MicroHorror: Hunting Monsters

MicroHorror

John Chi sat at his console; on the hologram viewfinder he could see his target - it was stationary, like an AWOL satellite. External lights were dim. If not for his scanners, the only way he'd know it was there would be to silhouette the ship against the distant star, G6567. Small, it lacked firepower, but it had the thrusters to escape.
                He would have to do this right.
                There was a monster inside.
                If he could, John would happily target a torpedo and blow it from existence, but he couldn't be sure if the monster's prey was dead or alive.
                It was a dangerous time. Planet-wide space travel had made it easy for the monsters. It was possible to buy a ship for the same price as a house, and indeed live attached to space-stations in orbit around the Earth and The Moon. These monsters made easy work of circumventing necessary paperwork and licenses, and de-bugging their ships.
                And then they were ready. They'd kidnap a child they liked and run.
                Space has a lot of hiding places. Finding them is a bitch. But it's John's job to hunt them down.

Once Upon A Time... Winter

Once upon a time Winter decided
he'd had enough of all the negative vibes.
It wasn't his fault he had bad circulation
and dandruff;
these were all conditions of genetics
and out of his control. So he quit.
Pretty soon, people forgot about him.
He watched Autumn turn to Spring every year.
People had weekend barbecues,
mowed lawns, played in parks and laughed.
"I will have the last laugh," he thought,
sharpening his icepicks,
"my time will come."



... Check out Sunrise Bedtimes blog

Once The Local

I remember standing half-drawn
and bent, my chin up,
listening to tall people as they watched
music videos above my head.

I was an acetate
slowly filling with alcohol,
emulsifying the New Year.
Suddenly, I was copied everywhere

as air crammed the ceiling
and got smashed beneath feet,
mixed in a cocktail of broken glass
and sheets of ice.

The yellow light peeled my eyes
back and back in hope
of being seen,
but time didn't bring friends,

or faces I knew
from the 6 years gone of school.
I cancelled the alcohol and stood,
drained of light, in the bar.

Unavoidably voyeuristic;
twisted faces trespassed
my memories; their opaque eyes,
familiar noses and once-known lips

lacked the sharpness of friendliness;
but in the pasteur of a bloodline,
traits get curdled in siblings' faces.
This was no longer my time.

Once There Was

Five years ago; a deciduous bus stop post
stood at the corner of New Road,
with bare twig-like branches poking above,
reaching both up and down, over my head.

Now when walking I have to duck beneath
the mini canopy; we’ve grown, the bus stop post
evergreen, hidden in bush, but I’m still waiting.
How much have I spent on fares?

I’m still here, as is the village hall opposite,
its fading letters arcing over the entrance,
having seen fresher times when I and others
played within every Tuesday night.

No more. It looks lifeless, with the lines outside
on the car park faded almost completely,
the metal bins lidless and empty, crawled over
by veins of nature’s capillaries sucking back

what was taken from her by brick and mortar.
I stand by the road, breathing the heavy gases,
as an ex-mate drives by in his car. We used to catch
the bus together for school. He disappears over the crest.

If only we were still mates, I could get a lift.
We’d see five years ago the empty green fields,
along the 292 path, and the corner house still standing,
the goalposts in the field still up, even if cobwebbed

with a moth caught in its hexagonal framework.
Five years later the bus appears around the bend,
my hand finds the change in my pocket,
the price to travel down memory lane, renamed

Melancholy Road. The bus pulls up and I ascend.
We pass the village shop that’s now a ‘Londis’,
the field domed with huge propagation chambers,
inside those green things that need help to grow.

Downloadable Ex

Cryptic codes of exploratory interstices
of The Great Spider's Web,
pixellate on the screen, jump synapses;
the mouse wriggles, but is caught
entangled by leads and boredom,
the Spider gobbles the disabled mouse.

Enabled, tails of cursors stalk pages
of planetary gobbledegook;
electric junk-food, battery-powered boobs,
news and thongs, sport and games,
a luminescence too bright,
electric letters of invitation.

A past girl poses a hello,
her words, unwavering lines
like the vocals of her box.
But 'Come' and trace my face
across the subatomic stratus
of the wondrous LCD, says she.

