They take away from me what they inspire
He went to what he was
For so long I represent you, a cachet
of just and true, that bones walk instead
and have to rebuild brick by brick
glorious atlas and swab, the stars, the shark sea satin'd
to become what you satirise
back to the circus and caravan
Weepy avenger coarse ground doesn't touch
— clang of sword on mattress —
I hold your fake hand to my brow
to feel love turn on and off like a programme
illustrating a cliché

———

Blogs fugue into themselves,
stripping time across the shuttling lists
as music plaques over a sacked diary
and the egghead blurb's mountain of claims
and heroic tasks depicted on your shield
You know it like a bath of dirty water
How did you get stuck in that tide of boasts
and souvenirs, his royal eyes light
on the past's porphyried gas
having chucked the dolls of irony
in childhood's plastic bushes and lain path
who slab the air, obstinately
Illness drags you to the talkshows of resolve and parried death
a maypole streamers reach to, a cabinet of poison
that twins each other in dispensation for the chute

You breach the galleries' biblical catalogue and pyramid of sand
A tinker of song fulfils the relationship you meant to cut
trimmed and cobbled, sworn in on a whim
Rain snaps into place for myself but you, unmourned
who prepared bitterly
Thumbing a mobile, I turn from the choir