with a shiny knife in my spine

I have been
beaten, spat and splattered
to lie dead in the midst of my country.

the faces I once carved into my hall of heroes
crane to bet on my wounds

and gather to play chess with the
broken knights of my bones,

spinning me like a revolution of liars.

Heart on a Platter

It was like seeing a pearl's oyster
or a cocooned caterpillar.

I could see my reflection
in the finely polished silver,
but it was black and dull
and there were creases where it had been
crumpled like an overused rag.

There was a needle dangling from one ventricle,
and grey threads were coming loose.
It might have been hard enough to scratch the table.

Trying to feel if it was real,
I prodded, to see my finger
sink through a new crevasse
that was tender and raw inside.

Realizing my disappointment,
she said, "I will give you my soul instead."

to Heather

we are a two-person anarchy
in our worn brown shoes,
we don’t take tears for free.

we live in the banished lands,
and even when we're asleep
on the caravans of time,
they mock us
and shove us out of the lunch line.

but we are a two-person military.
yeah, we don’t take tears for free
you and me.

Harry the Magician (unfinished)

He has spinning coins and white doves
under his sleeves,
and lips that tremble and decide. Years of
facades have made him pale; he hunches over

to carry the world on a walking-stick,
and to pull stars out of hats.

His coat-tails are long as years.

fall fast;

in your subterranean underground
you are a worm
who does not need eyes.

so crawl slowly, slowly.

I

Annie you arrived like a cat on a brick wall.
You tiptoed your way through
the secret path
and jumped over the grey stones.
They guessed you would last till July.

II

You didn’t know my name,
but I watched you on the porch every morning.
You held the old book in your arms
and chased the summer flies. And when
it got dark, going in, you shut the door
and continued running
with the pixie footsteps of your piano.

III

Annie you’re just twelve-and-a-half,
I think you’re growing younger every year.
The wind is carefully ruffling your ribbons,
but it isn't half as strong as you are
when you're off rescuing weeds and kittens.

But no one listens, Annie.
Everything’s just pretty when you’re near.

The beer was heavy in his throat; the juvenile smiley faces seemed to merge messily into a black and white sea. He’d spent the last night lying on the futon and doodling cheerful stick figures running, which escalated into them having sex and breakdancing to Pulp.

The phone rang. With a decisive blink, the swirly shapes disappeared, and he picked it up.

“Hello,” he breathed, successfully removing the question mark from the end of it. Good morning, angel; you’ve got me, beautiful, I’ve been expecting you.

The voice on the other line was uncertain.

“Is this Toby?”

He nodded automatically, then gritted his teeth. The alcohol made him twice as thick, and she couldn’t see him now, wouldn’t know how he could never say no.

The voice seemed to know just what he was thinking. “Would you know how to fix a leaking tap?”

He didn’t answer, just waited, heart racing to match the rate in which his brain was absorbing the female tones. There it was now: travelling down into his arms, his legs, and the sudden warmth made him close his eyes in contentment.

The voice went on. “It’s been dripping and annoying the hell out of us all. My brother’s trying his hand at it right now, but I just want to find out if we have backup. You know, in case he can’t handle it.”

Yes, he would. He was good at odd jobs. He’d take barely an hour, and when he was done, he’d stand back to admire his work. With her. “Thank you,” she’d say, and he’d joke with her and be suave like the boys in those movies and ask her if she was free Tuesday night.

She’d come to his place and even though there was only bread, butter and some leftover chicken it would be different, much better than the candlelight dinners in the posh restaurant a few streets away. He’d say all the right things and although he wouldn’t understand a word of what she replied, he’d love it and write poems about it later. Love her too, even the flaws in her face under the florescent lightbulb which gave out every week or so. She tutted at the quality of his meals and the next day she surprised him with spaghetti bolognaise, his favourite food. She was always free at night now, she would make space for him, and running upstairs to see him would become the only non-mundane part of her routine. Soon there would be so much laughter and a strange sober high she’d greet him with open arms whenever they saw each other, and one day she would kiss him like James never did.