My space, her space, her life,
her face suddenly remembered
as a new hologrammatic screen
invents itself, imitating memories;
realisation sparking that that face
is the same, that girl is the same.

Debased in space as attainable
particles, senses of magic moods me
numb; she's downloadable.
It's everyone's space; such a reactive
rape of treasured rememberings
violates my virulent program.

The Party

Punch-packed stomachs distilled the alcohol
into bloodstreams, and on the walls bounced
the screams of the laughing tall,
flickering scowls glared orange in camera lenses.

Up-lit dancers rubbed the carpet into balls
with their feet; a slow decomposition
unnoticed as the pumpkins slowly cooked
on windowsills, partnered by empty bottles.

Beneath lampshades, a web of white span
knots in people’s hair; spiders and bats
plastic fossils of deforested traditions,
customs of commercial tophats

dressed in costume, a daydream of horror,
comedy and war. Masks on masks, devils and angels,
sucking through straws through pinprick holes,
spilling precious stains atop stains.

Sweat and time-induced, legs rested as vibrations
continued through soles. On skins, alcohol
evaporated into laughter when sparked
by the heat of crossing paths and candleglow.

Dimmed music raised the sound of voices,
escorted goodbyes to the front door;
trails of promised abstinence whispered
in the night until darkened-clumsiness shouted.

A pair remained, a sort of easy unity
whose words fit like fingers within fingers;
in pagan intoxication they found themselves,
and in sobriety they got together.

Smears remained as the sun came up;
scars the house would bear when eyes widened,
and fake blood on whitened skin
where magnetism had rubbed two body parts together.

Wake Up Now: Song Lyrics

Wake up now, take my foot out of my mouth
wake up now, take my foot out of my mouth
I was sorry, I was sorry for the things that I said
I was sorry, I still owe you more than myself in your bed

Wake up now, open the curtains to the sunlight
wake up now, open the window and breathe the sunlight
I was taken, I was taken in the middle of the night
When I returned, when I returned you couldn't stand the sight, of me

When there was time to say
everything that we needed to say
you didn't have the words
all you needed to say was stay

Go to sleep now, go to sleep and never wake up
go to sleep, go to sleep and never wake up, now
I am driving, driving in the middle of the night
with the stereo loud, I finally found the courage to fight, for me

When there was time to say
everything that we needed to say
I didn't have your heart
and I didnt want to stay

When there was time to say
everything that we needed to say
it was too late for us
there was nothing left for us to say
no reason for me to stay
no reason for me to stay

Go to sleep now, go to sleep and when you wake
go to sleep now, go to sleep and when you wake
see the light through the open window
as it falls upon your face
stare into space, stare into space and see

A Fulfilled Wish

I watched when the wind tickled the proud chin
of the penstemon; it arced upwards, leant
toward the low sun. When the wind’s current
ruptured the fairies, we watched from within
the circulating eye of the cyclone,
those spinning shooting stars of white cotton,
as they ascended, or descended on
long grass, bare stomachs, the surface of wine.
One landed in your hair which I captured,
combing it out with my fingers and en-
tombing it in clasped palms, only for you
to take my hands, saying ‘Make a wish, love’
as you prised them apart and blew the fruit
into the air, so my wish may come true.

Proposing on a Hilltop

As the lonely, blooming sun ascended

like an Arnica Cordifolia

– its heart-wrought petals as familiar

to my botanical mind as your scent –

we picnicked among the fairyslippers

that flourished, purple; the bulbosa brand

plucked and passed from toe to tanned orchid hand,

your eyes as blue as the virgin’s bower.

When the wilting sun began to descend,

the Castilleja Miniata scarlet

paintbrush blossomed in my olive fingers,

made photosynthesis against your skin;

the specked chlorophyll in your irises

glazed with dew and formed a melting chrysalis.

Production Line Robot

Blocking lenses
listening to Marina sing
I AM NOT A ROBOT

I LOL

phone beeps for the nth time

condensed text-speak affection
sweet like milk
nourishes bloating hearts
to obesity

ours, or just mine?

