There is no doubt about it:
You have always loved me.
A leonine love.
A love that swells in the womb and the heart
From the very first twinkle in the eye.

Hit play.

Your eyes are swampish,
Mistrustful and marinated in cheap wine,
Shot through with blood, preserved in your own saltwater.
Those alligator eyes
That watch your girls,
Watch your girls board a train and draw away
Into the rest of their lives.
Leaving you stewing in twelve years’ worth of regret.

Years ago,
I used to pinch your forearms -
Watch the skin crepe up
Between my four year old fingers.
Thin blood. Tired skin.
Silently you eat your breakfast of pills and toast at the kitchen counter.
Throw in a horrid hacking cough to remind us you’re still here.
You always write everything down.
As if to tattoo it into your memory.

If you’ve locked the door behind you, it’ll be alright.
If you’ve got half a bottle left.
If you’ve left no trace on the bathroom carpet.
If you’ve woken up in the morning.
You can feel my eyes watching you.

You spend your days watching
Daytime TV, eating salad cream sandwiches and
Hit the bottle at a safe distance from noon.
Safe enough.
Your lipsticks have gone stale,
Now it’s porous skin, sweat stains, grey hair.
I find you poring over bank statements and local newspapers.
Scouring for a job, you say,
And clippings of your daughters
At school functions, clasping exam results.
You keep them in a cereal box that we covered in paint
Age five. We’re in double figures now.
I get drunk on weeknights.

Rewind.

Hold me.
Ball of flesh and screams
And you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.

I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.

Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve

Credit for my courage--

I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
If your wife wouldn't let you go
That proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
Wouldn't she want you to be happy?

I think now
If I felt less I would be
A better person. I was
A good waitress.
I could carry eight drinks.

I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus--
In the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
Is moving away. With one hand
She's waving; the other strokes
An egg carton full of babies.

The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.

Light comes with day
Darkness comes with night
Listen to your heart; it’s usually always right.
Keep it hidden, locked away.
Don’t let anyone in, make sure all stay out.
Make sure your lock is nice and stout.

You must not let your guard fall,
For if you do, then so will you.
They’ll take advantage if you let them in.
Lead you to believe all their lies and rip your heart apart.
Their love is false, you can feel it in your heart.

Don’t fall for their act,
For all love is, is a lifelong trap.
If you see them blindly, you won’t see your landing.
You won’t see their deceit until it’s too late.
Not until you’ve given your heart; for them to break.

So shield your heart, lock it away.
Don’t you let anyone in, for if you do……  
It will only be anger and pain you will feel in the end.
Keep it safe, don’t be a fool.
For love can be exceedingly cruel.

I want to die choking on my own tears,

So that I can taste something real

Right before the light fades.

I want to drown in them

Wade into my own

Salty, watery disappointments.

I want every open sore on my body

To sting and ache and throb

So that I can remember where I came from,

How I got here.

I want to sink to the bottom of a sea

made from my own eyes

thrashing about

clutching at nothing

Right before the light fades

You can feel a sight
at eight thirty on a summer night
air turns a deep blue
and it stays completely still until you brush it aside
air reflects blue and shoots it out
and now everything is blue
goodbye sun
hello black felt sky
your glimmer is showing
but only in some spots
someone bigger than you and i poked some holes
through a backlit scrap
of undeveloped film
to force the light and the heat through
but that's gone
as the heat leaves
the dark slowly breathes
the air turns blue
for twenty minutes
everything becomes diverse in uniform
you can lay your head between the dirt and the air
hear blue, feel blue.
and then it goes away

Glassed with cold sleep and dazzled by the moon,
out of the confused hammering dark of the train
I looked and saw under the moon's cold sheet
your delicate dry *******, country that built my heart;
and the small trees on their uncoloured *****
like poetry moved, articulate and sharp
and purposeful under the great dry flight of air,
under the crosswise currents of wind and star.
Clench down your strength, box-tree and ironbark.
Break with your violent root the ****** rock.
Draw from the flying dark its breath of dew
till the unliving come to life in you.
Be over the blind rock a skin of sense,
under the barren height a slender dance...
I woke and saw the dark small trees that burn
suddenly into flowers more lovely that the white moon.