Sit under the laurel tree, feel free to dream
of candy coloured toes and happy lil things.
Pull one out to suck – better, give them all away
for once pulled out, they’ll turn black anyway.

The idea’s strange, yes, like pigs eating ham
but darkness and light are bread
and I’m a walking jar of jam.

I love the whimsical, I love the macabre
and sandwiches needn’t any sort of stub.
So come sit with me, jam, butter and brie
we’ll have fun on our baked dough mats,
loafing under the tree.

Whee!

what is the good in well-formed toes,
when you can have five sweets apiece, per sole?

so candy sprung up to take their place
and left the girl wiggling lollipops, amazed.

the rosebud caught my eye
before it drowned.
yet it was dead
plucked off its stem
long before it was tipped into my cup
and scalded.

it was those hesitant petals
slightly open
dry and gently flickering
that made it seem alive.

i sipped its watery grave
i drank the flower tea
and wonder if anyone mourns
the remnants of a beverage.

tonight i switch on my computer
and crawl to the tree
so that i may forget.

forget the fine threads of fear
running loose from the spool
of cobwebs in my head.

forget its sticky silvery floss
cleaving to my skin, spun
as if by an eight-legged seamstress bent
on clothing me in reams
of elastic gossamer it so fervently spat
out in my cerebral attic with
no body to dress.

as if bored with heaping
up the wasted material on the floor
of its lair, it threw
one end out the window,
exited my ear and
gowned me in its creation.

so i switch on my computer and
stumble
to my tree and let
the seamstress go
free.

she dresses every insect.

i water the tree.

and i do, indeed, forget.
as we wait for the tree
to grow tall and big.

because, you see, my mind is
a spider,
and
it
needs
to roam free.

potato boy felt out of place in sugar town
until someone sprinkled icing over him
blending him right in
among snowy looking croissants.

and this misshapen confection
this blob in a bluff
is my very best friend,
because he understands
what it’s like to be different from everyone else
underneath.

You want to run to hide from all
you never wanted this;
it echoes in the weak tempest –
the tea and your heart twists.

Around, a dry coppery tang
circles a bloody silver spoon.
You wish it would never stop
but the crystals melt, too soon.

The black in your heart settles to base
the brown has dissolved every drop
of tears, of smiles
of broken pearls on a string,
it sours and stains almost all.

Laughs the bitter cynic and the naïve alike:
‘how could I ask for more?’
Was it the spoon the tea or the scarlet cup –
which was it that cut me raw?

And so I throw the question forth
the blame on whom to lay.
The world my life or my wounded heart
which one to be cut away.