A red jumper
in the airing cupboard,
thrown over a pipe,
drooping like it had melted.
“Académie culinaire de Toulouse l’enfant”
on the breast in fractured, iron-on plastic.
It was perfect.

Something that wouldn’t be missed.
I took my sister’s wave-edge scissors to it.
I took it to bits,
all but a jagged circle of a sun
full of furry solar storms
of thread ends.

I ignored the red fluff
falling slowly
like so much ****** snow,
mixing into carpet fibres
under my bare feet.

And my heat
Disperses into invisibility
everything but the colour,
like any memory will.


-

A green t-shirt,
it looks up at me lostly,
toyishly small,
from some forgotten shop
bought at some forgotten time.
A childhood comfort still smiling
but not soft anymore.

The front’s all robots smashing apart tower blocks
with tin pincers and laser vision.
People’s screams of indicision.
Staticky speech bubbles,
broken car windows,
exclamation marks.

And a Marilyn monroe type
in the midst of the fray,
bra half-undone,
hand cupped to her mouth
Calling into some furious colonised sky
into which I pinned my sun.

-

A cornish cream baby grow
with grandmother stitched flowers
hours of sowed leaves.
A polka dot horizon
and an orchard's evening shadow
from a lifetime’s washing.
It showed.

So I sowed my mechanical horrors
and it’s crimson fear atmosphere
onto the pastel world.

And now it’s all there.