3. !3
Papyrus
The withered planes
of aged papyrus
read like shallow pools
of cryptic braille.
Alleviating the curiosity
of tentative fingertips,
bringing history
to budding flesh.
Oil paintings with
grease-splotch ink smudges,
blending twelve-point font
into navy ocean depths.
Palms melting,
bleeding present into past,
the synthesis of mortal hands
and the timeless archive.
4. !4
Charred
A fall night that lingers like smoke after a fire,
The stinging dehydration eating away at your eyes,
On the coldest day of November.
And you told yourself through flickered breath
That you were not the fire, but a match
Lost to the corners of a frayed box.
Wondering what had struck you to ignite
On a day where frost bit at your fingertips
And frozen leaves cracked under feet.
A flame ablaze when darkness laughed,
That fated friction came to pass
And you held the world’s light condensed.
With your skin charred to fine ash you ask
Who could see the potential in crumbling bones
When they can not stand to stand?
5. !5
Surrender
Pupils still dilated with drops of madness
and the lingering sting of a rubber tourniquet
wound around his left arm, now drooping.
He wears tinted shades with specks of gold
in places the sun would never brave to see;
the softened gleam of street lamps are enough.
Flecks of chipped paint cling to sticky skin
in a mixture of blighted sweat beads and rot,
the remanence of his evening’s residence.
When the red hues of morning waking burn
he knows to join the night sky in surrender,
be it to the dawn or to his dying braincells.
6. !6
Inhale
Incense clings to thick tapestry,
embroidered paisley raised like hot scabs
on the virgin valleys of cashmere skin.
Hanging languid in the stagnant smoke,
growing heavier with debris of ages,
devouring dirty air and starving.
Laboured inhale from clogged lungs,
bearing the density of decades
with no hope of release.
7. !7
Home
Walls coloured custard with faded silk stripes,
edges eaten into threads by starving insects.
Crying from dank, rot-punctured ceilings,
the deafening drips of porous pipes.
Billowing drapes of drowsy moth villages,
surrounded by hollowed ancestral shells.
Splintered window shards glimmering throughout,
like an ageless symphony of shattered glass.
There is much life in fleshy bubbling fungus,
a whole new universe of slippery blackness.
Dizzying spirals of floating dust dots,
appearing to linger in defiance of time.
Stillness screams from a rusted hinge,
come in.
8. !8
Closets
Your sliver of a stare
and canyons of corduroy
pleats in loose slacks
like crow’s crinkled feet
in rays around black eyes,
Still reside in drawers
that hold what I cannot.
Your swamps of bruises
and rolling planes
of freckle constellations
geometric skin cells
and fine hair flecks,
Still are tucked in cupboards
that hold what I cannot.
Your shallow self-worth
and small calloused palms
sweating through sleeves
wiped on satin tablecloths
in streaks of liquid silver,
Still are trapped in closets
that hold what I cannot.
9. !9
Hollow
Hollowed stumps rise from dirt
The empty wood-tombs of giants
Blackened bark pieces dangling
Like spongy feeble ornaments
Soggy with grey morning dew
Moss carpets for centipede toes
Burrowed within, larvae kissing
Sloppy leaves strung like mistletoe
With sprinkles of moist earth
Blooming in death of another.
10. !10
Parched
That dry whisper of landscape,
where parched lips of crackling dirt
purse upward to taste the tender kiss
of water drops.
The slender arms of starved branches,
whose spindling stick fingers stretch
to sparse clouds.
A scene of stale citrus orange, speckled
with grains of sand like sepia film reels
relentlessly skipping.
Rainbows are for the pools of gasoline
that dwell on crumbling ash-fault slabs,
not for dusty shrivelled skylines,
and not for you.
11. !11
Sonata
Eulogy to a player piano
played only by mice.
Strings twang untuned
as little ones scurry
from A to B flat.
The dusky sonata
of wood-chip cherubs
with wormy tails.
Nestled between keys
dotted with droppings
chirping in C major.
Sharpening yellow teeth
with delicate floral carvings.
12. !12
Blouse
Her blouse is livid with loose ends of string
intertwined like feasting garden-worms.
That pompous scuffed tortoise-shell button
swinging from a sagging polyester lapel.
That feathered coffee stain from brunch, 1975
lazily hovering on her crooked collar.
The sluggish swish of tiny beige threads
tangled with dryer-lint and appliqué.
The scratch of dry skin and tight sleeves,
her nails dancing in profound pockets.
It talks when she talks.
It says what she doesn’t.
13. !13
Pitchfork
Piercing that Gothic blockade
A dull matte pitchfork
Tones of unsightly grey
Spilling into the senses.
You can taste thick paints
The splintered wood touches
Tongues with shallow palate
Poking empty intestines.
Textures of forehead wrinkles
Ripple like fresh gelatine
Among hay bristle fibres
Mouth gnawed like livestock.
You feel yellowed foliage
Needled through socks
Tickling ticks eat within
That sweat soaked cotton.
Those crooked denim gazes
Stinging like deer flies
Flying in reverberating buzz
Prickling sticky eardrums.
A sun-bleached hair inside
Pulpy lemon-tang water
The memory of dry throat
Pasted in oil on canvas.
14. !14
Deer
A hardened shell of sticky fur,
the likes of botched taxidermy
writing on the winter roadside
in shades of brown and red.
Limbs frozen on frost pavement,
coagulated hair and bone bushels
that point every which way
like some grotesque compass.
Once graceful torso reduced
to raw anatomical chunks,
scattered about stained snow
and in tire tracks up the road.
Eyes wide in perpetual fear,
glazed with crystal flakes
pulling pupils downward
into fate’s cold embrace.
15. !15
Drip
I owe my life to things that drip on silent nights
When the muted light of moons penetrate curtains
And blind the dreams of shut-eyed sleepers
Limey faucets packed with slippery muck
That immanent spillage that distracts the mind
Awaiting that muffled dripping sound, shaking
Telling myself that if such things can be heard
In invisible waves invading my wary ears
Then I have successfully survived
Until the next drop.
16. !16
Echoes
Is there softness in the slowest decay
of blurring lamentations past,
or the gentle end of a frayed photograph
from one too many hasty hands.
Is there subtlety in the murky waters
of flooded pot-hole puddles,
or the grained skin of sea-tossed glass
from one too many shattered nights.
And is there love in the warped wood
of forgotten oak-lined porches,
worn with trails of mud soaked boots
from one too many dirty children.
And is there any method in telling
a dignified echo from one of defeat.
17. !17
Ruins
The colossal pillars of chipped marble
Stand together like jilted lovers,
Sharing secrets in stiffness,
And crumbling.
Standing here,
With fractures of glory,
And the great richness of loss,
We may find closure in their cracks.
