bed, I have been turned to crystal, you enter
bringing love in the form of
a cardboard box (empty)
a pocket (empty)
some hands (also empty)
Be careful I say but
how can you
the empty
thing comes out of your hands, it
fills the room slowly, it is
a pressure, a lack of
pressure
Like a deep sea
creature with glass bones and wafer
eyes drawn
to the surface, I break
open, the pieces of me
shine briefly in your empty hands
I see you fugitive, stumbling across the prairie,
lungs knotted by thirst, sunheat
nailing you down, all the things
after you that can be after you
with their clamps and poisoned mazes
Should I help you?
Should I make you a mirage?
My right hand unfolds rivers
around you, my left hand releases its trees,
I speak rain,
I spin you a night and you hide in it.
Now you have one enemy
instead of many.
We are standing facing each other
in an eighteenth century room
with fragile tables and mirrors
in carved frames; the curtains,
red brocade, are drawn
the doors are shut, you aren’t talking,
the chandeliers aren’t talking, the carpets
also remain silent.
You stay closed, your skin
is buttoned firmly around you,
your mouth is a tin decoration,
you are in the worst possible taste.
You are fake as the marble trim
around the fireplace, there is nothing
I wouldn’t do to be away
from here. I do nothing
because the light changes, the tables
and mirrors radiate from around you,
you step backwards away from me
the length of the room
holding cupped in your hands
behind your back
an offering
a gold word a signal
I need more than
air, blood, it would open
everything
which you won’t let me see.
Sleeping in sunlight
(you occupy
me so completely
run through my brain as warm
chemicals and melted
gold, spread out wings to the
ends of my fingers
reach my heart and
stop, digging your claws in
If a bird what kind /
nothing I have ever
seen in air / you fly
through earth and water casting
a red shadow
The door wakes me, this is
your jewelled reptilian
eye in darkness next to
mine, shining feathers of
hair sift over my forehead
What is it, it does not
move like love, it does
not want to know, it
does not want to stroke, unfold
it does not even want to
touch, it is more like
an animal (not
loving) a
thing trapped, you move
wounded, you are hurt, you hurt,
you want to get out, you want
to tear yourself out, I am
the outside, I am snow and
space, pathways, you gather
yourself, your muscles
clutch, you move
into me as though I
am (wrenching
your way through, this is
urgent, it is your
life) the
last chance for freedom
You are the sun
in reverse, all energy
flows into you and is
abolished; you refuse
houses, you smell of
catastrophe, I see you
blind and one-handed, flashing
in the dark, trees breaking
under your feet, you demand,
you demand
I lie mutilated beside
you; beneath us there are
sirens, fires, the people run
squealing, the city
is crushed and gutted,
the ends of your fingers bleed
from 1000 murders
Putting on my clothes
again, retreating, closing doors
I am amazed / I can continue
to think, eat, anything
How can I stop you
Why did I create you
Hesitations outside the door
1
I’m telling the wrong lies,
they are not even useful.
The right lies would at least
be keys, they would open the door.
The door is closed; the chairs,
the tables, the steel bowl, myself
shaping bread in the kitchen, wait
outside it.
2
That was a lie also,
I could go in if I wanted to.
Whose house is this
we both live in
but neither of us owns
How can I be expected
to find my way around
I could go in if I wanted to,
that’s not the point, I don’t have time,
I should be doing something
other than you.
3
What do you want from me
you who walk towards me over the long floor
your arms outstretched, your heart
luminous through the ribs
around your head a crown
of shining blood
This is your castle, this is your metal door,
these are your stairs, your
bones, you twist all possible
dimensions into your own
4
Alternate version: you advance
through the grey streets of this house,
thaw, vines grow
on the softening refrigerator
I say, leave me
alone, this is my winter,
I will stay here if I choose
You will not listen
to resistances, you cover me
with flags, a dark red
season, you delete from me
all other colours
5
Don’t let me do this to you,
you are not those other people,
you are yourself
Take off the signatures, the false
bodies, this love
which does not fit you
This is not a house, there are no doors,
get out while it is
open, while you still can
6
If we make stories for each other
about what is in the room
we will never have to go in.
You say: my other wives
are in there, they are all
beautiful and happy, they love me, why
disturb them
I say: it is only
a cupboard, my collection
of envelopes, my painted
eggs, my rings
In your pockets the thin women
hang on their hooks, dismembered
Around my neck I wear
the head of the beloved, pressed
in the metal retina like a picked flower.
7
Should we go into it
together / If I go into it
with you I will never come out
If I wait outside I can salvage
this house or what is left
of it, I can keep
my candles, my dead uncles
my restrictions
but you will go
alone, either
way is loss
Tell me what it is for
In the room we will find nothing
In the room we will find each other
Lying here, everything in me
brittle and pushing you away
This is not something I
wanted, I tell you
silently, not admitting
the truth of where
I am, so far
up, the sky incredible and dark
blue, each breath
a gift in the steep air
How hard even the boulders
find it to grow here
and I don’t know how to accept
your freedom, I don’t know
what to do with this
precipice, this joy
What do you see, I ask / my voice
absorbed by stone and outer
space / you are asleep, you see
what there is. Beside you
I bend and enter
I look up, you are standing
on the other side of the window
now your body
glimmers in the dark
room / you rise above me
white / you smell of tunnels
you smell of too much time
I should have used leaves
and silver to prevent you
instead I summoned
you are not a bird you do not fly
you are not an animal you do not run
you are not a man
your mouth is nothingness
where it touches me I vanish
you descend on me like age
you descend on me like earth
I can’t tell you my name:
you don’t believe I have one
I can’t warn you this boat is falling
you planned it that way
You’ve never had a face
but you know that appeals to me
You are old enough to be my
skeleton: you know that also.
I can’t tell you I don’t want you
the sea is on your side
You have the earth’s nets
I have only a pair of scissors.
When I look for you I find
water or moving shadow
There is no way I can lose you
when you are lost already.
They were all inaccurate:
the hinged bronze man, the fragile man
built of glass pebbles,
the fanged man with his opulent capes and boots
peeling away from you in scales.
It was my fault but you helped,
you enjoyed it.
Neither of us will enjoy
the rest: you following me
down streets, hallways, melting
when I touch you,
avoiding the sleeves of the bargains
I hold out for you,
your face corroded by truth,
crippled, persistent. You ask
like the wind, again and
again and wordlessly, for the one forbidden thing:
love without mirrors and not for
my reasons but your own.
He is last seen
1
You walk towards me
carrying a new death
which is mine and no-one else’s;
Your face is silver
and flat, scaled like a fish
The death you bring me
is curved, it is the shape
of doorknobs, moons
glass paperweights
Inside it, snow and lethal
flakes of gold fall endlessly
over an ornamental scene,
a man and woman, hands joined and running
2
Nothing I can do will slow you
down, nothing
will make you arrive any sooner
You are serious, a gift-bearer,
you set one foot
in front of the other
through the weeks and months, across
the rocks, up from
the pits and starless
deep nights of the sea
towards firm ground and safety.