untitled

in the morning
the litter of kittens

loved

by too many
too little hands

was gone

//ends

gleaned

'my pants' rhymes with elephants

my head is bigger inside

our cat is restrained in company

your laces are untied

the size of a square is ambiguous

you will sit opposite me

break the silence and pay for it

the answer to much is brie

stuck on the fifteenth floor is a myth

true randomness hides from the mind

the dead of winter will rise soon enough

what you need is a tape to rewind

deep in an owl is a shadow of a mouse

a gunshot rings in the night

one thousand tonnes of rice was required

pressed for answers I darked a lit light

//ends

spring loaded

the thing that mostly happened
was a night on the town
and beer and pasta and
smokey
late night
deep eyed
guard-dropping
hand-standing
twisted polished words
and look at me
and don’t look now

what happened a little bit
was the omission of
the actual location of
your sinister
subtly betrothed
heart


//ends

Standing at attention

You’re looking straight at me now
With sudden complete comprehension
Of what I’m doing

The days are gone

When I could point over your shoulder and do
As I pleased

I am the kind of person who develops
A self-propelling panopticon and
Installs it
In their home

Shows it off to others and
Inserts them in its gaze

The key design feature is the limited battery
Malfunctions horribly in the thirteenth hour
Reliably shuts down for four hours a day

This is a relatively minor reprieve
On reboot, it scans the environment and
Infers solidly from limited data

I’m taking a photo of you
And you’re winking back

//ends

Domestic

we’d been out somewhere and
sophia lurked around the house somewhere
I was in the kitchen sink
obliterating the labels from jars
glumly hearkening the hollow promise
of a summer of preserves
scraping and scratching and tearing
catching dull thoughts crossing my mind
in the dark window refusing to represent
a genuine portal


//ends

the dreams that abound in a city in spring

from the tram I dismounted
on the street there we met
on the banks of the river
I took all I could get

just a smile in your eye
and the sun on your crown
some murmured observance
a flight across town

a pool and a party
a decade, a wink
a hipness and hapless
an unreturned link

from a phone in circus
a tear rolling down
and hopeless and hopeless
and hopeless, that clown


//ends

ten lines

crossing the bad lands from
one line to the next
with one hand
and a sweet heart
and a weak force directing

the next line leads the whole way
to the point of exhaustion
wallowing, mellowing, shuddering
halt

//ends