Thursday 23 October 2008

Insects

This is me; stroking the back of a grasshopper to read your fortune,
This is me; cutting the veins from my arms and lacing them to make a net
To trap scores of butterflies hopeless in fog.
This is me; spreading my toes out and in so I don’t fall.
Into the abyssal mess they call forgotten.
This is me; lying and lying and linking in letters of salt.
I am sighing not singing when the boy plays the piano so well.
So so well. He runs his keys up my shoulders and rumbles my neck with his chords.
This is me; reaching out with tweezers into thick-as-dough shadows, attempting a hold.
Weightless and swallowing lead.
This is me; a wire figure on a table edge – stuck upright with tac.
This is me; breathing my secrets into the ear of a crow
But they catch on the feathers and stay.
Then they fly.
And my nets are too heavy with insects to trap them back.
And I read the grasshopper too hard and
Break its back on the heart-line.

Saturday 18 October 2008

October

When I saw the meteor in the back garden - next to the broken deckchair and the knocked over bins and in-between bites of October apple harvest - I first thought it was a light bulb. Perhaps it had dropped out of the streetlamp on the other side of the fence. Then I remembered that light bulbs only work if they are plugged in and it couldn’t be. I put down the core of the apple.

It was warm like a baby and rough like a brick. It seemed homeless and lost cupped in my hands.

It did not belong to me.

So I made a sling out of elastic and blankets and strung it between the gate posts. I leaned with all my weight and aimed up to the darkened sky.

Off it flew, lost again, hurtling for the moon that was half in shadow.

It landed in dark lunar lands and for a few seconds the moon had a tiny glowing beauty spot on the unlit side of her face.

The rock had left a hole in the ground and a trace of silver remained lining the sides of it. Like luminescent butter in a cake tin.

I planted the apple core in the hole. It grew fast and strong. Within a year it was bearing fruit. Apples with the slightest trace of silver on their skin.

Perhaps they glow ever just a little on half moon nights.

Saturday 11 October 2008

Love Letter

Beautiful girl;
Don’t let me see your fathers die under crumbling piles of stone.
Windpipes caved in beneath weight of legend they can tell no more.
Don’t let me see your garden turn to dust when you water it with too much grief.
Please turn you lips from the kiss of poison toads that catch you by the edge of stagnant ponds
As you lie in wait for swords that fail to surface.
Don’t let me see lovers prepared from thorns cut your thighs
Inside moonless nights.
Dark stains on white sheets.
Keep the washer women’s whispers from my ears as they wring your

Darkness into murky basins.
Beautiful girl.
I traced you to the back of my hand so that I might watch you fade in ink,
Over and over.
Don’t let me see the bottle run dry before I can remake your outline, I would Scratch you out in

Blood and bone
So that I could hold you in a bell-jar.
Vacuous prison to keep you from decay.
Don’t give me cause to jump into your grave and run my fingers over your

Eaten skin.
Once clean with days of rippled glass reflections. Libraries full of sunlight where you would watch the dust rise in luminous shafts off aching tomes.
Beautiful girl,
Blind my eyes before the altar of your descent.
Put them out with burning rods before I feel the shame of tragic leads.
Put them out,
Beautiful girl,
Before I see what I have done.