If you come too close

From Ultramarine 2014 to buy click   here If you come too closeon this mad March daywhere the blossom flakes into starsinert on a bed of human compostif you come too closemy body shrinks awayas sunbeam struggles to ignitea storm filled sky.If you come too close I can smellcorruption on your finger tipsI can hear the tremor of children’s screamsfrom the silence of fallen familiesI can watch my hands torn to bleeding cenotaphensigns of this uneasy century.If you came too closeI was too far from here to notice:riding on a winter windwatching moon howl in a silent forestif you came too closeyou’d have heard the ground groanbeneath the pounding of the running heelssouls lost in the enigma of swallowing seasonswith only the memory of surviving soldiersto talk the lies of history round a sputtering fire. If you came that wayyou’d never really see the tears of unborn children, the perfection of the tapestrywith its silver threads of lonely heartbeatsshining through, forever shining throughthe lichen of extinction.    Genetic replayThere’s an imperceptible change in movement, where it seems that the voices of unborn children call out for life. Patterns regurgitate themselves in a myriad of subtleties; from my own terror in a hostile womb I was shocked into an awareness of life’s sanctity.  The early days were a struggle for survival and like a sewer rat I learnt all the tricks.  Then when you and I accidentally created life, I realised there was no such thing as an accident.  Consciousness filtered into the panic as hormones surged to the surface in a sticky sea of bodily functions. Our children became my crusade and you and I were thrown away like batter round succulent white fish, we were breeding machines, and we played our roles succinctly. Now women come to me, wearing their wombs with various degrees of distress, suddenly discovering the strength of biology, and I try to soothe the terror, I try to remain wise in ambivalent situations, I try not to cry.*If you come too closeyou might touch the centrewhere rawness is not a catch phrasewhere today merges into nothingnesswhere vastness is a wild mountain passwhere nothing ever really mattersexcept freedom.