Your bones glow fiercely
Shining pink-red through
the opal of your flesh
It is in the dark places
You find pleasure.
The moon in June, the red roses and the
Incongruous blue violets championing
The lost cause of true love are left
Kicking cans down the gutter.
All our poets squat in the offices of academy
Playing Scrabble in broken lines
Or crochet colored squares on Castlemain porches.
Chins dripping with kombucha.
No longer lurching to howl and jibber at
Clapboard doors for one more apple breast of
honey or a fist of crumpled bills in the overheated night
Watch alleys that once were forests.
Dark emus, peck amongst scatters of old bones
And the rags of abandoned love,
Casting shadows like impossible coat-hangers.
On the dim margins, spider-walking over the sucking
Mud of saltmarsh estuary, flocks of shadow saxophones
Wail like acid.
Wail like the inchoate longings of sadly beautiful boys,
Or bone hollow girls starving
for the expectations of an Instagram future.
Tears splash down, blurring flickering screens,
While fingers dance the lies of confident achievement
And buy wellness, excitement and fulfillment on credit.
Abandonment of life as a fulltime occupation in favour of Facebook..
Ice freezes out hope, reduces all futures to a craving maw.
Your flesh shone through your clothes
Shadows radiated from you – the shining hub.
All those boys you have burned;
The girls you have left quivering like flayed flesh;
The sofa stained with the leaking ichor of desire;
This is all that remains after you have slammed the door.
The coffee rings on the laminex, like a drunken olympics,
Are time stamps recording to much waiting for nothing.
To much disappointment at the frayed ends of a furtive night,
Whining like a rag rug dog tied to a dumpster in some Salvos car park,
Eyes catching fire from the lights of passing cars, has left me
Hollow as a bird’s bone.
Sitting in the park
An old lady on a plaid blanket
Shows rheumy eyes
And a dissatisfied mouth
To anyone who should
Look her way.
The dreams she once had
Lie on her shoulders
Like immensely heavy dandruff.
One day she will die.
Maybe she already did.
Her bones turned
Dark as charcoal.
Skullthorpe's Blog 