Petals Never Trembled
“[O]ut there setting fires and the dry trees rattling
their leaves like some golden currency no one uses anymore.”
“Something
Historical was happening to me
Something already
Antique.
[…]Anciently as you like to say
I suck pearls whole out of your hard core[…]”
“out of the silences inside maybe
we can cease without dying fuck
without tears falling[…]”
To fall into a
plot-hole the size of
a grave, no need
to wait for an
ache to wink, to
interrogate the meaning of
sex without any, no
blaze to make me
a spectator of my
own sport, to work
toward orgasm in an
asylum, words leak into
dreams, decay into sleep
swiftly, speak in symbols
pronouncing nude heresies pornographically:
‘Are you waiting, out
of anticipation or out
of patience?’ Displeasure is
your dignity, lines pockets
with dealt arms, tracks
with pocked marks questions
tasked to unpack what
loss you mask with
asterisked attacks of unprovoked
antagonism, footnoting ritualistic acts
of violin-smashing indifference to
the art of acting
so unattached, lies to
be met by my
inquiry: ‘Do you rain
from above or explode
from within?’ All about
getting laid, ‘Is nothing
sacred,’ you say, ‘Is
this an ekphrasis of
tarot, or just a
courtship without any kingdom
to gain?’ Made of
ashes and earth, tough
sport electrified a grim
coda, prayer murmured in
an hour of enslaved
labour awakened the way
one aches to face
a waiting son’s conundrum’s
repetition’s great, blunt repatriation,
similar a situation to
mine, making him my
father to abandon me
again, a memoirist and
a raconteur, parallel obsessions,
fast-moving moods funeral through,
laptop to lapdance, encourage
me to implore others:
‘Make your birth predict
more than your death,
never settle, friend, for
or accept ending up
a famous ruin, tears
make for cheap poetry,’
haunted now, as I
must seem, in thought,
in word, and in
deed, by that guy
I know I’m not,
but I don’t know
how to know not
to be, a failed
priest, only lucky if
not exactly fated to
even have any faith
in me, always going
about alone, out into
night after ghosting those
I meet to deceive
and be deceived by,
between sheets, my only
impression left when I
leave a sweating stain
wept into some shape
of me, no miracle,
no Turin Shroud, no
Veronica Veil, just bluster
and bravado, Novichok in
shredded boxer-briefs, emptied nests
where emptiness beds unrest
so the rest of
us don’t need to
experience this restlessness, he
asks, ‘Are we necking,
tonguing?’ free-bawlin’, sew your
name into my tongue,
familiar strangers, follow cosmic
jaws until swallowed, all,
by the cosmetic urology
of these flawed li(n)es
of poetry by which
my mouth appalls, called
not to the altar
but to the brothel,
instinct the only thing
obeyed, hunger’s ache intoned
scrapes the blank from
bone to shimmer with
a strange inner heat
the way blood does
to the jeweller’s eye,
crying to be cut,
weeping to be prized,
while we roll over
to throw our Selves
upward to a building
storm, vigour rules the
churn of our arms,
determines the direction of
our abandoned vows, an
ambush of companionless charm
closes in on many
a broken locket opened
wide, both sides mouthing
fighting words like Proverbs
25:20, licking vinegar onto
a wound, sickening with
sung song jettisoned miseries
my mouth mainlines to
your heart, poisoning with
my tongue’s dart the
part we halve, left
over after pulled apart,
running the spectrum of
beauty’s cruelty from aplenty
to bloody, sputtering prayers
like hurt scraped from
echoing cavities, toothy truths
too beautiful to share
aloud dig roots, bite
through, bruise blue, subdue
those fools who confuse
getting blown, getting wet,
for getting even, for
even death’s breath sets
a moth’s wings bouncing,
the only one in
this war not bound
by any honour, crude-humoured
as though you’re fed
on rumour rather than
compliments alone, as though
you’re Helen in an
unauthorized adaptation of Homer
my own Iliad wonders
Odysseusly if you’re even
worth the plight of
my wanderings afar, our
world your diorama to
destroy with such melodrama,
venomous knife though it
was, gift enough when
you paused to offer-up
this grift of us,
illusory as it was
too much, petals never
trembled but our hearts
thundered whenever we touched,
most satisfied when hungriest,
to thrive on devastation,
to blemish flesh with
lust’s bruise mocking love
for having abandoned us
before we could manage
to bloom, its poisonous
rust consumes and consumes
until tenderness corrupts, corrodes
what’s coveted, covers up
until its colour kills,
crumbles into fistfuls of
dust, assumes confusion’s wake
to be its opportunity
to entomb fools who
pursue noonday heat in
the cruel dusk of
once-blazing gardens faithlessness makes
grotesque, ashen, awash in
loss, withers fruit the
way kisses evaporate and
pain always lasts longer
than the expiry date,
or the time wasted
by heartache to create
memories of what never
was, as dreams lead
to Los Angeles those
stupid enough to follow
stars, finding only fallen
ones we want, then become.
