Cat

somewhere on the edge of the street's lamp
a cat skitters away, a mouse snapped in jaws.
it hears my footfall, stops.

the eyes it casts on me fall inward. their blackening fury
a depth like whale's belly, like grief's first days.
awestruck, i hold my place.

cat, you look at me like he did. if only he had known
a way to find a place for us where this dirty seed
could not grow and ruin all the wallpaper.

a filthy killing vine, gripping at the neck of love.
and i, resistant, and he too: but his failure to steer
made for us dashed all over the hillsides.

the cat moves off to pull apart the mouse.
and this is all we have power for now.
pick over sorry remnants and lament or pretend.

i catch a glance of the cat each night after,
or superimpose it: blood on it's fur, gore on it's nose, a grim detachment
mocking the entrails i am coveting.

Sickening

Four days in a sick-bed;
the tissues mounting up like cloying snow,
missals pitched into anonymity and digit-soup.
Impossibly tiny cogs.

Red flags pop up, electrons;
diorama of affection
that I hoard and gulp to interrupt the aches
and chills and feverish searching for
employment.

The every-day is rude and base.
The mundane and terrible;
microscopic horrors and slights that
pull at our wits are
lifted just enough by
tiny mirrors of interaction.
So scaffolded, we soldier on, shoulders
more at right angles with the world.

Four days in a sick-bed;
the ginger cat sneers from the window-sill -
secretly, he knows it isn't flu
but you
that has me ailing.

Ardent

Densely, I contort to hide and mask
the extent of how this joy springs;
though like mossy ground the moisture will
seep up and round your shoes
and you will notice me.
I am conspicuous.

I try indifference instead.
I look as awkward as a heron in this
suit of with-held glances, passed days without
communicating.

I want you to think
I won't check for you constantly;
a manic bird collecting sticks for an imprudent nest.
I want you to think
I won't pat your
empty spaces for the shape of you and yet
we both know, I think, this is a lie.

Little shy lies are good.
Face-conserving lies told from the need to appear
more bold, more sans desire than reality speaks.
They're the only kind mistakes of love.

The truth is:
I did not need you six months ago;
you were not a known quantity.
But now knowing as I do,
there are tiny pinholes forced in me.
Very small.
Shaped perfectly to fit you, and only you.

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.