1. On Blinding Larks

their melody sips
from cracks in the pavement
virulent poison
primal and long

like my poor blind birds
I will never see the sun
no morning
for the sight I've undone

only choruses for midnight
and memories of mornings past

one was of sorrow
shaken with anger
one was a sweet trill
with measures of light

2. Undertone

when I fell from the tree
that summer
I thought that I had died
I lay amongst the moss
and leaves and tubers
and ties uncoupled in my mind
the sky was filled with dandelion
and heather
and soft, unearthly sound
it seemed to me an exodus
from heaven of strangers
coming down
oh down

where once a canopy
benignly waved over my head
now only bitten fingers tick
against a sky of laboured breath
yet it is not so truly unfamiliar
this agitated dream
where mourners chatter at my bed
and suck my flesh into the earth

delivered under to disassemble there
dispersed and wonder-filled
I do not miss the air

down amongst the grasses and
down amongst the beetles and
passed between the earthworms'
mouths underneath the landed dew
air filtering like water
far down below the mourners
and the blind things
in their kingdom come

3. Dialogue

a serpent is kept in this pillow
a mentor and critic
blue all the day
and at night begins to jade
how can it hope to be
any more than it can
not a human but a low thing
its seminars languish in failure scribbled
in spidery, spit-spattered achres
long long
drone there, a loverthief
that must suffer it all
suffer directly and squeeze
and gather up your sheets
and swing and swing and swing
in isolation

quiet please
I am locked in with you
like a fiend from some film
I can't quite remember
sour and neglected friend
whose old skin became hard
unnamed but now a face
at the window
so let us do death
as I am already in parts
from promising dreams
I cannot deliver
mad and dejected lamp
that has never gone out
just condemned to make shapes
on the ceiling

you don't fool me now
with a calm demeanour
in this washing of thoughts
I have watched your blood boil
slow now
we're simply pieces
estranged
a blinking beacon
and boat separated
by some heavy shroud
this skin sticks like a mangled cloth
to be wrung and wrung
and never dry out

press in
feel the passages swim
from a wall of dark eyelids
where memory plays like
old film
of cells
reticulation
unclean, unsure
unclean and elevating
peel from the screen
such paper-thin fingerprint wings
cling and constrict in cellophane twists
so suffocating
the snake is in the nest
to swallow every piece
of recollected guilt
it forces me to keep
the snake is in the nest
it tightens in the night
to keep the meat distressed
and lock me in its sights

4. Affliction

Whatever you are
I acknowledge your shade is moving

Potent and cool
Maybe empty
For where there were mars
Now the summer hides uneasy
And whatever you are
Made it so

Dim lights unbury you
Broken words and crumbling stone
Softly loom the night affliction
From a blackened benediction

From the thickening darkness
Soundless
Tyrant-eyed / rejecting light
An uneven crawl of hunger – slow steps of neglected dances
Unremitting flower of shadow
You have called to me in slumber
Stole out from your quiet collection
Latched your veins about my stupor

Dim lights uncover you
Broken words and crumbling stone
Cautious is your circulation
Toxic flux of cruel intention

Whatever you are I acknowledge your sight expanding
And somewhere in the room you are breathing
For where I was lost only you could fill my vision
And whatever you are made it cold

5. Contours

late answers lap around
the bliss-wet air beneath me
cold gulps, as many as required
won't seal up the ceiling stare

stay, filter
now all of my rats have departed
I can wane somewhere
apart from the noise
pause here and colourize the pain
because soon I'm alighting
the lifting beams

glide down
siphon
into the overspill
beckoning the outlines

signals lull
flickers in a new time

contours
your grooves are filling up
an anaesthetic crush
and I draw out

6. Inland Sea

a lonely silhouette returns
upon the inland sea
to keep my eyes from looking up
I focus on the haze ahead
whose ghosts are shepherded
by chills that trip
and undulating haze
no voice
no peace
no anchor here
no remedy can permeate

loss –– is this loss
with sudden introspection
with my scanning of horizon
and my hands in restless motion
loss has left me at the surface
left me to this little ocean
gone to settle at the bottom
with its tortured concentration loss on the inland sea
through fear I keep myself aboard upon
the inland sea
whose barnacles have sured me up
whose salt has shrunk
my wooden boards
and every drop it seems to me could
pull my fragile craft apart
no rest
no flag
no pleasures here
no beam to break
the ghastly murk

so –– is this sorrow
a romantic disposition
with my gaze out
through the phantoms
all in doom and weak confusion
sorrow wracked me on the water
made me desperate and open
just to pass on from the deck and sink
down to some silent treasure
sorrow on the inland sea
a lonely figure there
upon the inland sea

whose hollow mask is shot
with grief
which calcifies with melancholy
my heart is overboard
my mind drops
through the oily deep
no life
no thought
no entropy
a surface that I shall not see

7. Cocoon

in a cask where I am constant
hidden article of hurt
like a hapless plane descending
like a flower without dirt

what will I be
if you return me
if the parched heart
stutters to motion
will your new tongue
clap in my head like a bell
a clamour of secrets

under gauze and under the rapids
under covers sick with attention
slowly sinking far
from the setting sun
and for no one

changeling –– I am caught in a blur
in only your view
my bleakest transition
powerful sleep
what a powerful sleep

this must be
come to me oh come to me
I feel you only
as something remembered
distant and ended and
pulled in my path through a fog

and
what would I be
if you return to me
freed of pigment
free of sensation
will you leave me
dreams of the cold cocoon

under skin and under construction
will I work with my hands
with a wonder
never certain
that you have left at all

but what does it matter
if I am distorted here
I have you to compose me
I have you to replace my fear

8. Numb, An Author

numb as a clock
with a drawn face
haunted by my beats
numb an author
uninvented by sleep

broken arm
uninvented by sleep
a tumbling wheel
forming patterns in the sand
whirling, uneven
a bruise going deeper within
releasing unhappiness
it's work but not completed
but what could be left
what corner is kept
my fever
a cloud that thunders a fiction about
you
spoiled that which was good
of any of it

and seizes my moments
both scolding and embracing
collides with my silence
ungraciously devolving
and I give it a sign

I surely am disarranged by sleep
wear me away into
my patterns in the sand
whirling, uneven
a bruise going deeper within

9. The Bloom In The Blast

come, the atomized
oh, the surge in heat
bring the bright white
that paralyzed colonies
interrupted
a case of infection
all reduction in my perception
I felt the temperature
at my fingertips
sweep a darkened room
clear of malignancies
with pure radiation
in ripples that flow
through my cremation

grow
let me flow with the changes
imperfect glow
a glint in wide spaces
cut loose the lines
and drop into the white
the bloom in the blast
let me fade in

past the silent queues
frozen in the glare
captive characters
lost from a storyline
a hull distended
its bones re-arranging
all out of sequence
and outside intention
clotted air that must fall
in the throatlike molds
calefaction extracts
the redemption code
gaunt dolls rock
their marrows in vacuum
snap with misery's
dry white grin

on quiet world
over expose
gestures are frantic
like wild snow angels
the narrowing
needlethin shadows
who watch a star explode