dear you, she drove away before
I could write a living song
about a world in which I’d never be
wrong. remember your record
about an empty cage?

well, when I spin it
our voices slide into one.

a long time ago I loved
everything vespertine but realized
they flew away
after I woke up and blinked in the sun,

too dumb to dance
and too stupid to run.

(lots and lots of love and thanks to Mr Fran Healy, the Scottish one.)

I know my wandering days are over. I’ve
had enough of the fast cars
and diamonds which only shine twice
but spin like stars. I’ve
hung up my jacket, shut the door
on all the strangers and
bought my own felt sofa
to sip coffee on. I have a clean pillow
and blue stationery
to scribble letters to you. I’ve even gotten my
own address, it’s

<><Room Nineteen,
<><Hotel Lautréamont,

near the twin roads of philosophy and despair.

Where are you going to, and will
I miss you? Your footsteps once
streaked a spray of silver
over the sea and my heart, next to
the girls in skirts
who play their music so loud.
Child, I saw you in the café
and you were laughing, a cigarette
between your stick fingers.
Child, it's all right

that I've found my world without losing yours.

for cynthia

Poetry is the worst form of art. Instead of
dipping brushes into warm paint, pastel

colours, I drown my mind in ink. Instead of
drawing what I love most, starry nights

and sunflowers in a vase, I yell about
what cuts my fingers, what makes me

retreat under my blankets. I
attack paper like a flame, scarcely

not charring its edges, spewing
the alphabet, so jumbled

you can’t tell L and H apart.
Baby, I’m only gentle with your letters.

hot date

saturday = blinking late in new light
and rolling over unwashed sheets
to wake up to yourself, like an
abandoned baby. instinctively,
you take a breath – daisies and
air – to fill your lungs,
bring yourself closer to your heart
than you already are.

you want to. dinner by the rainy pier,

staring at the moon and
binding its silver around both of you,
cold lobster in warm restaurants
and talking about dimensions,
photographs. sitting in the back
of a taxi, strange scents on leather,
black and white

skin-on-skin;

freeze-frame.

This, sadly, is tomorrow.

we have been fighting a war that is about to take us over the skies, pretending to be white horses with our toothpick swords and aluminium foil armour.

it is only when we cannot breathe that we will begin to discover.

Down begins with geometry
then lowers itself to algebra. I
slice its apples with my tongue
and rearrange them erect

like glass skyscrapers;

that have corners to cut you with

crevices to hide myself in.

Good and Evil are attempting to play chess with each other. They never end a game because Good does not think sacrificing pawns is right and Evil cheats way, way too much. Minutes before Evil banishes the board to the ground in a hissy fit, the pieces are actually moving so fast you can't tell their shape or their colour.

farting around, a prelude to nihilism

Good and Evil are having breakfast. Good asks, “Do you want anything with that?”, but Evil ignores him. Good figures Evil is in one of his moods, so Good takes a slice of bread, spreads the butter, and takes a large bite. Suddenly, he begins to look very ill.

“I poisoned the butter,” says Evil, grinning horribly while Good foams at the mouth. Soon, Good collapses out of his chair. “Still, I win, because I didn’t lie,” he mumbles, before his eyes go white.

“What use is that?” wonders Evil, shaking his head.

in your green house
you’ve been watching television
for twenty-five years. the stale popcorn
and lack of light

have turned you deep purple, like
a turgid grape, swelling with
those shows,
those strobe-light mascara-ed shows
that ooze out fake laughter
and leave you dry. you're getting fat.
dust-storm, dust-man,

you sweep millions off their feet.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

the table could be
slanting – my chair glued to the ceiling; but in
my coffee I see double reflections,
and the apples resemble your lips.

The Price

last night, under the stars, he killed the boy
whilst they were sleeping
and buried him in clumps of warm earth
for the secret medicine. but today is subtly
spring and bleached green, methylene blue;
rather new, tangible.

the brown burrows have metamorphosised
into apartments with balconies, and
under the battery-operated sun
the mouse is brushing his teeth
and ready for a new start. he thinks
he is a man
and expostulates bad French – still, he is
unknowing, the only path for immortality
and the old body is already missing.

if you have a fresh poem
dripping with dew
don’t let it trickle out of your mouth,
down your shirt
and into the grass. water doesn’t leave
stains alive enough. leave it in your head
to ferment and grow a mind of its own
till it beats its wings so hard
you bleed,
then cut it out with a pen. when
it unfolds its edges;
bet your life on it, the butterfly.

Dot

you are pink like june, like beauty,
but you have been infested
and infected
time and time again. sometimes you
aren’t even a primary colour; you are
a tossed easel
in back alleys, with needles
bleeding onto you. wherever you go
the clocks will turn their knifed hands
to slice you.

you cannot escape this third dimension,
not like a little boy
in a magic book.

let them follow you.

I don’t want to die nine feet underground,
in a glass case
with shrivelled plants and skin as presents. I
spent my years preserved in concrete and wine,
bobbing around in a test tube
till they threw me out, and
I will go bad the same way. stiffly,
the ants will come whispering
about phoenixes and the immortal - only
ghosts rise from ashes – no, I don’t
want to die at all.