Green Light

What a clever trick it is to buy

a pretty thing.

Hear her pennies

Rattle in the tin.

Look at those round

wet eyes. That silver voice.

Hand her your change: your copper

your gold. Hear her

ring with it. Like

change in a till.

Stuff her full.

And when she's nice and round

smash her wide open.

Spend what you find.

Hungry

Spread cold meats on the table.
Keep the warm flesh to yourself.
Salt everything.
Nothing bites harder
than an empty stomach.
Keep yours overfull and aching.

Sleep in wheat fields and grain silos
and water troughs and rice paddies
and kitchen cupboards and rubbish dumps.
Sleep in warm, cosy ovens
or locked back-alley refrigerators.

Sleep when the animals come home
or you'll see what happens to them.

Or lie awake and listen to your belly -
gurgling and churning.
Shrieking like a wild thing.


Or else like the fattest,
softest,
fullest little sheep there ever was.

Drill

Prop gun under one arm,

hard against the skin,

each breath harsh and humid,

out on drill in light rain,

feeling good about some things, feeling earthed –

wet mud sucking like a puppy at a teat.

Blind, hazy satisfaction in it.

Sky like a scrawled kiss on a love note,

already halfway a mistake. Distant,

but fond.

What’s needed is a cage you can wrap yourself in

like a gift. Like a mind.

Tumble into one, out of another.

Rifle humming like a current;

boots buried in soft sand.

This moment.

Then this. 

Snow Queen

Aren’t you a shivery soul?

Sliver in the glass.

Slip of a thing.

What a balloon you are!

Puffed up on hot air,

Beloved of children,

And where you go

You pack that snare of a smile.

And me the perfect pin,

My hot hands pressing you to water

Letting air in.

Triptan

Feeling eyes feeling

hands on your skin

your eyes closed your

breath is like a clock

that over-winds inside

you, those seconds stored

like apple seeds in your gut.

Your mouth is like a tunnel.

Your mouth is where the skin

is thin enough to split. Nothing

fits in your mouth. Your teeth

are an ill-made cage that

your tongue pushes through.

Your feet ache. Your feet are cold

and they ache. Don’t you have nightmares?

Don’t you have cold hands?

Your mouth is mostly blisters.

A ceiling on the world like a doll house

With giant hands piercing through.

Cumulonimbus

This is the electric rain

that stings the skin.

That startles laughter.

Rivers gripping the pavement.

Great black clouds

and her own small mouth opens to catch water –

burning her tongue.

Clothes plastered to skin.

Nimbostratus

The next time she opened her eyes

it was raining

straight and light

from cloud to grey paving;

leaving tiny black circles.

Her skull felt tight:

a fuzzy kind of ache

where the rain came in.

She ran her tongue across her front teeth

and felt that little gap

where the two incisors didn’t quite meet.

She breathed deeply.

The air rushed in

tasting of iron and dead leaves;

it clogged her throat.