in the last days of 2012, a poem:
i have worn a slow hole in my bed sheet
in my unrestful sleep
suspicion warms like a siren
a sluggish beast in the belly—
spitting venom
on every one
they leave
each, and all
like a tide
every
last
one
my world is so small
And the outside,
the sea change,
E N C R O A C H E S
upon the shores of me
lapping away at sand and shale,
at shell and sole,
and the sea (“CHANGE,” it calls) swells swift
well S W A L L O W S—
—ho!
old hand and heart.
Such a wavering beat
can only be engulfed
extinguished
beneath the roar
of the wave/of the crowd
CHANGE.
YOU ARE A WILTING RELIC
CLINGING TO AN OLD, ROMANTICISED ART.
YOU NEED A KNIFE,
A SECOND FACE,
AND A FRIEND’S BACK.
this is the way of the world:
you can be a wolf, or a lamb.
you can bang you can buck you can obey or you can
whimper.
my hands look strangely honest like this;
humble, bare,
kept short and without polish.
Pale nude nail plates,
translucent and thin,
like cut glass plied
onto a doll’s fingers
they look square
and rustic,
wrinkled at the bends and
knobbly at the knuckles,
bleached of all colour but the
sallow brick beige of my yellowing skin.
thin, bony hands,
crooked at the ring finger,
fickle in its shape:
curve curve
square square curve
curve curve square square curve.
at the tenuous onion skin of my wrists,
and elbows,
dabs of violet vei n blue
against the fish white underbelly
of my forearms
soft (like a membrane)
warm (like a pulse)
thin,
like a blade
like a book
like a heart.