Two Children

I: the child

the aura of a fossil is an oscillation,
a speaking upwards of colour and light that
runs into waves of whispering.
this throbs from her small white knuckles,
gripping, owning, closed.
her hat trailing from the other hand,
the ribbons: pink papyrus, thin in the wind.
her hair a sheaf of taffeta palely battered
in the hot november.

I open, I close my mouth. the sound
of my love is a beaten hoof, a struck
red sheath of forming steel.
it rings, it clangs, it is ugly and hot in the world.
for her, I must will myself
useful and fierce.

II: the miscarriage

the glass is a vase, may as well be.
it is a lost crystal boat on the varnished
immensity of mantle and wall.
the mildew chases the shadows,
the blacknesses tussling for place.
the canvases stare flatly -
all moving beauty reduced to line.

I bleed, my womb an opening eye
of unexpected biological candour.

I would have let her lie beside me;
I would have hounded fevers down.
I would have stood between her door
and the advancing crowded neon earth.

Despite all my weaponry,
I bleed.

Oh stopper me up, stopper me up
at the centre and third eye.

The Rebellion of Mrs Jones

Bright leaf-fall, rusted sky:
the morning rims the lip of earth's
arched and wanton hip.

The force of curing you nips
my mouth shut,
pinches me closed
so I become tight and rackish,
blackening and puckish
keeping joy silent.

So, you won't see me darting
around the city,
collecting bus-stops
names and places like tatty parcels
stuffed into my brain.

You think I'm folding starched linen;
you imagine my perfect hush
lying still against your ironed out air,
unmoved, unmoving.
My shadow a pristine projection
caught between the paste of
wallpaper and world.

I see what really lives where I should:
years of sooty hate,
damp, mildewing ambition.

Bright and brazen leaf-fall, rusted sky;
the morning lathes the question mark
of dense tree-line and day
with my shut-stuck
secret tongue.

Under the Loam

O come to my crown of palms
salacious light
and saint them;

fall
tipped and plentiful,
a bucket of loam
burying ill-gotten claims.

O come and sprawl over and over...
a smug lady
sullied.

A bent back for hurried flurries.

The full burst of horizon light
in the keen cock of the whip

and pain about the temples
like motes of touch, like thrips.

Born as I am in the scope
of your incendiary grasp

burnt as I am, down to ashen alder

rising as I am, glorious phoenix:

manifest of your will.

Emotional Algebra

Unsure how I am led
to this juncture of illogic
I simply marinate in the
impossibilities
the ability to dissemble.

I can't, shan't ease away from this;
I'll rush to it, like water to the seam.
You do not know.
You are a man made of
wires
wood
and algorithymic calm.

I rise to my nature
like a taut miniscus,
my hair in my hands, your words
a dancing play of scent;
a heady show of
boronia,
correa stars
of swept up ideas.

I agree without being asked.
Without being motioned forwards.
I acknowledge the virus;
I catalogue the sincere parts of my gut
and calculate the mean I can preserve.

Unembarked upon memories;
memories not even halfway to the squall.

If I emerge again, I'll fly them
high high high
as kites.
Defy the champing mouth
of the advancing human grave.

The Grace

By your grace, my bound tongue loosens;
you unfurl your closed fist and there:
my animal eyes swallowing tears
and dilating for the seam of light.

We can reconfigure, you whisper;
your voice a thread of rational love.
It sews an opening for me to pass through.
We can let go and hold on, you whisper;
your voice a glimmering aqueous faith.

Oh see, you say, all that you need
is alive and living in the world.

I am not your completed self.
I am not your working out.
I am not your closed circuit.
I can be your jumping off,
your reaching out,
your open growth,
your tendril charged to the sun.

All of me releases you, so you shall return.
Your skin will become a pyre
of living parchment,
of sainted joy,
that I will burn to touch.