Modern Art

Your mouth parts slightly when you sleep on your back,

eyelids as soft as if they’re painted on.

You spend so much time animated –

jumping from moment to moment –

that at first it was strange to see you rest.

Then I learnt that this is the only peace you get.

Fire Dance

Around the corner I spot your flames,

little blue flickers, seeming tamed.

But should a whisper, snide and bold

from the tower whence they hold

the power to make all decisions

interfere with your mission

or threaten the one you hold dear,

I know you will instill them with mortal fear.

Your flames will rise up, acrid, molten

and in an instant completely engulf them.

I worry, not for their well being,

but its effect on you I’m seeing.

This radioactive surge you have

may drain you with its grab

and all I can do is hold out my hand,

and hope, hope

you’ll rise up, scar-less, from the spent ground.

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Testing. Testing.

It may be nothing.

A whisper.

A shadow.

A breeze.

 

It may be a nameless,

shapeless mass

that is only the ghost of a ghost,

an unwelcome spectre, but a harmless one.

 

It may be. It may be.

The Rubbish Sack

When you open the rubbish sack, what do you expect to see? The empty packets of last night’s tasteless dinner? A card from someone you once knew so well it was like having a twin? That unopened box of over-fragrant toiletries your cousin of a cousin of a cousin gifted you three Christmases ago?

Why are you looking in there anyway? In that black hole of discarded things? You’re searching for a key? Oh, what kind of key? …You don’t know? Then what good will it do even if you find one?

Don’t you try to drown me out with that bag of sprouting spuds.

Hey. Hey! HEY!

Phone line

I ask you where your eyes

find light – your mouth

falls down the back wall

to the receiver, hanging

limp by its cord, mumbling

love and family like trickles of water

flowing into a drain. Not

a downpour. Perhaps

I should have asked

a different question.

One that you’re more comfortable with?

 

Cardiac Arrest

The flat edge hits my nose.

Sharp. Unwanted.

Thump.

‘An evening of heart’,

the print on my face reads.

Thump.

I’m flung waist-deep into the quadrants –

which door will I choose?

Thump.

Careful! Don’t flood them,

they might burst and leak

Thump.

red wine on the prize rug.

Sweet-talk them. Coax out

Thump.

the opaque scent of mind.

Keep reaching for the string.

Thump.

Really, it’s an advert

for a radio station’s new show.

Thump.

Oh, I see.

What happens next?

Thump.

Thump thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump.