dressed up in a crystal palace
caught between the contact lenses
of a dirty weekend
with thoughts of being
a person sheathed within a person
I pass faceless dolls dressed up
for painting the town in bubonic splotches
(I offer meths fixers their wish lists
in a holy grail)
you walk the plank
as if I were there too
faceless in a crystal palace
you balance precariously
everything seems tropical
seems abundant
grows abundantly
exists under this curving shelter from the storm
I am your human handler
your human dogsbody
your make-believe role model in human fragments
always you’re in my sights
you wear a motto around your neck
you have one chance only
to save this green horizon
this maternal colossus
crawling on all fours
on broken ground
I balance precariously
amongst others
slick and shiny with no party to go to
no function to celebrate
a mass production of dolls
greets me without having to say so
they freeze their poses yet seem to watch
as I pass
prodding the air
the children play at executioners
at viewing their life-spans
and living off the pathogens of Paradise
constantly you’re in my sights
collaborative statements make all the difference one
applauds the other the other
tumbles through streets
fighting for pictures
bloody-minded
torn mugshots / / hang by folds
a mummified genie
(half unwrapped) smirks
the shop is in ruins
and a goat herd clatters on the trot to be milked
##
upside down
over capitalization
enables homes to be quilted into streets
movies for adults
in Aegean technicolour
screen nightly
biographies
alive in plaster sky-dive
from God’s right finger
and onlookers
crane their necks
gobble anything that’s going
like manna from high places
##
worn antiquity
shows its flakes a wooden horse
has been wheeled in for an all-expenses-paid
escape for those who want it
the sun is elsewhere being argumentative
resistant to change / bloody-minded
the shop is in ruins
##
going nomadic
is an excuse
for reviving superstitions
talking to oneself / / gesticulating wildly
burning hard-earned sacrifices
on rock piles in the desert
earmarked for heavenly delights
1
she tramples on field coordinates
on paths earmarked for urbanised heavenly delights
she lights up a system of caves
(the bats long gone)
it seems intrusive
but generational habits still persist
a crawling upwards
is still the only way out
2
I’ve written my version of events
(in triplicate this morning) of suddenly last summer
I’ve watered down my part
to a spectral observation
she the red-wrapped drama queen licks
an ice cream
hugs local panoramas
talks me through pornographic slideshows
through guest lists
drinking from the same glass
she holds me up to airborne nuances
3
her favourite people
repeat
good-byes / / hellos
a kind of primal saturation
can be read into what we hope for
