Poem "Cigarette"

A cigarette burns painfully

in the ashtray of

last night's tears

and is married

- without ceremony -

to tomorrow.

long sighs echo.

It's yesterday again, already.

Poem "Grace"

There is beauty in this,

this toe-dance

this belly-flop

this dependence

on gravity

and surrender

to space.

It's called Grace.

Poem "Pineapple"

Dawn is relative.

Though my hair be

standing on end

and my skin be prickly with

the sun's demands

today i am not

an overripe pineapple

fallen beside the rubbish

too forgotten

to be discarded.

Poem "Slumber"

We float

through slumber's depths

as though she is water

moonlit beams

illuminate the haze

to remind our

swimming minds

of where they are:

Within a smile.

(and someone is picking us out of their teeth)

Poem "Choice"

Excess

and insufficiency

usurp

the heirarchy

of need

and i fall

between the flavours

of fear.

Decision arrests me.

The temporal

and the spacial

wind their strings

about my joints

though my eyes

are left open

to the wake

of my power

so limited by the spoil

of choice.

Poem "Scythe"

Silence aches

its way through the

Otherness of noise,

heavy with fate's

potentialities.

The scythe is assumed.

You can see it reflected

in the iris of my eye,

polished power

bleeding with needing

raw flesh.

My flesh. And since

Ive been braced

for violence

since I first drew breath,

I am more than ready

for my last.

Poem "Late Winter Lake"

The late winter lake mocks me.

Shimmer, lake,

And show me once again

All those things that I may have:

A look of beauty,

A glance of love,

A glimpse of joy.

Your cubic zirconias do not fool me for I know you reflect the truth:

That diamonds are

never forever,

and forever is a trick

of light.

Poem "Bauble"

My world is a bauble

of garish glass

so easily broken

so often mended

a pattern of cracks for all to admire

how did you put that back together again?

Poem "flame"

You have swept through me like the wind of change

collecting head and heart

and hand and fist

with the grace and hunger

of a flame

that devours

the synthetic of dress

and warms my

naked

flesh exposed

in purple plumness

singing for a song.

Poem "Here I fall"

Here

I fall

beyond

all

beyond

known

drowning in

A wisp

A dandelion

As heavy as a feather

feeling less

than

the more that

you see.

Such eyes,

As rosy as mine are blue.

Poem "Lost"

It's easy to get lost

On a sword-edge situation

In the need for something more

with the wind in your eyes

with your tongue parched and dry

when you're falling

if you're shuffled

like a deck of randomness with

nothing left to play.

Poem "Offering"

You sleep as I wake,

early morning light

tickling our

transient humanness

as it mutates into day

shifting beneath consciousness

sloughing away the dead

leaves of skin

we still remember and

rebuilding our resilience,

all pink and springy

like a newborn offering.

Poem "Boyness"

I'm jealous

of your boyness

and want to be

on your side

- like

- like

I want to make babies but not have them.

I want to cry and be ashamed

and to be hard

of mind

and hard of body and

covered in the hair of possibility

unrestricted

by monthly bleeding.

What's the point, with all those test tubes?

Poem "Absent"

To my rebel prince, who lets me be by way of being himself -

What day is day if your lips are absent? Surely only a day of longing for them, such sweetness that spills from them spoils me for silence and makes a mockery of all else that passes from my own.

Oh to taste that sweetness! Taste you, again, and feed the hungry beast that settles in all the places that aren't filled by you, or reminders of your presence, your essences, your soul -
so catlike. So proud, with sharp claws and sharper teeth that bite with such plesure they must sense beyond senses -
and far beyond my flailing pen, which skips only for you.

Poem "Pavement"

We fall between
the cracks in the pavement
and grow up again like grass

but tiredly,
like spindles drawn to
shards of knowledge
that cut us down to size.

Poem "Tiny Hands"

I walk the edge of your tiny hands
not mother or sister
not friend or foe

an unknown
with a sharpness to my claws
that pierces your calloused skin
with such clarity,
you had to marry me.

