wake up, feel terrible
for all the right reason
   it is all too easy
          this augmentation
                        this grandeur of emptiness

                                     it is silent

     a car traverses
  another road
humans are out there
alive and breathing and asleep
                                  still asleep
                                  eyes open
                 the humans are just
                          as empty

   in seventeen years
they will be as empty
      in paris
  or new york
  or moscow

their eyes will still speak
  as their mouths curl
and their children cry from
   their cultured gardens
the unfixed faucets dripping
     in their marble slate bathrooms

in the shower
they still wonder
what happened to their lives
          their dreams
and how they'd changed
with every pivotal moment
         they'd passed up
              for comfort
                or a new dream
     conveniently forgetting the rest

   they'll think back
to the faces of lovers
they lost to the road
   or to chance
     or to themselves
       and cry
           in the shower

            if they haven't
     forgotten how to

               recollecting
         how once
       long ago
   in a dream
       they had learnt
dreams don't mean anything.

people watch themselves, eye to eye, in the mirror
so ******* afraid, if they turn away,
that they will put the knife down their own spine:
‘it is your fault my heart is dying’
they would say,
‘it is all your fault I am so alone’

so, everyone neglects their profile,
their victorian shade decays,
so, all humans now are, in silhouette,
as hideous as their engorged sense of vanity.
such is the nature of our society, narcissique.

but you, damp heart,
where the rain falls and makes
sweet sap, under that arterial lacework,
your side, lit by heaving sun,
took all that beauty and bound it
under and over your skin,
cheek palette like slow fire,
eyelashes like aching needles,

you keep stealing,
in all those moments between,
stealing me.

days pass like other days, just
lullabies in single,
you, and me, and the end of everything:
how we had found thoughts, like life, unraveling,
in that pristine and angular field,
locked up- brilliant, crystalline, and in voices shaded pale cherry,
some statement of ephemeral lust, no doubt;
we've always been fools,
holding ideals, far too grand
for the size of our routine worries

and, now,
the clock's still claiming moments,
the faucet hasn't lost it's gauze, yet,
the radio's crackling paper moons, in sevenths,
and, me,
recalling a patchwork sentiment and, then, little charming you, you, you, you, you...

made up of scattered electricity, you always leave me lost and drowning;
drowning, drowning, drowning, and
watching those soft-changing colours, through the drifting canopy as
brine-soaked seafloors meander, take place, and
me, falling,
dreaming in shades of slow loss.

so, good night to all the lovers,
all the shimmering faces;
to all the lights of the cities,
all the pleading droplets of rain,
all the shortwave signals, furrowing their ways up north,
to all the heavyset expressions, long led goodbyes,
all the sorrows, left a mess for so many years.
good night, that is all,
good night.

sailing for better shores, or abandoned islands,
      folding paper boats, destined for the mainland.
sat on a bench an hour and a half, out on that bay,
                                          watching seagulls scream,
walking through the dusty overgrowth in a daydream haze,
                                            drawing tiny recipes for loneliness
             out of the thin air.

                         for three days,
        haven't seen fit to eat or drink;
   all sustenance just unsettles
that terrible ache
in the pit of this assemblage of flesh,
        as long days curl into the crescent of
             such half-hearted lunar illumination

the sand always brings those thoughts back-
           how the lights out east
                         strangled the knots
                       in that mousey forest of hair,
eyes, opaque in the shade of half of a hand,
            watching the clock,
               with nowhere to be.

           she disappeared
like paper boats sailing out to sea.