february  2018

...every day behind the ha-ha mask it is the same

and every night I have no choice

but to kiss the one-eyed oracle

my tormentor and kinsman

my traitor who gazes with contemptuous relish

on all that I have been

the child who still scratches the ground

in search of love

who even now snatches at the shadows

for feelings that are clean

and so I have no choice

but to draw my tormentor’s breasts up between my lips

the hope, the ascent, the tenderness

covered with make-believe

with the ethos of the infinite child

the traitor within the ground

my body’s clean treachery

behind the mask, behind the kiss

those feelings caught in the earth’s shadow

the love that has no choice...

                 (ii)

...look, the ritual vice versa

has finally won

it is clearly a disturbing gift

contrary and courageous

to have spat out

the clockwise mind

and to have had the disfigured past

pulled from our spine

its myriads of glittering astrocytes

falling to the floor

over-flowing into rooms

filled with animated, gibbering tongues

it is exactly the courage needed

to dissect the last ever paradise

as death gazes out at space

and space gazes back at death

a final summit is reached

and these two curious siblings stand

as they have always stood, whispering

like scheming lovers

and neither the one nor the other

will ever be the first to relent...