Hope-fed
beats lay the track
for the butterflies to dance

organs will be knocking on the door
asking for my music to be turned down

but, invited

my body dances
blocking these lenses
I AM NOT A ROBOT

Running For Our Lives: Song Lyrics

Standing on corners with the microphone
Watching the cars pass the cornerstone
Hatching plans high on ritilin
Waiting for the limousines to let us in

(waiting, we are) repeat

Asking the questions our fathers asked
Forcing our mothers to give up the task
Standing on corners with our mouths full
Watching the cars break our skulls

(waiting, we are) repeat

Holding out for something more
Spending money like we weren’t poor
Drinking til we see those lights
Chasing us down the alleys tonight

(waiting, we are) repeat

Taking it now in the middle of the night
When you’re asleep in your fortress
We’ll be knocking at your doors
Taking your mind by force, then

Running for our lives
Outta this place
Running for our lives
Outta this place
Gotta get outta this place
(we’ve infected this place)
(infected you)

Running, we are
Running for our lives now
(We are) running for our lives now
(We are) running for our lives now

Canteen

Fingers grime-glazed gauze once-office hands
– with each wash a layer remains –
the soap, bubbling in the water,
sustains my brain, fanatically cleansing.
Sandwiches in lunchboxes and there’s something wrong.
Vending machine chocolate
lacks the weight-gain threat from exertion.
Vending machine tea
lacks the taste of believability.
Vending machine coffee
fails to arouse caffeinated bursts of exuberance
from the heads resting on the canteen tables,
perched like death on shoulders.

That constant night-shift eminence
– that’s what’s wrong –
lapsing yawns just shrugging those shoulders;
something feels heavy on mine.
The 6-berth table occupied by me
is emphasized by the ricochets from the pool table.
Even the laughter is foreign.
The break shifts switch, chairs clunk and groan,
but I stay, left to my pen and paper,
no-one I understand cares,
even the English speak in tongues.

Foreshadows

I see a foreshadowing of light
like candleglow in a mirror;
it will flicker through your hair
and in the comb of my fingers.

My chest will tickle with breath
saved for post-love letters;
each vowel exhaled with a smile
in the alphabet of our purrs.

Beneath my eyes you'll lie,
asking to kill the midnight light
with a blow from my lips,
a hidden kiss to the night.

But I will purse across your lids
and kiss up to your hair,
into intoxicating perfumery
distilling all my cares

and envigouring my blood;
the clock will tick on the wall,
your plane will be circling soon,
the gate will be making its call.

Sleep will be best left for later
when this memory will be alive,
not just a dream as it lives now
in the present of my mind.

Not just the future awaiting me,
bated breath all pent up now,
needing to whisper you're beautiful,
my lips against your brow.

More Than I Am: Song Lyrics

Verses

When I look at you
I see reflections of myself mirrored in our lakes
And though I know I’m missing the genes of love’s arms race
I’m evolving under you
Into the vaguest of human shapes

Your bed may be great
But in truth it’s nothing without you in it
And though I know my life ain’t perfect
Like a drought in a lake state
It may be less without you in it

I see so much in your smile
Our potential in how you reserve time for me
And though I know I must reel my meanderings in
The elastic’s stretched a mile
I still find myself falling


Chorus

You make me more than I am
You are the light in the dark of my restless sleep
When the waves of my heart are buried deep
You make me more than I am
More than I am

When the world’s knocking me with its battering ram
And it’s hard for me to give a damn
You make me more than I am
More than I am

Extract from The Urge

Tempered now into a boiling mass of flesh, finally the beach opens before me, but slowly, not all at once. First, the flat sea, flat as a reservoir, being sipped by the chalky looking sand, momentarily scarred by a pair of fleshy mounds that have been pinkened all over by the sun. Then, non-active knolls of pink, lying on the circumference of the water, submerge themselves at its will. As the sorry excuse for a road spits me out and into the mouth of the beach, more lolling, rolling, strolling, bodies of every imaginable origin and denomination appear, in all their beautiful glory. I smile, feeling at home, looking around. This is the honest root of human beings, no getting away from it; no getting away from the flaps of unwanted fat suckered by the skin and hanging over the mottled, natural cloth; or the sagging, flopping breasts that have no doubt nourished a newborn; or the flat pancakes that could no more prove gender than be gorged on; or the lumpy porridge of buttock cellulite; or the thick tufts of dark hair that grows under armpits or between our legs, around that man’s small penis but extremely large testicles, around the other man’s adequate penis but unbelievably small testicles, that forest of hair over there that really does need tending to; the short and the skinny, the tall and the fat, the old and the young, we’re all equals here.

