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.

simply grace

this last of days
is measured by stars and scales

within your archway
I remember; loss
cannot assassinate the marriage
of hope and bone.

like a mermaid
crying to walk in a pair of steel shoes

I try to clasp your attention.

nostalgie de la boue

to you!
to you, my sweet assassin
I bequeathe
my bouquet of umbrellas,
my truffle oil, argan shampoo, tulle skirts

and sighs and heaves.

Anne of Cleves
kept her unlovely head;
Anne Boleyn
was less fortunate.

a lily grows from mud
even though her neck is the dimension
of a hearty tree trunk

I expect nothing

and I forgive.

follow me down

and you can follow me down
past your shantyshack town

I will be wearing a dress
stitched in water.

my tresses will curve
like the Moskva
with verve

my killer
your stones were heavy and cold
but how pretty
when dripping
ruby droplets
from my stilled heart
to your banquet goblet

pink shoes murder mystery

elegant and elongated

in repose,
your faux-haute glamour

trips you over
a man-hole.

that plunge
stirs vertigo in heart and heel and soul

poor baby steps
for a stilted girl.

my sister—my killer

your silence
erases all features
even the ones
perfect and cold

this dead January,
you approach two-faced
and I cannot fathom
a chosen direction.

duality and the madman

gone
those days
when your dual nature

sliced my skin-pink
figure skates

then left me
looking into the bottomless eye
of a timeless ice-hole.

carry on, savage winter

my nostrils attach
under blind-white
chill factor.

carry on,
savage winter.
you are dressed in icicle
splendour and your victims

are lost amid snow-drifts,
like holes in white cheese,
they have nowhere to go
but under.

the post and mistress

self,
hostess at twilight
with imported orchid lights

you whisper
at midnight
to guests

who leave
like hopeful ghosts

colour bleaches
from your throat
which locks
in loving protest.

The Life You Save Is

 

never your own
and that is why
you crumble

like a stucco wall or lyrical dancer.

You were never afraid
of living alone, rather

terrified of majority's noise—

its unrelenting blather.

 

 

slave girl

I have visited your cruel terrain
you are swollen, insipid and vain

yet youu twirl instruments of torture
as though you possessed honour—tenure

your teeth rot,
your flab glubs like
olive oil
churned rotten

oh,

my killer—my rancid one:

yellow is your colour,
true and five-pointed.

How is it that you disdain
hygiene in favour
of something

I cannot  quite
wrap my death around?

fish glass

here kitty-fish-fish
the bubble-gum stench
of your deep-sea lips

pries open pink flesh
inside a stained-glass wish

I am dying for you Bosnia—dying

behold

the faker's pasty face, his hold
on ancient Venice.

His followers are fat and fucked.
They've seen this card trick

tweaked and tucked
under sleeve or hem.

The executioner
kneels to be redeemed.
His silver bullets
are more merciful
than the poet's pre-fabricated
holdings

called upon

To be
something other than self and shadow
in failure

at rest

the fatigued seamstress
stitches her best
copy of wings on a runway

Then
needles her way through  torn text

Seamstress Post Operative

your costume shot
full of worm-holes
and absinthe regret.

The whir of bobbin and needle
fine-tuned pumped
operative.

Golden threads
bloom like mushrooms
or spors spun
out of control.

Tell your father,
blood-stained progenitor
who mudered his whore.

Compromised

hello once more, little darlings.
I am so sorry
to have abandoned you in hell,
but I had meetings and contracts deemed

important. Kiss your father good-bye.
He has let you down
in phrasal verb limbo

and his good will
is with you no longer.

Lydia & Absinthe

the evacuees, transports to Dachau
or Auschwitz understood minimalism

and despair.

They understood it short, but well—that
each absinthe convoy could mimic a covert:

When we exchange crucifixes, we exhange fates.

No Kansas farm-girl, corn-fed,
ill-bred, no Muslim covert

infected with love and longing could
follow this trajectry
until blind-sided until

the road insisted:

enough.

the dead girl and her traitor

oh, he crawled intoxicated by rose-cunt scent
and curls that tumbled blondly

and yet
at that turnstile moment
of do or die,
pass or stall

he left

a cowardly fox unrepentant.

Woe be the woman
who loves the coward, the civil servant,
the braggart and the moral infant.

the dead girl and her lover

beside himself he comes
inside her self no longer
for she has been duly
boxed inside an earthworm home

for now and furthermore.

ejaculate
mists the cold hard earth
her lips might curve

but in revulsion or mirth?

