*

Word follows word
as foot fall follows foot fall

I wonder what I am supposed to
have missed, by the
look on your face it was something
silent but vicious.

You dish the rumours by your succulent flesh
words follow numbers
the man I am the woman YOU are
makes II
What have I missed?

Your eyes are snakes/apples in the fading daylight.
You say "I don't know what to make of it,"
that I believe is sensible and
suggests thought, as you stand
smiling, your eyes beacons through a stare
of truth.

I lifted my hand and, eyes closed
you followed my lead,
enigmatic and spurious,
my right outstretched hand
your right outstretched hand
my silent fall to the floor
your silent fall to the floor

I told you how, at a job interview
the interviewer told me how the government
had shut down his mother's
nursing home

You told me that, recently you were
approached by an aggressive salesman
fundraising for the elderly.


eyes are spies our necessary lies
stares are strewn across our real-
life places, Internet pages
tin cans alive with prying eyes

"take our temperatures doc"

pseudo psychoses

or the insanity of sanity?

"reconsiousness", to light a spliff

poetry to curb the myth

or to light the truth?

I never loved you

You never loved me

I always loved you

You always loved me

twice lit or half as dim,

"reconsciousness" of half as much again

then twice as much our

hypereal days are over.

the fiction of our raison d'etre

was never clearer.

As ever my poem's too long.

Too long for who, I've

never been quite sure.

Not for me, my imagined audience?

Who the hell are they?

I sometimes watch you dancing across

the studio, the stage private moments

public spaces,

knowing, never knowing.

I watch your flow of limbs, your

transition of flesh

your hair splayed

over white shoulders

"Lifts me high up in the air and I fall over his shoulders."

"You can come back if you want?"

because of time I am at a loss for words.

It is by the intangible that I reason

and measure and form my life,

to hear others claim that its foundation

is reason, that truth is measurable

and comprehensible.

I've never heard such bullshit!

By force of habit or, by

necessity word follows word

as foot fall follows foot fall

You'll tell me, by not telling me

we live a failing democracy.

In time they'll reach the same conclusion

by not thinking its fruition.