(an unfinished exercise)

You’re organic, sea-sand
in the middle of a town;
scattered on stone streets in
heaps that catch light, going out
when the moon moves
her cold body over you.

electronic girl, you shine more
than any star
with the plug stuck in your back
and the live wire in your neck.

you stuck your finger in a socket

that fizzed, and glittered, and
was brighter
than the hair you used to
comb, and sing to,

and pulled you more than magnetically
with promises of
a life with thigh-high boots, and
underground lights.

for two dollars
you do a dance routine
and sing off-key
about cornflower-shampoo days
whilst scratching at the green dye
which makes the gold rust.

a definition of sickness

My heart sinks and beats a hole in my stomach.

you’d live here, between the mildew
and the disinfected cleanliness
that is acidic. the bogeymen
would come at night, but you’d step on them
with your shoe
and begin your new life in the
tiled corner.

you would start with brushing away
the spiders
that crawl on your skin to eat your dreams
like fire, and continue with picking up
crumbs for the mice to feast on.
the nights would pass un-Arabian
with the lightbulb flickering
your breath on the ceiling
and your lungs in your toes.

one day, if the void should open,
mercury would rise, you febrile, and
“love me?” you’d ask, and she’d
close her heavy-lidded eyes,
shutting the bathroom door.

are you gone: a meteor
cutting through the still
of the night

the golden hammer of god
that falls upon my ribcage.

you were singing about
explosions
and mercury rising till
the tip of the bottle explodes

over them, over me.

you have shards of glass
like the tail of a kite
but you leave no trail behind.

You’re walking in the park, getting your bare feet wet with dew, watching the birds almost drowning in the bath, sort of minding your own business. And then you see a white flower in the soil. It’s pale but not stained, fresh but not poisonous. Just as you bend over to pick it, a woman rushes towards it and knocks you over. You’re lying winded on the ground, but she glares at you. “It’s mine,” she says, “I saw it last year, when it hadn’t grown yet. You try to explain she couldn’t have seen it if it were nonexistent, but before that, a little girl runs over. “Hey, I’ve never seen one of those before!” she exclaims, and the crowd which is just forming murmur their agreement in unison. Before long, everyone’s jostling to take a look at the flower, and someone whose friend’s girlfriend’s uncle is a botanist announces it’s a rare species that only blooms when love is near. The journalists start arriving, and a movie star – one of those with a large bosom and platinum hair – turns up her nose at it. “What a ghastly funereal flower,” she says, and one of her bodyguards spray it lipstick red. “That’s better,” she sighs. Un-awed by her bodyguards flexing their muscles menacingly, everyone starts squabbling over who gets to keep it. By then your throat is dry and your head is spinning and you’re struggling to get to your car, and you’re surprised when an old lady sticks up for you. “It's Dylan's,” she says commandingly, pointing at you with her walking stick, and you recognize her to be the retired judge who had a conversation with you last summer. Mutters of disapproval are heard, but the crowd disperses unwillingly, and someone throws it at you. It lands on your shirt, wilted, artificial, and you realize you don’t really want it anymore.

They

you say they live in the closet,
by i think they live next door.
they are your ex-lover
who now sells voodoo dolls.

you say they are the ghosts of dead lions
but they are worse than that.
they are running their cold hands
up and down my back.

dear you, i hope you’re happier.

i hope the people you’re with
are so bright-eyed and interesting
they’re malleable, spongy, full of
colourful drops you can squeeze out
and force down your own throat.

it’s so much easier to photograph stars
when you are president
and poetry flows in parallel dams
that never run dry,

i hope you’re happier
because your universe is square.

we’re simply not there
to send your theory and war strategy
sprawling down on the ground,
so you’re winning, winning now.

maybe you could pretend that it never happened,
that the leaves in November fall and don’t splatter, and

the locked room in your house is empty enough
for you not to call the monster exterminators, and

the one who hasn’t phoned you doesn’t hate you
but is busy lying ill in bed with a cup of tea, and

maybe you just might be able to see beyond the vast haze
that dulls your mind and pushes you to the TV, and

perhaps you could stop the alcohol and save your last penny
to buy some chocolate for the street kid who's got no money.

save your weapons for another year,
it’s not like the sea is anaemic.

we don’t need your love if it has eyes
that search our bones for powder
but not enough hands
to wrinkle and grasp the dry husks
of our shoulders which collect water.

we don’t need your love if it steams up our windows
and leaves us drunken but dying of thirst.

Dylan (incomplete)

He was just a face, a stain,
a lost leaf on a vast plain.