Umbrella Land

they can be
long stem roses,
unopened

untried and not yet tested,
dry fabric ripe for free-fall or parachute dress

allow me to descend
to mushroom land

my toes are springy and pink
and my will to explore
is as grand
as parchment under ink.

Diary Of A Transgendered Geisha

my ornaments fulfill
a cocoon silk box
of baubles and presentiments:

let the future
offer an earthquake

that blasts us all to Kingdom Come.

Oh, forgive me,
I employ the wrong cultural idiom.

As a time traveller,
my geography
is shot
full of holes

like the building you entered and wrongly
called home.

any old foes at war or play

seaglass impresses itself upon water:
I was the lighthouse keeper's daughter
until I was no longer.


This woman who presses silk and skin,
her lips strain in a sneer

and her rancid cunt is her veneer.

 

unchartered heart

I carry an alien heart
through unchartered waters

Terra Incognita
and I was born wrong

in continent and song

my colours display
a range of fear of rage

my darling, why
did you betray

a millennium of heroes and maidens
waiting, simply waiting

for their long-lost day?

oh, oh, oh, you errant number

generic
as a fish tail

you swish and slap

the designer tank, yet you are lost

in revision, edition, your good strong fins
shall surely save you,

but I cannot vouch
for the next generation.

Lisa

I have tried to save you,
Code Steinberg-Nussbaum

Cocaine, S&M 101.

The woman,
flat-voiced has reclaimed
a human form.

Holding wonder in a cup,
her tea & sympathy is rank and malformed.

Lisa,
your cream-blush
heart-shaped face
has worn a hole

into my soul. In a twilight
shift of love and thought

we perch together on a velvet bough,

admiring a rosegold sunset
and the force of why and how.

You were My Narnia (Death Rattle of the Frozen Heart)

frost-locked lips
kept a January promise

my lion-hearted assassin.

in one hand, you offered Turkish Delight,
Lokum filled with pistachio folly.

in the other—
a heart-shaped cookie cutter

that you pressed into my breast
until I bled and wept

until all that was left
leapt and shuddered.

The Ecstasy Of Veronique Rough

perhaps I should say
harmony or torment

these extremes are all the same
in effect and intent

my enraptured marionnette

With strings attached,
all gifts are sent, arrive

upon a pale blond doorstep

only there are no cover
stairs, just bullet holes

where homes once dwelt.

the wolf-child you carry in your feral heart

in dreams,
doors refuse to latch
because life leaves
us spread-eagled,

in timeless disgrace.

I hunt a civilized heart.
When it one day refuses to pump

I will slump
against broken locks and rabid bolts.

feral child with hot blood
in a goblet, racing fierce
upon four unequal legs,

nothing is fair,
and my pale ferocity

will be shepherded into blond  pastures
long after I am hidden elsewhere.

your stunted heart

dwarfed—it pumps
buckets of rosy ice

and a tongue that refuses
to rise, like a flag

struck limp,

your love is minimalist.

no time to protest

under the watchful eyes
of two full moons

you brace your selves
to die

none too soon.

tonight, my lover,
the condors are hungry


and your cooling flesh
satisfies.

length and leisure

your hair allures
it has all the time in the world

castaway doubts,
bouts with yellow fever and revolt

why do some creatures always appear
to be growing?

mermaid lie

what better way to say good-bye
than with a fishy alibi

humbled

I topple like a Greek Island icon
or perhaps a shipwrecked maiden

who waits for Jesus or Bin Laden

Anyone
who will help me on this cold, long journey Home.

your fucked and feckless heart, sweet tart

your legs
are Rumpelstilskin stumps

but your eyes and cock
know the Mystery of the cannibalized heart

you exist in the Mists
of Avalon, but I know

you have a day job

and a blown business card.

unlikely thorns

you were robbed
or stolen in carnival country

my darling
your colours were so bold: amber corn candy
shoe-red candy apple

and the death toll
climbs like a Biblical ladder

tossing gay Jacob
to  Palestine's rabid dogs.

Clench fierce and tight
the feast of abandoned dreams
is on tonight.

your ooakish heart

stuntman,

you are stunted, a Rumpelstiltskin skin
stretched taut

over your undersized heart

and that arrow of yours:

it squirts venom and spunk
in no particular order sometimes

all junked up. A short, salty
path down an open throat
can lead a derelict pussy
astray and then save her, to betray her
on a later day.