Cold

A pane of glass seemed to be floating upon
the pool surface,
so smooth and ripple-less that
it should have been human forged,
Planed by a master,
Rather than petrified by the night.

But it was perfectly fashioned from
the hush of the air,
cold, quiet and still as granite,
leaving behind it a token,
flawless in execution,
a shimmering rink for fairy skates,
Or a pane to replace the broken window of a
Winter palace.

Here was the coldest of cold candy
to crack chattering teeth.

A satisfactory snap greeted my
curious finger.
The obese air bubbles beneath bumbled
to the surface
and pharted their escape.

The ice was broken,
I laughed and glided on.

Unrealistic

You have me waiting,
bated with the promise of a new beginning.
I tiptoe on the edge of the happy future
That will neutralise all prior sinning.

My conscience has me crowned conical.
Did those explosions teach me nothing?
Is the suffering the addiction
or is it you?

Is love just a drama?

I believed those dreams were of contentment
but compromised with the grime of real lives.

Did you fan the flames of your adoration
To burn away my flaws from you contemplation?

In this, my miserable search for honeyed bliss
I spend thousands on feathers to fly to a life
I don’t have.

Even His T-Shirt Was Cruel

Red.

It is
softly cotton and, I fondly imagine,
impregnated with his DNA;
his essence woven in
through one day wears,
not possible that it
would be laundered out.

Looking for a nest,
I burrowed and curled into it,
surrounded
my heat stroked flesh within it
and grasped for a familial connection,
seeking telepathy in the fibres.

The long nights found me
shrugging on this substitute
for the absent body.

For one thousand rains
I shrouded myself,
let it hold me limply,
hoping for a rescue
and some teleported happiness.

But,
I found it’s scorpion tailed label,
sliced into me.
A bitter reminder
pricking my bare hip.

Congratulation

The compliment contained a poisonous
burr that she pulled out and studied
to see the blood congeal upon tiny spikes.

So wonderful this is, it said,
simply clever beauty,
and from the heart it is clear.
With your face we can
launch a thousand bank accounts.
Let us be honest,
this is so much better
than your other, recent stuff.

There, she heard it;
Her recent stuff,
of legends,
of pain,
of transcendental suffering blackly upon
an unyielding lake,
had achieved mediocrity in the extremities of a word
that does not allow it.

Observe.

Would you understand if I said,
you looked wonderful today,
That I meant
you never looked wonderful before?
That before this day,
went a thousand days of ugliness,
when your head and body should have been
disjointed from public view?

Or would you grasp that
my eyes have freshened,
and see you again,
the way I see you every day?

A perfect movement of poetry and
the only thing in colour
in my insipid world.

I Saw Your Ghost

Big fingered whittling
of Lilliputian gourds,
each one of fingernail proportions
with a tiny ghoulish face
peeping from the empty head.
Is this the size of love?

Pumpkin head
could never be a compliment.

On the edge of my slumber
I rumble along the mattress
raw from the bite of the sweat soaked
tides of anxiety.

I awake in the middle dream world.
Here, within my mezzanine consciousness
and fragile sliver of sleep,
I saw your colossus
menace the air above me.

Confusion
as I feel for the real world
at my elbow,
but the visitation still mushroom clouds
and terror writhes and rips through my throat.

Seconds yawn red
as the Ghost vapourises and
your body wakes to collect my sobbing bones.

You cough a lullaby to my brittle snapping teeth,
breath coolness into my lungs,
soothe me back.

But,
I saw your Ghost
and am now watching for it’s return
with taut, matchstick eyes.