It’s the writing down of what I can’t say,

that incubates monsters:

octopus sliding from beach to veranda

aliens gliding across English lawns

children turned to vampires round a Guy Fawkes fire.

 

In trying to create mystery from your ordinariness I faltered,

tripped and splattered on the pavement of your shallow clichés

made scars that ache and welts to mirror the fragrance of your skin,

the perfection of outer casing left me hungover,

blinded fingers caressing sleepless nights of non- events,

body cringing from the battering to come

as I courted profanity.

 

Still the blame of failure clings  under nails

and all the washing, all the washing, to no avail.

 

It’s the realisation of what I can’t be, all the  “can’t be’s” that are expected;

blazing a trail of destruction through these middle class streets

leaving cindered beds and hopes binned like old newspapers.

Things I can’t say rise like images of a litany long remembered

chiming in the brains of dead nuns,

pink blancmange, click of worry beads.

 

I was never more sure of nothing

as it echoes in the cellular memory of dying stars

still visible in these orange city nights as pulsars,

lending some kind of eternity to this impeachable generation.

Wherever I look poets emerge from cracks in the fabric

selling their prophecies to the hungry emptiness like ice cream cones,

dripping at the extremities.

 

It’s cruelty that super glues this bright successful globule of society

where I dream out of control scenarios.

It’s the fragility of trust beyond words,

words escaping like steam under pressure.

It’s the movement of air from a still life breeze,

the apples in the bowl that I painted yesterday,

a sudden gesture never to be re-captured.

 

  

It’s the writing down of what I can’t say.

 

For courage is a minefield of prostitution

which teeters on the skin fold of truth;

and all that is worth the telling is not said

and you who have tried to touch me fail in the twilight

 

for I am lost to the seduction of angel’s breath,

rising and falling

for I am lost in the allure of unknown galaxies

rising and falling

 

for I am lost in the invisible metaphor of

 “ might have been “

while the world revolves in it’s worn out symbolism

and it’s the writing down of what  I can’t say

 

that incubates monsters.