Extract from The House of Silent Tears

Our bedroom was always modestly decorated. At least in our eyes. Of all the rooms, this one was our first baby. We took special care of it, nurturing it through phases as the outside world and all its fashions changed. But it was always our first attempt that we'll remember with greatest fondness. Back then it was a genie's lamp of trapped lust. It embodied us, tempered us. When we rubbed it, wishes were granted. On our four-poster bed, satin sheets, so deep they were almost purple, spread across the girth. The floorboards were stripped and stained, a varnish protected it and the soles of our ever-bare feet. Soft footsteps, so soft that only in the aftermath of love could they be heard, scuttled from bed to door, door to bed, as we crept up on each other.

End

snake-breaths
through the open window

curtains dance
open on a drained day
devoid of weather

– the skin of the clouds
pale,
the cataract sun blanketed
on the mattress of sky.

a sickle moon
carves the heat away

despite quilts
and central heating.

fingers weave
like wicker
warm over cold
warm over cold.

Extract from The Frontier

There was no moon in the sky when Kacey woke, no sun either, and the air was too thick with ice to see through, though she could touch it; feel it drain her heat. Beneath her two blankets, in her nightshirt and socks, it had been cold anyway. And she was awake now so she rose in the darkness, hearing where her step-father and mother slept twelve feet away; their low snoring a mysterious sediment that ingrained the soundless air. Her siblings were invisible to her left and right, and she couldn’t hear a sound from them.

She stood up, lifting her blankets with her and walked towards the door – or where she thought it was. She reached out and found the handle immediately, intuitively, and pulled the door inwards. Fresh air hurried in and replaced the stale smell of mixed sweat. Her boots waited for her outside.

She shut the door behind her, hearing the latch click into place, and sat on the edge of the porch where she pulled her boots on. Her eyes were adjusting now, or maybe the stars were bright enough to see her breath issuing from her mouth. It was as cold as Montana could get, but it was a refreshing temperature; one that made Kacey want to breathe it in and hold it, to nourish her lungs. She imagined the ends of her hair crystallising as it hung across her face.

Once her boots were on she stood up and wrapped the blankets around her, wondered what to do. But she knew what she was going to do all along, ever since her eyes opened.

Above her, the hill rose, and in turn that hill rose to meet another. A path led up to the top, a ten minute walk tops. And from there, on the first day, they had seen for miles down the Boulder valley that looked as though it had been perfectly cut away by the swing of a pendulum. And the only colour to be seen was green, grasslands of unending green. Green, green, green; from dark to light; unmarred by any other colour except maybe that of a transparent rainbow looking like the bow of that pendulum.

She wanted to see it again.

She was drawn by my will, I led her. I protected her from the carnivorous mammals. She felt safe, though she didn’t know why. And eventually she was there, sitting on an outcrop and staring down at a dark valley, her arms around her legs, hands tucked under the hem of the blanket that wrapped her. She shivered, but only half from the cold: the other half was from expectation. Her affinity for nature had grown, as it had for the others. Now she was sitting in anticipation of the moment of sunrise, as if nothing else at all existed in the whole of the world. Just her on that outcrop.

On that first day there had been only green, but now she saw every colour imaginable as the top of the sun filtered over the summit of the mountain and filled the valley with warmth, spreading rays of gold and silver, of bronze and copper and tainted zinc; the spectacle reminding her of a science lesson; of magnesium burning and I could see the distinction she made – in her mind, the sparks casting colours that exploded out 360 degrees, for an instant lighting the room and the heads of all present, before vanishing to a dull opaqueness. It was as if she hadn’t seen colour before that moment, and upon seeing it now it would never be the same again. That feeling held onto only momentarily and then lost again in a surge of happiness to sadness, enlightenment to dumbness.

