the heat that feeds
your needs
before you're aware
unless things are very right
and the rivers within
are sudden aflame
and you burn
and you flood
a torrent
breaching
and turning your skin
to molten streams
hurtling to pool
and build
to power
reshaping
the world's
place
around you
forever
suppose
every road's spiked
and every door electrocutes
and every sip
of every drink sears
and every meal
is ground glass
suppose
every heart beat
explodes
shooting shrapnel
through your chest
and this is discourse
according to our
extremist rich boys
"this is discussion"
they howl, nasally
"why won't you debate
with us"
they snivel, snottily
"why won't you
let us fix the game
more than it already is
so we win
everything
we don't already have"
follow the rolling crystal
into tomorrow's shroud
as if it knows the path
dumb melted sand
airblown to bubble
and as empty of truth
but hope is free -
if the game's a game
and the well-worked
well-wisher well-prepared
then theatre gifts
dents to wallets
slightly camp
slightly arch performances
and a drop of optimism
for a bitter world
the salesperson says it's half-full
the buyer says half-empty
thirsty, i drink it all
and imagine a planet
on which everyone
can fill their glass
with clean drinking water
inside an adequate home
educated and secure
the glass is half liquid now, half air
molten sand translucent
containing futures
night passes
unanthropomorphised
and we rest in silence
though not silent
skin bounding skin
but energy moving
in ways that mean we can't lie
one or other or both of us weep
from time to time
everything is touch
in darkness we dismantle us
clean the parts carefully
try to blindly put them together the same
but only manage mostly matching
the point of it, of course -
applauding as the curtains swish
enjoying the credit spool
closing pages with a sigh
or hearing copyright notices -
is that there can be an ending
that's also not an ending
we return home,
those of us lucky to have them,
happy we survived an end
(we'd admit nothing so childish)
hopeful that our own finish
may also be a resolution, of sorts,
to be discussed widely
and remembered
long after we can't
i learnt to be small inside
quick and sharp of tooth
to bite myself on command
and to be sly
safe in shadowed layers
draped dozens deep
the searching of which
gave time for escape
i built walls beneath my skin
that ricocheted barbs
through my soft internals
i learnt my place
in the slowly flaking false grandeur
of our home, rotten from the seed
i learnt to read, for which i'm grateful
and to write, for which you're probably not
once upon a time
i fell into collapse
as if i still had a choice
about falling
haunted by the ghosts
of memories
both recalled
and forgotten
we carry the grave weight
of every dead cell
a mass accreting
with each breath
no wonder bodies
can only cope for so long
before they rebel
and free themselves
and there's a nip
in the air today
and the rain
hurts and chills
on the inside
and i can hear
my billions
of dead singing
it's too easy to say
it's a moment
or an accidental touch
a look, a scent, a movement
perhaps we do it because we must
imagine the terror if we admitted the weight
of aeons of happenstance
leading to us, two sensing, calculating
feeling and tale-telling nodes
of the immensity of existence
falling naked into each other
to create something that has,
despite all that time,
never before happened
be the lantern
stab light
into darkness
dare it to come at you
be the fire in a box
everyone underestimates
until they're gloomstruck
then be their lantern
lost lit to found
their gasp of relief
when they're no longer alone
(we're all one bad night
away from scrambling to light fires)
be the roiling furnace
that feels every bond within every atom
straining with the power
to end worlds
and chooses instead
to be the lantern