december 2021

                         (i)

…do you even have a context

you and your egg-shell deities

the brittle pleiades

the pole-and-dog stars

such angels of perdition as these

draw black circles in the air

mark your skin

with images of the universe

and cut away your ears

with fragments of broken glass

and so you look for yourself

in the rich innocence of everything

rubbing leaves into your eyes

pushing back the grass

you, who luxuriously floats

above the rape-seed’s yellow lava

hoping someone will notice

that someone will call your name

this truly, truly brittle context 

black circle at the point of breaking…

               (ii)

…every line of every verse 

is an act of drowning

a long, long flight of the blood 

submerging for air

this ocean’s unique hunger 

an inspiring mania

that repeatedly pulls me down 

into its green, deep glass

where faces that once tried to kill me 

now lie on the ocean floor

their smiles floating 

like discarded, grey dirt

but the deeper I go 

so too the inching pressure grows

of an indissoluble darkness

squeezing the mind

every page a breath 

every word another desperate gulp of air

this endless mania 

this restless calligraphy

this long, long flight into uncertainty…

                           (iii)

…thousands of times I have given birth

yet strangely I am still in the same place

by myself unmoved, snared

and although the sleepless decades have unfolded

yet somewhere my vast, obscure lover

is still out there

rolling through immensity

her unique sex a deliverance

her unique soul unbearable to watch 

the vision of another thousand births

as life waits for life

the future snared

by itself unmoved

wishing simply for eternity to come

and eat through the greasy threads

of this vast umbilicus

that covers the eyes

that cries out to all existence

the parturition of stone from stone…