The underworld is

close at hand: ****, poo and junk --


slimy and rotting.

It is super thin,

the gold leaf that will survive --


the iconoclasm.

Decaying leaves, wet,

cold, and *****, but a bed --


for shiny chestnuts.

Crippled, skinny gull
puddles in the potholes
of empty streets

holes in the walls
the school closed, no one
who could leave stayed

after the riots
no one who was released
from the cells

Losses have been taken
suitcases packed
the water shut off

Old town, dead harbour
where I was at home and would
have liked to come back

clean your white steps
turn on your lights, please
turn on, turn on again

Grandma's tapestries,

which she wove as a girl, are --


decaying with her.

a moonless bird
in a storm without center
some things hardly
come undone
emptiness dissolves
surfaces contours
plastic hands scream
in distant dreams
dystopia belongs
to daylight in a world
devoid of shadows of thought
unable really to recognize
the gap between their eyes
in between me and anti-me
tyrants dream disembodied worlds
angels have not yet been invented
no more black words
in mugs by the window

the propensity of deadness
as real as the decay of sonnets
one cannot see one's steps
in bruised forests

I am singing a lullaby
to my emptied hands
I bow to this force
the starvation of life
the oblivion of the pulse
in which time grows

Shreds of promises,

once for sale: advertising


canvas in the weeds.