster cheekbone.