We sat stupefied with the expats,
eyes wide open telling lies
between repeats of
La Bamba & Lady Grinning Soul.
Peter Gunn screamed sax
through the hypnotic-haze,
the place was a ******* rat hole.

Sticky seats smelt like
****, burnt toast & dead feet.
A one-ton greasy bartender
sat on a low stool,
drooled on his cigar
rather than smoking it.
He counted his dough
about every six minutes.

Shadows of waifish tired-women
floated by us like wispy-clouds.
With tricks hand-in-hand,
they moved in and out of
the proverbial back rooms,
an odor of primordial-slime hung.

This was what they called
the tropical-island high-life,
a swanky place where ten bucks
could get you an hour of *****-thrills.

It was actually a cheap-*** brothel
disguised as a night club,
tucked away somewhere
in the middle of nowhere,
the skankiest
of Never Never Lands.

It was by far,
the saddest place
I've ever visited on Earth.

I’ve begun “The Wasting” once more.

That ragged uncovering of bones and peaks and ridges that crop up along my spine and shoulders.

My scapulas revealing themselves like the bed of a lake as the waters recede.

Indents beside and under my kneecaps, hollows that match the ones slowly sinking themselves back into my cheeks.

And the hipbones…the things I truly crave to see through the paper thin layer of my skin…

Those…I’d starve myself to waifish proportions just to graze my hands along the mountaintops of those things, those sharp little things.

I lose my hair and my colour and my shine just to dig my fingers into the hardness of my breastbone, just to know that my jawbone is an overhang, just to plunge headfirst into the thrill of being thin.

“The Wasting” and I are friends, and I want to drown in her.

She was a gamine,
an urchin and a recluse.
Tattered and waifish,
scrounging for some small morsel underneath a city bus.
Tarnished,
a lot like brass that's been exposed to water;
she's splotched.
Even whilst disenfranchised,
she carries some valiance hidden beneath her turncoat.
There is beauty in the loose pages she's giving to the wind.
She is,
and will forever be,
floating in the updraft of a sidewalk vent.

.                                                                                  o
                                                                                  f
                                                                                 hu
                                                                                man
                                                                               thin
                                                                              gs: ma
                                                                             ny doin
                                                                            g, thing
                                                                           s human
                                                                          are more n
                                                                         eatly couth i
                                                                        n Into-Dust co
                                                                       ats of polite var
                                                                      nish and their ha
                                                                     ats hang at precise
                                                                    their teeth ivory and
                                                                   the smell of their colo
                                                                  gne catches back at the
                                                                 throat wearing finest silk
                                                                s (but time, time looks bru
                                                               tally through their and prim
                                                              shoes and trousers. knees sag
                                                             eyes hang instantly
                                                                                                 languor w
                                                           ears them like cheap perfume and
                                                          laughter unsuddenly from nowhere
                                                         crisps the cheeks of everywaiting sou
                                                        l creeks with soon to be dirt bones and
                                                       amongst them sprouts something gener
                                                      ous. Less close to nearly dead, and has (l
                                                     ike a frond has) demure sturdy waifish. its
                                                    timber is clothed in blonde lips and eyes lik
                                                   e waking almost never(no like daffodils; yes l
                                                  ike more them) only daffodils, they are not so b
                                                 right, nor as agile, i think but who knows i was o
                                                nly a boy who, from across the street noticed, a girl
                                               pressed between death,
                                                                                                     laughing like a *****

The devout of Saint Sophia, the ones who prayed
Venerated, ******-martyr, holy hunger
The priestesses, vestal tombs. Virgins of Etrusca
What do they know of me?
Waifish, heart-sad, victim of ill womanhood
Persecutor, rejector of the womb,
Denier of her blood.

I always imagined September
a woman
Carelessly tousled
Auburn hair
crowned
with multi-coloured flowers
Dressed
in silken smoke
Dancing in a grove of fallen leaves.

I never imagined September
to look like grand-mother
Wrinkled, waifish
Wrapped in a blue waist cloth
A *** in hand
Slowly shambling
towards the sun-dried fields.

i have(foot brutally)

               in grass newly wet

trod

the lick of

                    waifish

                                   damp

greeness('tween toes particularly futile blushed)at
beads of damson
                                slung eve,
                                                     falls

              
                            A

                S


                    T

          A
                    
            R into earth SWELLS
                                                  crystal
                                        keen
                                  
glassy summer night
crisply etched in sleeping trees

               FLOWERS!at whose

gentler fullness

                            the jagged suddenly

                            cold

                            of
                            "goodbyesun"
                            
                             whispered the errant
                             predictable mountain
                             slunk
                                       fat
                                             in
                                                   dark
                                                             i

if i should die tomorrow lady
then tonightlady
let me sleep in the tight plume
of your thighs lady
let me lay them apart lady
and i will enter between them
waifish pillars elated
a rolling vibrant howl

erupt gradually a forest
of my limp and eager throat
green ponders waifish

staid,
so sober
tossing pages
closed on clover
sank for a sennight

cream
and green
and white
and red
like spring cloudburst on her head
from stride
to sulk
to sleep
to cry
clutch, cradle and cast the die

******,
sleeping, sneaking sot
windswept, waifish
closed on clover kept to rot
fold for a fortnight

fix a thousand paper cranes
taking pains until it wanes

cream,
and green
and pallor,
plum
forswears all her working numbs
from sink
to sink
to cough
and cry
contemplates with vacant eyes
the stars above, where they reside
and when they dawn, their bright visage
where could the glimmer be