He would propose the next day, he decided, and the second kiss would come straight after. They would get married without a wedding, just a ceremony they had by themselves under what was left of the stars and they’d live forever afterwards. He would have no reason to cry now, the tears all went down the drain whenever she washed his hair. She would take him in her arms and kiss his shoulder and share his coffee and every night, before they went to sleep cuddled together, he’d tell her in jumbled sweet sentences how he could never, ever go on without her.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

Toppling back on his pillow, he fell backwards into sleep, something he hadn’t done for a long time. Things were all right, finally, it was all right that he had no money, that he had nightmares, that he was dying. She would whisper cotton-soft words and soothe the wounds with her breath.

She would make everything all right, and for now, lost in a world of repose, he was unaware she hadn’t called back.

I and the Fortune-Teller are great friends because
she reads and wrinkles my palm for me:

She says,” You are as lucky
as a pair of fish in the sea.”

I and the Fortune-Teller are great friends because
my pasts will blur her eyes tomorrow:

She says, “You know, you are as pure
as a hundred rusty cans of snow.”

War on Christmas Day

snow descends like an oversized peace flag;
and through his blood-red glasses
he cannot tell if he is killing nature or himself.

the stars come out to watch:

he shoots at their winking eyes. he doesn’t know
his last bullet is destined to float in space and land silver
on a lone planet.

he shoots them and then briskly,
he falls.

The Infamously Famous

Is today Monday? I am going to
take out my wine and take a starlit dive
into oblivion. Tuesday,

I will pick a lone flower of sex and screams
and crush it into my waistcoat pocket. (Are you

filiming me still?) Let’s kill
Wednesday and Thursday, they belong together
in a late-night soap opera, and on Friday
I will gamble with chocolate cards. Saturday,

I need some silk sleep,
for tomorrow I will play a tune I did not compose
but for you to dance to.

When you have picked up your shoes and gone,
next week starts to creep up behind me
like a smoky green ghost with claws.

i know where the winter goes.
it seeps through eyeholes in the red brick
to curl its fingers
and takes dry leaves for its wife;
leaves that last sheltered
a child’s head from the sun.

he spilled his ice lolly on the ground
and rode his bicycle through;
but you swallowed the days of
picnics on the mat with jenny.
he was wrong to chase the pigeons,
you said, and blew his hat away.

i know where the winter goes,
it sneaks its way into mornings
to scare the wind chilly;
kills the beginning of an old man's last prayer
and hides behind those pines
to grin at the state the boys are in.

he was hooded and sedentary
and the hum of the heater
charred his stinging ears.
he stopped, he smiled;
and in your smooth glass pool
he tied his shoelace over and over again.

i know where the winter goes.
i said, i know where the winter goes.
it pricks its way through my skin
like a sterilized needle;
paints my windows blindingly white
but again i hear him sighing.

an olfactory poem

honey, what do you smell? the
decaying ruins of yesterday and today. monday you thought
began with gold and grass, but it rained; and
after a murder, tuesday was a dark alley garbage can.

weathered and beaten you give off your own
scent, a bit like a sugared apple
dissolved by a teardrop;
but tomorrow is busy sniffing you out.

seven am
(is this what you’d always expected?)

the bread feels metal-hard between your teeth,
and you’d rather chew on yellow cornflowers
or drink tea instead.

seven pm
(is this what you’d always wanted?)

the walls are closing in on you, and
you can’t read with the moon peeking over your shoulder
or the snowy white quilt over your head.

the lights are too bright
and on the way to school
you were travelling before the sun.

sometimes

sometimes you smile

a crack of blue paint
on a dry canvas.

but most times you frown.
then your head goes under
and my fingers claw too deep.

sometimes you think that whatever you are

(the words you can never find
when they need to know secrets
and snap lightning photographs
that freeze you)

lies in a tiny treasure box
at the bottom of the sea.

sometimes i..

Little Aphrodite

Is this the red brick house
where Laura lived? No;
she was born two years
too late,

somewhere between the louvre doors
and the rise and fall of war.

Perhaps she is dead?

No, she leaves her slipper marks
over and beyond the walls of this concrete.

Lying alone in bed
you cannot tell me what mortality is:
Laura is a girl
who eats heart-shaped chocolates
right out of the box
without so much as smearing her telepathic lips.

The windows, they warm and mist for her.