The girl in the black
bathing suit swims
through my dreams;

her orange eyes warn
me that summer
is coming.

An inescapable
swelter of air
threads itself
through the slats
of picket fences,

crisping insects
and terrifying
an army of black birds
bivouacked in the trees.

I hear the soft explosion
of hibiscus, red petals as
bright as belly wounds,

and the heartbeat
of the dog panting,
stupefied by the heat
of a relentless star.

Up and down the street,
abandoned children call
out from the bottom of
empty swimming pools.

I slouch in an aluminum chair,
trying to get black-out drunk
on warm gin and tonics.

The tidy rectangle
of grass around me
ignites in a legion
of slender flames.

I remember the dark room
and my father’s deathbed,
his whispered, final words:
dying is thirsty work.

I strip to my underwear
and fantasize about ice.
I pray for the neighborhood
sprinklers to spring to life.

sixwordsorless

She was singing that
doo wah diddy diddy ditty,
and
looking so very
pretty.

She said,
Manfred Mann,
which excited me
because I knew it was
recorded by
The Exciters
way back in the sixties
which put her
about my age.

So I was going to have coffee
at my place,
come on over too,
I said,
which was another reference to
a different song
she came along
anyway.

The games people play
where
everything I do
reminds me
of you and a tune,
I once knew.

A world in colour lies
                semi-distant, semi realised,
A near-forgotten future exsanguinates, yearning
              in the weakened glow, of infinite winter morning.
The voice, the voices, the voiceless, my anger, my age,
                Pan-millennial youth in coming years will fade,
It will carry duvet and pillow from hateful home
                to halfway-house until half way home
It will make all its hearts into the shape of cardboard,
                blemish the fire with chemical ****, **** hard,
It will seek forgiveness at the steps of screen,
                beat asthmatic chests, fingers, ribs and seams,
It will see itself cower in the horrible light of mirror,
               sail to the sun on wings of fakes lashes,
And it will burn, burn not in forgiving hangover sodium,
                but burn in the eye of a guilt yet to come,
And it will drown, drown at the blessing of the water,
               drown at its birth time and time over,
And it will wound, wound in scythe and cushion comfort,
                wound the waking dream in Siamese horror of sorts,
And it will leave strangled in the cords of its university hoody,
                leave alone at night, touch itself and cry.

Bursting rhythm from the panopticon, viewing all aspects
                of itself engulfed in ex-disney coloured acid
                spewing forth from the desired wreck,
Hurtling profound and profane into and beyond
                ******* and love and love and *******,
                *****-tinged snows lubricating seasons onward into each other,
Gut-busting, gut-busting, gut-busting societal downpour to harridan office
                from liquor dormitory, escaping and elevating
                on citalopram or selegiline,
The surgeons and nurses, the poets and builders, ever restless
                at the unbolted door, screaming into their unread palms,
                comparing varying hell to holy water lakes of others,
Sipping the dew from paradise wing, discontent with all
                in purgatory-England whilst licking the knee
                of America and imagined Europe,
Wanking itself dry at the lottery of thought,
                crude reckonings spiralling sugar into salt
                landing on the tongue of want,
Feeling crucified at the Atheist tea party,
                climbing the cross of trend
                supplying own milk and nails,
Unwanting in the chrysalis, ignoring coming candles
                but fantasising a thousand symmetrical suns
                to limited avail and idea.

But idea there will be, birthed, blood-hungry
                gnawing at the heel ‘til bare bone,
And it will rip apart fat riddled arteries,
                Deconstruct, Reconstruct all the bodies and the cites,
And it will write and spell all the words wrong
                realising that what ‘they’ are selling is sign language for the blind,
And it will note of itself as harsh but not unkind,
                reject bribe bread and water be it divided or divined,
And it will say of cartography “No need as of yet,
                I have seen men lost in the lining of a suit,
Crying into their shoes, uncombed, unfettered, unfertilised, without hope,
                after laughing into empty lakes.”
We can each say “My God, my empty sky, my cartoon prophet, my local MP,
                I have seen everything and want none of it,
                I am alone in a narrow shape of time,
                watching us all unfurl to the scent of burning feathers and hair,
                to the sound of punctured veins.”
We watch silent litanies for graceful pardons of filth,
                in “Amen” then nothing,
We watch our age’s world rend lung
                through hollow cheeks and air in our bones,
We watch ourselves into eyes or no eyes at all
                watch ourselves read last lines and then
                watch ourselves realise and whimper
                from ulcerated gut, tongue or pen,
                the everlasting knell…

                “…And it will happen again…”

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