Stalactite

Stalactite [22/03/24]

I don’t write to anyone anymore:

I just grab leeches from the

Sinks and the cupboards

(Consume them like a star)

And spit unrhymed nettles in the pastry bin.

I can transmute emotions into coat

Hangers with a flinch, make marmalade

Out of brain matter and wish our lives

Away like a Victorian voyage;

I can gargle fat, salty adjectives

And tie knots with my nails

As complex as shelves

(Hanging from the moonlit backdrop

Of a gleaming river in a day-lit dream);

I can bottle books

And, casting them off cliffs,

Collect the precious shards

Of crying glass amongst the dewdrops,

All whilst inheriting a coffee’s stain

And a pack of the editor’s painstands;

But I don’t anymore, anyhow, anywhere:

I can’t draw a scene. Lend a

River to a footstep or a tear

To my very own pointless throat.

I can’t be honest any more:

No listener is chipping a mountain

Into the roof of my mouth,

Chirping like a chaffinch in the attic,

Or an acid in the base

Of the basis of my days (my words, worlds)