The shadows in the valley gradually receded, revealing elk and deer like dots whose heads could be seen rising from the nutritious grass as warmth found their backs. Here is the new day, they thought, before returning to graze. But they saw it everyday, Kacey didn’t. The cold still lent out to touch her, and her spine shivered and shuddered her crouching body. She was crying. The cold poked its fingers into her eyes and if not for the blinking, would maybe have crystallised her tears before they had even left their source. As it was, they streamed over her cheeks and dribbled off her chin, but she didn’t wipe them away. She wasn’t self-conscious enough to even realise she was crying. Or if she was, she figured it was because of the sudden blinding of the sun.

Down the valley, groups of honeylocusts were rooted to the spot by the spectacle; they drank the sunlight like the specks of two brown bears were lapping from a mountain-side stream. Further down the valley, though unknown to Kacey, was the Crow reservation, the only place now for a Crow Indian to live if he wanted to remain true to his roots. Not many mule deer around there, most been hunted down for food, as they were allowed to be. That’s all this view needs, she thought, a group of Indians with actual real tepees with smoke coming out the top, camped down there in a circle. I wanted to tell her that wasn’t possible, that her government had starved them all out from hunting legislations, over a hundred years ago. But I couldn’t. Her mind soon wondered away from that thought anyway, and onto the cliff faces marked with deep black caves where anything, for all she knew, could be sleeping away in there.

A bald eagle set flight from a family of scotch pines, emerging into the new day and rising, spreading its wings and soaring, floating on the air’s currents around and around in circles, flying as high as Kacey was sitting, and sometimes as close as a muskrat dared to near a weasel. She watched it, with a perpetual smile, for ten minutes, before it disappeared over into the next valley.

By the time she left, she had no idea how long she had been there, and her limbs had stiffened and her skin nearly frozen. But it had been worth it. Once in a lifetime, she thought. She didn’t want to spoil it and wake up to that every day and dispel the magic. No, she would see it once more, and once more only. Just she wouldn’t be alone next time.

Vision Labs Tonight

drawn faces
pushing down aisles trolleys of trays

transparent as the lenses inside
all strengths of sphere and prism

the weakest
nearest twenty-twenty
slow vanish

curvatures on others
small smiles
scintillate under the focimeter

i step into the microscope
the strength reads
-0.00 -0.00
vacant cataracts

coating department next in the production line
raised on cinders

i spin
as lasers fire substances
make me ultraclear
impervious

tinting room bypassed

in despatch
scratch resistant
i'm pushing trolleys places

they rest in piles of plastic sheeting
into which I disappear

in reflection

my nose presses against the glass

all the light reveals

are two lumps beneath bedsheets

I've Been Waiting Ages

The rain is angry, thudding concrete
and pavement, affect-less against it
and the rushing footsteps bolting to cover.

Others wait with me; 'Hello, friends,' I think,
faux-friends, they're waiting for the rain to stop
and I'm waiting for her to come.

I could be waiting awhile, but maybe she’s quick
to the crescendo; stupid grin hits my face,
my inner humour a quick dimwit.

Bus stop time glares, red LEDs static torture,
a man steps in and anoints me with his umbrella
waste-off, the appointment passes by.

Last time this happened her excuse was valid;
her phone had eaten her dog and the dog
had to go through the phone's digestion, or something.

Should've agreed to meet inside - there are empty seats,
all bases forethought and prepared army-style precision,
not that she'd be here because of that.

Great. Rain, like a trenchcoat over my failings,
ugly and old and unattractive,
even sun and shine couldn't doll me up.

Hoards hoof off, clomping mini masterpiece-craters
of dirty water; rivulets slalom; streams sting necks;
the phone beeps in my pocket: here we go.

"I've been waiting ages," glares angrily on screen,
causing me to search all coverings, and there;
dripping, hair like strands of wet silk, she's here.

On Christmas Morning

I wake Christmas morning
to find a
ribbon
around you,
and I untie the bow of your mouth
with my tongue,
devouring your silk
and opening my present.

