I don’t want to write yet another poem about you
about your gorgeous words,
and how they trickle like honey down my neck.
about the sweet way you seem to like
to email me.
for no reason at all.
about your smile, your laugh
and the way they just suit your face
so well.
about the fact that you once surreptitiously
asked for my number.
about the way you under-state things.
about your eyes.
about the curves of your lips.
about your glasses
and braces.
it’s creepy.
i really need to stop writing
about you.

Cloud-vacant darkened sky,
muffled ears
under woolly coolness
of chocolate-icing water,
choppy,
unsmooth,
iced by an unprofessional
child-chef.

Stretched-out limbs
like a blown-up starfish
floating dumb and mindless
and alone.

Bobbing apples, eyes obscured
temporarily, under cold salt
swishing
swashing
slipping sliding.

Sticky candy-apple lips
pursed tight against
salty smoothness
licking
lapping
lisping loving.

Slow breaths flow freely
through nose,
sticking upright from the water like
ancient uncovered bones
from sand;
Wind whipping off years of hiding
to reveal
the unknown death.

Slowly floating, bobbing
silent, unaware
from the sand: waves washing
gently, nudging
against the starfish boy.

Leading him
away
from shore.

My blood runs cold
My heart beats slow;
and I can see the world
groaning as it spins
upon the point
of a finger.

My pupils dilate
I fear it may be too late;
and trees are twisting
mouths are yawning
open to swallow
the stars.

My veins contract
Life no longer intact;
so far from the horizon
and that burning bright sun
dazzling my blind
creamy eyes.

Too late
to turn back from the flurry
of painted snowflakes
on a gossamer wind.

In a
whirlwind they spin
up and upwards
to the timeless lands.

Frozen
specks of crystal;
perfect and unimaginable
melt on my face.

Shadows
fall and they turn
grey and the painter leaves
his canvas unfinished.

A soft
white sea has emerged
below my feet
and immersed the world in white.

Foamy
to wade through and yet
impossible to resist
spoiling the untouched.

Then sun
arrives, and he brings warmth
and light, and so
the sky’s daughters melt in all
their sweet virginity
and the ground is rendered wet
once more.

Life is a curious thing;
as fragile as glass,
as precious as gold.

Spun slowly from a thousand strands of silver
spider web.
Sewn and patched together from
old clothes,
by the sorrow-sweet whistling
of the wind.

Made in
a shell
that a child has placed against his ear
to hear the sea.
Made with
Sea foam
and Mermaids’ songs
and Rocky cliffs
and Storm and Lightening
and Laughter.

Nothing more than
a fluffy white cloud
which gradually turns greyer
the further Time carries her lantern
across the sky.

Beautiful,
delicate,
Unique,
perfect,
simple,
present,

so
­amazingly
solidly
Dreamlike.

In this, my last hour of rhyme,
with stains uncontainèd by shaking hands
Spreading like red soldiers running wartime
untempered by generals shouting commands
Then laughing like drunkards, drowning in wine
that rich purple spills out from its barrels
Then lying on bartops, eyes shine porcine
and unheard soft voices hiss curses and carols.

O, woe be on me if I speak out of time;
out-tumbling come innards, spewed from a mouth
Which whispered sad prayers in corners of grime:
hints of spring-season on trips to the south;
Watch them out-tumble, watch horri-divine
like the death of the tragic, acted but true
Yet laughing old minstrels declare it quite fine:
and friends ensure royal-men breathe not from the blue.

Hours fly past on wings of the Sun
who turns misted eyes from child-fight below
And lives lives of many, but cares not for none
not least merchant servants, throttled in the snow.
I fade and I fade: a blossom once watered
and love of the stage is clogging my throat
It changes my words: I fight it, I fought it
and hot-wet floods up with drowning and choke.

This minute, these words: I defy death.
And cold, outward slipping: my slow final breath.

Hath thou seen Queen Mab to-day?
in that bitter carriage, with her dreams
         Forwarding to the cursèd fray
with unhallowed thoughts, or so ’twould seem
         And creeping under willow’s bough
’pon rotting leaves and sick’ning scents
         Of fretting unborn babes and now
she peddles with a marred intent
         With foreign faeries in the leaves
who show broken wares and scattered souls
         They hide amongst the dripping reeds
while dying rays reflect on shoals
         And here, on the last hour of light
mab cursed the world into the night.