Lead
A precise pencil
is a happy thing.
Being blunt
is never the policy
of diplomatic stationery.Fallen
Autumn leaves should be red, spicy as the leaking heat of cut flesh. This pretty gash in the palm of my hand, in my flesh cut by the chill, is as spicy as they come.
What a beautiful piece of blood.
Nara Park, outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, 2014 “Sunbathing”
The sun clung to the tree
and cast its shadows out.
What a beautiful exorcism.
On my ride home from work in the evenings, I would see this tree, this scene. It’s beautiful, isn’t it – this conjunction of tree and sunset. “Raining”
If the sun exorcises the tree by
casting out its shadows, then
the rain’s way is to torch it in
a cold misty blaze.
The rain adds a certain dreaminess, a certain sadness. A wistfulness. When you wish upon a star
I screamed at the sky in pain and
guilt and poverty of spirit and
it threw down a star for me.
It was so nice of a loyal friend.
I stabbed it into me and everywhere
that the skin broke, shone. And
I wanted to shine so badly,
I stabbed it into my heart.It’s been a year since I felt the slow
burn in the coals of my heart. I’ll
never shine like the star, I know now.
My lot is to smoulder enough that I
may smear you with blackness, that
you may realise brightness in the
diminishing of it. That embedded
shard is my kindling and when I turn
to ash one day, be happy, be happy for
me – that once, I glowed.Acceptance
Once, I thought a good sky, a worthy sky, should be clear, spotless. And I tried so hard to scrub the stars and moon away, that I scratched out the sky instead. Grey splotches now glare from a patchy sky, and only a sliver of moon is left.
Once, I was a perfectionist. Then I learnt you can’t expect to always get what you want. Isn’t the sky still beautiful, even if I did nothing; even though I did something?
Hangers
When I say that a clothes hanger wants your body, I do not mean it has a prurient interest. It just wants to wear muscle, skin and bone; something more solid, something like you. To hold up your shoulders, wire their blades, so that they will never curve inwards under the weariness that bleeds from your mind and pools atop them. To make you stand tall, no matter what.
Because even clothes hangers can be noble.
Night Sky
Her eye had a rendezvous at the park.
It ran down in the dark and at once
embraced the night, twirling in arms
of starlight; the optic twinkle
ambiently magnified.It spun out of balance and fell back,
laughing, a mere child to the ancient
night, who, to steal the liveliest
sparkle, proffered a pipe. The eye lit
up and puffed hour after hour, while
her human tossed in bed, gripped by
insomnia.How sad this betrayal, this scheming
sky. How ignorant this vision, this
Judas eye.
cremation
boxed in my room,
feeling my way out of the gloom
i stumble to the door, i push and
fall onto a floor
of stars
like a galaxy of broken glass.red and gold,
my blood and galactic debris
mix under my sole.i feel no pain as
my skin like night rain,
fine rain, almost dust,
falls down around
you sobbing
into your mother’s bust.i lurch to my knees
near bone-dry, dragging
myself across the sky, over
a million splinters till i smoulder,
ignite,
and feel this swelling
unbearable heat
inside.my eyes, like windows shattering,
first come alight
then blow out; crackling, caving
into a burning ball of light.
i’m still here, only
i belong to the night.a casket’s just a carriage,
a sort of space freightage
pushing off for the constellations
with a blast, where
the load would combust
amid cosmic matter
both grit and sandpaper
to scour, abrade
my body in the celestial mill till
I scintillate.——–
In the interstellar vastness
I’ll always exist.
I am above you, girl,
I never ceased.abandon beauty
one, two, a thousand maple leaves. to reach the light, you need to ignore beauty.
but beauty is easy; too easy to get lost in, mired in, complacent in.
we all have our own maple tree. who, though, has reached the sun?