Your festive skin
is a scented candle
from the night before;
in peeling it away
I see your heart
and thank you –
just what I wanted.

Flooding Out The Sin

From yonder Eden spread the world;
the roots of peace and harmony
spun rotting webs beneath the earth
and poisoned soil, crops and lakes.

Good Noah bathed in water of the sky,
ate the flesh of healthy herds
and walked on holy lands of grass
in valleys ripe with rainbow arcs.

Elsewhere, the brothels bulged with sex
and men who drank water from the lakes
walking in fields of debauched crops,
their blood diseased with stink of sin.

An enwombed seed spurted to life
and brought a child to bear upon the world.
At age of four in all that joy
she splished and splashed in puddling rain.

She splished and splashed some more
until her feet were off the floor.
Her hands were tied by the hands of God
and she splished and splashed no more.

Good Noah, the one and only,
sailed by her floating corpse,
hooked her in his fishing net
and fed her to his bears,

so in pairs of beds of diseased trees,
in twos and twos their sighs rang out,
the brothel-Ark shook from side to side,
a whorehouse of burning hides.

Forced Home

The box of fluorescent memories
stands a little flushed,
where flowers have flowered,
and branches have branched
to broach the open doorway
- a ribbon around the wrapping
of festive ruminations.

I untie the fading hair of memory,
unwrap my crinkling skin,
to find inside a burning hearth,
enflaming the sight of withered wood
around the riddled doorway,
and the patterned carpet, paper thin
dust sprinkled over everything;

the tiny Christmas tree table,
the ornaments of lifeless porcelain,
the clock on the mantle still stuck
at 1 since childhood,
its tiny door forever locked,
the key a charm on your necklace,
you, asleep, in the cold armchair.

Once Upon A Time I Found God...

http://sunrisebedtimes.blogspot.com

Once upon a time I found God,
he was sitting cross-legged
on a playschool playmat pushing cars around
the make-believe roads,
rolling his tongue to make the sound
of the engines
and going BOOM! as two cars collided.
Then his mother came to pick him up,
lifting him up from the armpits
so two cars tumbled down the lego mountainside
causing mayhem.
Life on the mat remained static,
with headlights on high and engines idling;
waiting for god to reappear.

Accidental Constellation

I drank you in
like an illicit starshine;
an elixir full of sea-wet hair
and sandy galaxies on your face,
your forehead glittering
with our unique constellations,
your eyes hiding the Milky Way
at your tear ducts,
and our universe inside.

I was a lost star-traveller,
devoid of air and thought;
you sensed the vacuum
that opened within me,
and gave me your breath,
all fire and fuel
and lappings of salt,
to remind me I had lungs
that could ebb with the shore.

The cessations shushed around us,
its unparalleled composition
binding our rhythm,
as though the sand and sea
breathed for us,
and we were merely vessels
that conjoined its parts;
a conspiracy of the moon
and the darkness in-between.

Our new universe breathed:
Your mouth trembled in my ear
and tremors sped like comets
between our breathless bones,
and I could almost see new stars
making new galaxies, even then,
in your opening eyes,
and in the taste of the sea
on your tongue.

Wyre Forest

Underfoot, stone age stones
the colour of bone
and splintered from the earth,
crack and scuttle

over dirt;
a dislocation of sounds
and senses overwhelm
the superfluous,

as the wrists of trees
wave in the wind;
dismembered fingers
run through the brittle hair

of the hedges and undergrowth,
feeling for bald patches
where radiation
has irradiated

the intimated seed;
but none is found, not here,
where ochre leaves fall and sit,
more like a hat than a bandage.

The Garden

Pictures of the garden when we moved in
sit with previous memories in the tin box,
bundles of photographs elasticated together;
of Dad holding me by the Christmas tree,
my baby blue eyes pierced with red-eye,
and Mum with brown hair sitting in the armchair,
one of my brothers cradled in her arms.

A thin film of sunlight glows from them,
those photographs, and from the ones of the garden;
a patch of descending earth ending at a fence,
bedspread rumpled brown and grey;
this bed unmade by now-gone JCB’s.
Lumps of potential mill like sleeping hills
dreaming of the pull of the shovel’s curtains.

