for your benefit I have eaten the sky,
swallowed it whole. the stormclouds
scraped the roof of my mouth
and I bled like rain, while lightning
got stuck halfway down my throat
and I received a new scar.

still, the heavens were fine chocolate,
and licking a last star, I stilled to breathe...
knowing venus and the moon
would follow their predecessor; with you
having room to fly across the new universe
like a comet.

The Dead Orphan

dennis is crying again, and he thinks
his new wings are broken. he doesn’t know
what he is here for; and
that is bringing on a premature winter
which could make him shrivel.

it has begun within his lungs-
streams of poison spurting steadily,
like a blood fountain. the toy guns
lie forgotten; benign, pieces of smiling
metal, that do as much good as a
piercing.

soon dennis will learn to do away
with the literature that is holding
his puppet strings together, and
he will fade away and turn into
a whole; probe between his silk lungs
and thrust in a clockwork key. now his
tears are real, but he does not know
I am watching him.

twelve 'o clock. i come down like a junkie,
footsteps un-synched, unable to smile
with the dangerously curved highway
still fresh in my mind. above me are
telephone lines; shouts and whispers alike
travelling faster than i can ever hope to.

a crack engulfs what i think i have
returned for, till i lose all reason.
familiarity touches me at the throat,
lthe edge of a merciful knife, and
i stand blinking in the sun i once covered
with a silk curtain
and replaced with candles. when i boarded
the train i believed there was no return, but
i have refreshed myself like a computer.

in the act of going home i have lost my originality.

Mrs So-and-So was crying again.

I never knew her name. Honest. It could have been Mrs Unknown, Mrs God, or heck, Mrs Santa Claus.

Actually, I knew nothing about her, except that she lived a floor above me. I used to imagine Mrs So-and-So lying in a heap, thinking about how alone she was, how her locked-up troubles fed on her insides like acid, but in fact we'd all be listening. She was so poor her floorboards had holes in them, it was the same for all of us. Everyone hears, whether you're having a fight or having sex. Once I thought I saw a single tear trickle down through my ceiling, where it'd in turn sink through G's.

In this flat, you share everything.

Early Shower

in the cold, intruding hands of the morning
you bloom like a distant flower. while there
will be time for them to beg for your dew,
you strip – shed – and step inside.

water has become an unstructured world
full of strange tingles, chuckles you never knew
came from your spine. it forgives more
easily than any father has done
and lets you go
though you twist and turn, writhing a dance
while soap flows, taking the surplus with it;

and then turning the grass black.

the door under the stairs is empty, unless you count the musty unforgiving air. it is at least five hundred years old; breathing like a cardiac arrest. a subterranean tunnel lies in the space where we can poke bits of our flesh. once the children played hide-and-seek around its edges, but trembled when they
slipped against the white wood. beware because it creaks at the most inopportune moments, at the blow of a candle;
or that of a sombre nose.

i stepped into the world without so much as a quiver. i heard a voice that was insignificant, almost invisible. but glittering specks of saliva stained my cheek, and i knew i'd taken my place in the lottery queue. it was cold like stale ice, and i longed for the steady thump, thump that no longer encased me as a blanket, but lay deep down where i would never reach again.