Wharf

wind skirts the wharf
locks me up in whirling
circles, circles.

lost as I am, girl, speck
a sugared dot on earth
the dirt rises

two soft eyes blink out,
a head of curled fur.
nesting leaves, thoughts.

travelling through the glass
I push my hands out.
the air. oh the air.

paper songs, brief singing.
your poems fall silent;
all I hear is flat
flattered notes.

Repentance

Scales fell from Saul's eyes when
he repented his transgressions.
Not for me, the knee-bent
sucking up.

My eyes are scaled over thickly
by my own hand.
The wombs I move in are dark but I see
with the keen eye of a guarded mind

my logic always cocked.

Regrets

Memories toss and spill across
my clattering tongue as I open
us again.

It still feels wet -
the paint on the rooms of those last moments
when you almost kissed me,
your mouth along the air but past me
and I recoiled like a shy sun into clouds.

My face dusky, my breath damp,
a catch and your pleas a hinge to hang on it.

Sometimes our conversations feel
like old notes pulled loose from
a journal;
Shoved there in haste, stolen
minutes dreamed into their husks.

I want a vessel to our past;
I want to cross the taut second to your kiss
and see what it looks like
when we travel in our words, further
than we did.

The Morning After

I used to write love poems
the morning after.

Filled with good intent,
a curious, creeping
delusion of having grasped something
intangible
unknowable till then
would beat my heart
to pulp until I had to grab
the sticky organ and daub the words in,
indelible.
Make something lasting.

It was some time before
I gave this habit up.

It took a few leavers to squeeze the
need out of me.
Or not the need, but the compulsion;
dulled and muddied by the inevitable
renege, apology, pall of
backing slowly off.
As though I were a corpse
they'd brought to life
in the night's light, but in the morning
their realisation at the loathesome tint of grey
around the mouth they kissed
threw them backwards with a shock
they could not let me see
in full, just yet.

Last night, there was a little opening made
in me.
I am scared to see it there;
it looks so tender and new, a winter bud
and the world's cold.
I am drinking tea at your computer
while you sleep, my hands alight with the
fire of fear. My keystrokes falter.
I wonder if your hand flexes, if it grips
the upswing of another shoe
dropping.

This is not a love poem.
No, this is not.