A sickness once drove me
Out bare-skinned in white steel rain,
Shivering with listless terror,
Howling damnations,
Living just to die a wretch’s death,
Moving just to stumble and bleed
Love,
To be taken by lamplight ghosts,
Or find wheels strong enough
To crush an oesophagus.
Wading in barbed wet waves, some days,
We would forego the other’s bowing head,
To cradle ripe skulls instead,
Measurings that slowly became mirrors,
Tearing down the line of ocean foam and hoping
It could never be crossed.
Our razor tongues learned well to topple
Bodies with words. Our timekeeper organs
Might have grown wings before we
Plucked them pale like crows.
That grimace you pulled, peeling onions
And later, in vein-scorched vexation,
That was tortuous, but worse still,
I hated fixing jars that probably should have stayed
Shattered,
Plucking heartstrings with earplugs, always two octaves out,
And the palpable silence in raised voices.
Two people, united in knowing, alone in grief,
Making the gradual shift
To the bed’s cotton cusps.
The jaded bathroom tiles were
The worst realisation.
No matter the angle of attack, green, green blight,
Vignette of dream-affairs, forced orgasms
At a ghost’s pelvis,
Then, relinquishing bruised flesh,
Searching for wheels again at the choke,
Searching now, because things never done,
Can never be undone.
Foetus on the tiles, spine bursting,
Dried soap odour.
Door ajar, gather my fragments –
No, don’t touch me. Please.
I said we shouldn’t try again
For the sake of our remaining sanity.
Bittersweet was the resigning shake of palms,
Knowing we tried, God, did we try.
Sold our souls to stone-jacked psychopaths,
They dug us out in messy holes beneath alley neon phantoms,
But no use, always anamnestic light finds
Shadow beat it to the punch.
Your hunched, moon-face back, brave new steps,
Love, I know, I feel the fabric breaking too,
But I promise you, it won’t always be this way.
I’ll wish you frith
From afar in a one-way glass house,
And hope she loves you more than I must have done
To sacrifice you
And salvage myself.
Grumpy Cat 