end colour

not yet assassinated,
you show us your true
colour. all love has ended
during this prolapsed detour

on hand,
you had,
a mighty dictionary and a rose-gold bullet,
good for nothing,

yet decorative.

you may dance or drown,
it is really all the same
to your virtual audience,

asthmatic and furtive
the curtain has been called,
all memory stalled.

the old and the new of it

once
everything was new—
too raw for beauty, yet
shiny with promise


which page do you claim?
which cover,
the front or the back?

sheets are roughly torn out
or perhaps delicately extracted.

almost nothing happens

your life abruptly sealed
so quiet, for you have begun
the task of waiting

however it is done,
it loses memory
and becomes
the one koan always fated.

the only solution

to everything
in hate or even for those
with the luxury to wait

the finality of death
suggests the only solution

we, however, bend weak
at the concept of shoots
not quite strung
to full height

pretty children
in gardens
of roses and bullets,
her end, our collective execution.

led astray

flush
into a firing squad
cameras loaded
lowered to meet your

childhood

we know
that your mother loved you

it is evident in your rose-red coat,
your curls
meticulously harvested.

little rose in Warsaw ghetto

my darling—
daughter

your perfect coat
stitched with Margarita devotion

may fail to protect you.

tumbled and humbled

Killer—
your treachery was not quite willful
never the less
I am impressed
with your reckless, feckless
tastelessness.

In a tumbled, humbled war
accountability is obscure.

You chose the thick one, the girl stuffed
with wheat and corn,

blondfully born; you spurned
the fish girl
hiccuping fresh pearls
and veils and bolts of mermaid revolt.

no new blog for you—80 8010

cool as a dawn in October,
your head rolled in, Miss November:

pinched and chilled and grim.

Forensics considered.

I picked up my Jimmy Choos
and ran and ran

as fast as I could

dismembered, barefooted.

All I have to say is this:

should death appear,
subdued and unbidden

consider yourself a genetic winner.

spiders in winter

do you remember a pestilence

in winter? tulle spiders too greedy

to conceptualize surrender?

 

resin on old floor boards, your capezio

brush strokes were so much like a sugar-rush

 

that swells all senses

until metamorphosis. then—

 

nothing ever looks, smells or tastes

right again.

 

 



the girl with the mermaid tattoo

Darling
daughter

how far you have travelled
to meet me this one last time

upon our bed of rock and weed
these artefacts I bequeath to you:

a tattoo of myself when I was your age;
may you fare far wiser

a lock of sea-coral  hair;
may you learn the Argentine tango

and the argo it inspires.

a subtle notion

your devotion
never was
and never will be

I am subtle
when I turn my back

seducing you
to focus on my butterfly and my alibi
and my aborted pregnancy.

beautiful and dead

hello world,
how fresh you smell
despite your immersion in corrupt and ugly

you see
I was pure

but what good
did that do me
consigned to the outer limits of hell?

Defaced

you
who lie in wait,
never to understand the notion of Defaced

I congratulate

your tepid ambition
locks, ladders and snakes

your pale supposition,

He who endures,

overtakes.

sometimes a tiny sufi

darling,

I would spin for you and spin for you again,
ecstatic in the tide of suicide

your elsewhere Karachi bride.

I swallowed those gemstones you mailed
like candy— like mosque ornaments and then I said...
(whispers a lament into your polymer ear)

heart break and tulle

why can you not
stop? every thing, single
is broken, trampled like
crystal in a nazi night

your promise
over spoken until your tower
and ladder are reduced

to one.