Locus

Geographically
This graphite papyrus marked rush
Brushed with old hieroglyphics
Marks
A trade route
Star strung
Locus in quo
In rapture
Beating like some ancient winged thing
To the sky born
Pockets of air and light
Through the creases of trees
The hands left mute
Dumbstruck
Space climbers beg for stars
Fuel of fury
Marks left untorn
Unmapped
A continent raised on flesh
On blood burnt black
To seed
I go
Vowels from toothless mounds
Gasp and exclaim
Escaping sound like water bubbles
Geographically
Mapped
A solid line of mountains and causeways
Hell bent
Decisive
This collusion
This gap
From heart
Apart
Yet so close
So very close
To the place
It first learnt
To sing

Naming

There at the bottom of the garden
Beyond the mole heaps
And compost
Grew our anonymity
Risen as if from nothing
A division of the indivisible
A waking into sleep
The dream that never was
There from a bed of twigs and moss
It at once unbecoming
Unbirthed
From neither woman nor she
Rose splendid and unknown
For lack of itself
Haunting nothing
Saying nothing
Still born
Relentless
And yet nothing looms into something
Where at first nothing could be
And colour-kissed
The unknown at once becomes a book with lined pages
A pen with enough ink
A face recognizable
A person at once personable
A name.

Knowing

Surely
Before light knows it is light
It believes it is darkness
And letting go of that shadow skin
Struck by its own luminescence
Casts itself apart from that black opacity
And once torn from it
Is something else altogether
Something other
Surely it is at this moment
That light cannot go back
Retain itself in cup or cavern
Cling to shadows
Pose as dark
It can only shed itself
Crawl through holes and curtains
Splayed fingers
Keyholes
Peep through possibility
Refract unrefrained
Until you open
Your eyes to the glare

Journey

I slammed the door on inadequacy
Its skull burning a shadow on my left eye
White moths dissolve
In flame anthems
Flickers of debris
On you slate grey sky

I wore my hair long for winter
A velvet curtain down the innocence of my back
To part for you a Dead Sea
Voyaging the map of your hands

We have a happy medium here
A witch for the wizardry of your words
We have enough passion to fill the dam of years
We lose course asking for apology
Knowing beyond all knowing
That without the other
The world would be born of martyrs
And joy put to sleep.

Other

I always felt my otherness acutely
It radiated from my skin like black winged butterflies
Struck the light somehow inferior
Left me empty

You were his passion
Surely?
You for whom he lost his love
Like some gnawed bone
In a garden over run with weeds

What was it
About you that
Clung
So fiercely
A creeping vine on the face of time
What lay buried
In the brilliantly painted sarcophagus of your smile?

Many a night
I raced through the celluloid track of that old camera
Burning spools of misery and regret
Developing imaginings where you were the other
Wondering if you could fare as well as I
In this half life

Yet still
I painted you victorious
Children on your knee
Your faithful, loving husband
Whittling away the years
Spent on your restoring love

I longed to be you
Although I detested you
Raged against your haves and wants
Beat you into a palatable pill
That I could swallow
Tolerate
Give in to.

What impossible latch key had you swallowed
Stored in the pit of your clear glass belly?
His faith clipped and pasted onto your skin
Like a religion of knowing
Lighting the votive of his sad, sweet smile

pushed and pulled like some magnet
Everything brought you closer to me
The world grew into
My desire to inhabit you
Quell my own inadequacies
Harvest its rewards

I am older now
Your vision looms more quietly
It no longer trips me on the stairs
Envy gives way to pity
Apology to regret
All this time we were much the same
Looking for ourselves
In the drawn faces of each other.