Still I walk the edge of your tiny hands
not mother or sister
not friend or foe

but wife,
a word you cannot taste
though the smell draws your closer
to my small, milky breasts
and their roundness, so soft
that you can't comphrehend

how your skin can be my world
how your fingers reach so far

down the well deep inside me
which can never be filled..

Poem "Without You"

Without You
there's only shadow
dull patches of time
that prance about dressed up like reality -
which only really exists
in the shape of your eyes

Dull patches of time
that paste each other
against themselves
all and one
one and all
a repetition of difference
juxtaposed against the same

like alien-hood
of which we're all a part

like a contradiction of self
now the same.

Poem "You, Husband"

You, husband
are my beginning and end. Far beyond
this meagre pen, its meagre droppings.

You husband, defy existence,
having crept inside my own
- made me an extension of yourself -
like a vine. Thirsty for the lifeblood
of such a tender young morsel -
so Ripe -
and afraid.

Yet your musical voice
soothes my soul,
your musical soul
soothes my voice,

and helps me breathe.

Allowing words to form
that would not otherwise
have found a note.

And there you are,
listening.

Poem "Muse"

You smell like a cup of coffee
and feel like one, too -
smooth, slightly bitter,
on the nervous end of awake.

It's this i miss - the nervous twitter,
which only a good meal
and plenty of drugs can fix.
You're alive now, and so possible -
not hiding beneath your blanket of stars
and rocky dreams.

In the morning i'll find you
curled up like a crow,
with your beak on the pillow
and your claws around my legs.

My strangely comforting muse -
whose absence is a like dagger -
or a well-meant birdshot
to the crookedness
of my heart.

Poem "Midday"

Midday sleeps
in yesterdays skirts
so full of the forest
so blinded by the trees
so afraid of the power
in such small and lonely hands
of what they might make
and what they might break

in this house of cards,
my delicate hemline.

Poem "Bones"

The flesh tears

The skin flays

and bone is

revealed in all its

crumbling glory.

I thought there might be more -

a marrow secret, perhaps -

but bodies never hide what you want them to.

Poem "Shadow"

All that remains is shadow.

Existence substantiated
by spectrum
soul imprisoned
within the prism
of light's darkness.

Poem "Taste"

One sharp afternoon
you cut yourself from me
like a papercut
and now you return
to suck at the wound
to hold my pain
upon your tongue
as though you want to taste it.

Poem "And There Is Your Hair"

And there is your hair

Unkempt

Unkept

both

A nest for birds

and Sunshine

tangling

like spiders webs

the ones with which

you caught me.

(for Tim)

Poem "In the Morning there Is Rain"

In the morning there is rain.

Long buckets of it falling drunk against the window pane like a heart murmur. It's appropriate. Cold and wet like the fishiness of a day that flops about gasping for attention.

Reluctance flutters across lashes. Shadows are borne of light. The snake-y sneak from dream to wake draws lines in the eye-sand of sleep.

Teeth clench against mouth-fur. A disciplined hand finds the light. Six AM feels like a fingernail clipping, but can be endured as long as it's bitten.

Off. Quick.

(Published in Going Down Swinging no.27)

Poem "Thin"

Thin measures
itself against thin
too full of yesterdays fat
to remember the bones
of definition.

Poem "Spectrum"

Red finds new purchase pink consumes white stark yellow slumps in its chair, orange remembers brown looking tired grey meandering beige disapproves of purple skirts revealing green looks ahead to find blue staring black blankets all black.

Poem "Sad Poems Bore Me"

Sad poems bore me
but they're all that i can write -
only sorrow makes me lyrical -
as though the pragmatism of happiness can speak for itself
while only melancholy is at home on the nib of a pen

(bleeding incoherently)

Poem "Polite"

Alone is a polite dialogue

two thoughts closer
and ten further away from reality

that strange daughter of perception
who will lift her skirts and curtsy
as if to mock you

and you will stare at her nakedness unblinkingly.

Oh. Oh.

And then you know.

Poem Each Day anew

Each day anew

Each day a new poem
each poem anew day

an understanding
a promise

as though words
might make up
more than the sum
of their meanings

and in doing so
change my way
of thinking -

as if i can write myself home.