Sevengem

It must always come to this; foresight
alone cannot spur my flight.

You did not err.
I did: my ear
twisting fact into farce,
deaf, defying, denying.

The threshold surpassed,
I, a mere mirage, collapse.

Why must I start at the beginning?
Because, try as you might, you can’t not.
The point you deem the end is a beginning.
Always something sparking,
something else burning out.

You shouldn’t be here.
False intoxicated cool;
foolish bravado moved your feet
in their too-small boots,
your hot pink safety net torn to shreds.
The present is restless:
a life and your death
the sum of history and butterfly wings.

There’s an audible click,
the gun, the solution
  and a long cry
    and the big bang.
      Consciousness gained in repose;
a masterpiece animated
  for me
    alone.

In your wake,
  I mend.

good little product,
you shrinkwrap yourself
though you learned young that a bag
on your head suffocates.
but over your mouth
(to catch the sounds, to catch the vomit)
it calms.

hush, little baby.

select your
prey and sell yourself.
leave out the fine print.
lie to lie.

through scratched glass I watch
the glitzy towers of your city melt
like the thin sheen
of ice immobilizing my eyes.

your bed a crude, punctured lung
swelling and collapsing with ours

coughlike your breath jerks through
your throat to clatter
from your slack jaw

your slovenly claws graze tender thigh
flesh in a mockery
of ravenous brutal rending

your voice
a stranded swimmer thrusting
glimpses of himself between
heaving waves, torrents of breath.

your right arm
gravity, the undertow,
around me like a life belt you constrict.

I wring salt water from your lungs.

Read by me at the funeral of my grandfather, Samuel Bird (1915 – 2010)

your eyes forever closed,
opening ours to our now-
eternal blindness to you.
you can’t wake up.
we can’t wake up.

(my debt to you demands this.
my nature at these times is to
be small and silent.
my dreams humble, not grandiose.)

I knew you,
not well, but
in me more of you is built
than in those who stand
to gain from your departure,
to sing His praises
no matter who you were.

I cannot fit your years onto my page.
then, I will keep you secret in my boundless heart
till the lids of my dead eyes
and lifeless tomb are sealed.
but one moment, recurring—

your hand, weathered, withered,
long overworked, now laid to rest
on my young, lazy knee;
and in your sky-coloured eyes
the sparkle of your smile, the sun that’s now set.
“my girl,” you’d say, “you know I love you.”
you knew I loved you too.
you’ve lost everything;
I’ve lost you.

My eyes roll back into my head,
but in the dark, I’m blind.
I need to see the reasons for everything I do,
for my comfort in discomfort,
my pleasure in pain.
The jury dissents,
but I am judge, and I am ruthless.
I consume without replenishing,
digest without having first split your throat.
Deny it not!
To maintain limitless possibilities
is not reasonable,
nor do I deserve to.
Hearts are not collateral to collect.

Love
is,
invariably,
fatal.
You say logic, weightless;
I say lead shoes.
My souls
will slough
your slick, slithering gloss.
My wing span
breathtaking in unslouching repose, in
my mind’s eye;
crisp, colourless, virginal;
no matrimonial shift,
consummatorially stained,
cuffed, anchored by the
chastity gallows unbalancing the hands.
Love? If your word is truth,
abandon matter, defy
gravity—join me.
Else become it
and be strapped to stone.

“I don’t think”
he says
“I’ve ever had better
kisses with anyone.”

“I wonder”
I wonder
“how many times we
have kissed since yesterday.”

His laugh can
be startlingly
resonant from
his small frame.

“Like, seven”
he estimates
“thousand.”

antagonist,
only fools bet against you;
wise investments oppose public demand
(you’re cleverly urged to “break a leg”).

you’ll win no ribbon but the battered strand
wound round your crooked finger,
because you’ve beaten no one.

close your eyes
hold your breath
bob the sour apple

sink your teeth in
pierce the shielding skin
ravage the yielding flesh

now cringe and chase away the taste
because I’ve beaten no one.