Time passed and peeled the foundations sheets,
or to be more accurate, time’s hands were Dad’s;
on my digital camera, the sunlight auto-dimmed,
the RGB pixels reveal the colours of flowers
found blooming for the bees in season,
arranged in beds with brick bases and sides,
on mattresses of clay moulded by man.

Dad’s conjuration has torn the sheet of soil
from the table of the industrial mess.
Hadron sparks flew and found fish in the pond,
fish evolved to its size, spectators of red
and purple loom, lounging lizzies circling,
first a figment, then a seed, then a breathing thing,
the proof of will performing its magic.

Years of blindness can pass by, darkness of soul,
of cloudy insight, and then like your first pair of glasses,
you can forget how clear the world can be;
a birdhouse of bamboo is attached at the far end
to the wooden-slat fence Dad erected,
and its lines draw thoughts of the Orient;
slanted roof, deep shadows and design.

From his mind to the page to the fence,
and onwards drawing eyes as well as birds,
instant and sudden, my pupils dilate;
here are the hands Mum holds and loves,
the designs of etchings like paintings
on the inner wall of his palm,
all marble, soft stone and devotion.

The Chamber

There were two smiles like something bright
in the dark of our pairing parts,
an horizon glittering glorious in starlight
of wolf-eyes drifting slowly apart
till twilight blinded our hearts,
and in the confines of our castle walls,
fell deflated, stalled in pools of bloody bricks.

It was because your smile crooked left
while the signpost at my intersection pointed right,
bereft of reins; that our roads left
and acquiesced under assaulted sites
of eye-patch heights,
a-crumbling, teetering, my battlement failing
against the torture of your misting upturned lips.

I fell from light to the torture chamber,
a basement of abasements and cruel machinery,
blood-rust vices framed my heavy heart's harbour,
and as your melody span scents and imagery
from our life's menagerie,
they squeezed the salent sponge of all its pain
which drip drip dripped to the gutter of my hips.

While your melody plays its devil dance
the vice will continue its stubborn stance;
there is no beat in which I can move,
no breath, no life or day-lit love;
You must stop your tunes mystique
for a staircase slanted high,
for breath inside my lungs, so that I can ride away.

November's Three Faces

November, November, the nth of November,
slow burning bales aren't all I remember;
the phosphorous lights exploding up high,
that mirrored the show set deep in my eyes,
deeper, still, than in my star-dark mind,
through vessels oxygenating sparks of flies,
beneath my heart and trembling diaphragm,
rising tsunamis on the cardiogram.

Patterns in the above shape irises of roses,
I dilate at the smiles of their flourescent poses,
and cascade like willow at their taunting shapes;
triangles where there should be day-bright drapes
and pyramids where there should be eyes,
instead in pinpricks I see him, and her, and I.

November, November, the nth of November,
the strangest month I may ever remember;
the fire burns to tempering embers,
one final folly that falsely renders
what whirls like Catherine in my gut,
for her, for after and in infinite glut.

Sunrise

http://sunrisebedtimes.blogspot.com

Once upon a time there were twins
who felt it was the social convention
to live like a pair of aces in a deck
of multicultural faces;
they wore the same clothes
and had all the same mannerisms,
and were so similar that sometimes
people forgot they were two different people.
Even their spouses
secretly loved them both.
And then one day one moved to a different country,
and for the first time in their life
knew what it was to be in half.

Secret Whispers

Secret whispers, like secret fires,
sizzle in the deep shadows of the room;
a wandering stillness creeps across the ceiling
above our shared insanity of longing,
and lust flicks its fingers around the edges
of the eclipsed curtains,
drawn across the eyes of peering peers.

In check, tentative, hands hold hands
hold each other, stroke skin, lace fingers;
new scents oscillate the hairs of our senses
dowsed limp by heat irradiating from me,
at some point some slow equilibrium
calming our mid-night temperatures

– until morning we face our faces
in cool concordance;
just a few more minutes as though
they’re the last of the last,
but it’s so hard to get up from each other,
until one relents – or resists – and leaves the other,
drawing back the curtains of reality.