solniger

you pry and push and probe and twist my frame into a cage which i was never made to fit you file my edges down with time and words and soft slow hands caress my face convincing me this was my fate to hang here unadorned and worn and dulled you whisper kind unwanted praise you fill the hole that needs so bad so wantonly to be complete by any means you bend my head for sword or crown or some form of finality hat's skipped and shied beyond my desperate grasp too long denied you'll thumb my eyes shut tenderly you'll weep repentant at my side as cold they'll bear me from this place this hard flat

lucifer (for megan) if it's what you claim you like best, then i'll treat you like a rough beast - unhewn, still base, still unrefined, identified by brands then owned by crude and callous, calloused hands. if you desire it eagerly, i'll craft and weave such supple words to burn you clean of those expectant aspirations you coddled and fostered and mothered; i'll leave you slurred and blurry. if it's attention you crave, affection, rejection - i'll supply that sharp, swift kick. when you lay face down, when you need it least, then you'll want it most, and then i'll hurt you, again and then again, so you can pretend that your

not us (bar blah blah, christmas 1999.) frame by frame in stilled sepia, we watched them roll up one after another, spilling in off the street cheered unreasonably. seasonal delirium drawn in by the warm, easy evening lights, and the complimentary house whites - and the close-shaven bleach-teethed boys, sharply suited in similar mirror-imagery, slickened and endeavouring to exchange cards and fashionably blueprinted exploits. deep ugliness obscured by embossed lettering and expensive watches. fondling the serving girls with immaculate hands - a hand on the arm, a paw on the thigh, drunkenly gathering courage from your numbers as the

model. offhandedly adept at turning heads, long-limbed, lounging about clad fashionably in whatever threads that mass of hands have deigned to drape her immaculate frame in today, the sylph is poised gracefully before the lenses, blinking eyes. smouldering lips glimmer sinuously beneath glossy two page spreads, and she's flat-backed, dead-eyed behind bedroom doors. her pose won't change for money or for love - this is what she does. entranced and slowly captured by the frame and her habits. waking languidly in a well-lit clean space, she checks again her face - that vain vehicle of fame, the immaculate facade she ex

sprite, lithe pixie, vixen. i have again entangled myself - this time in the fine severed strands and cloying acrid sweetness of your smouldering hair. thin blades taken to your unblemished skin in some grim ritual of attempted ownership fanned the flames. this fire, now started, will be only extinguished by some unthinkable act i am still unable to divine. if i would. if i could only wake beside your peaceful sleeping face, and in the wet leaden twilight place intent like a small, unsolicited kiss on your blank forehead.

suburbia in the bright languid light of suburban dreams, on a morning breeding prickly heat and brooding muses, a young grieving mother, blonde and frail and weighed upon with whispered news, rumours of a sick infant with a slit soul spilling life - and a husband terse and unwilling for her to find other's comfort. she found me clad in confusion, wandering lost at the shops - with a vague sense of foreboding unreality. she was failing fast, rent and unable to stand scared even of a hand proffered in solace. i had forgotten my place and an unmade call wavered before me. while he waited impatiently in their old car

junk. six or seven of us pressed together within a small singlestoried block. it was faded and so were they, confined and clutching syringes like teddy bears, and crawled up against the corners, taking up only the barest of spaces. 'i can't stand this any more i'm taking my shot next door' said the pale blond and faded blueeyed kid. and so he did. where i found him sitting - his dog, his one dirty old fleabitten friend was dead. the virus had left him resigned and sad, and the fire he'd built all embers and burnt skin and bones. and one charred skull picked clean in the middle. by the time i arrived with the broom ther

insomnia awake, he lies drifting, unbidden, in frayed flat blackness. bred from sleepless weeks, the endless parade of blurring days is hazy and framed by torn borders. his are the flitting peripheries, the tortured forms skitting and sliding skywards. tottering on feathered feet and babbling manically, he untangles baffling mumbled equations. sprawled on the floor casting frantic sidelong glances, he searches for inaudible noises, gnawing thoughts and shifting shapes, chasing the fading phrases of some malignant subterranean symphony. crashing unbalanced into the buzzing colour-bled static, and through - into the slow r

sisters upstream, landed upon the river's jagged edge, a small boat lay stranded, run aground on the shallow rocks. one shadowed by old stones, the other backlit by blinding light, set astride the raging tide, twin sisters lived - binary stars rising dark and bright. long hidden, these two furious muses are cards dealt out by fate's unbidden hand. barefoot, wet and careless, they roam the banks in stolen moments like crazed angels, freshly placed like some quiet seduction, or a babbling madness. unwittingly, the lonely boy completes the spell - strange sisters bound, now slowly drowned in bliss remit amend thei

chinese princess (for amber) - christmas 2003 1. chinese princess, hemmed about by red silkchoked ritual and smothered by dazzling goldcushioned obligation, unsteady legs stumbling gradually into stride - the wind of a thousand years of whispered voices howling at her back, fine hair whipping into tearing eyes pared down to raw nerves, to single images and naked self, and past, discarded casts shed in the dry shifting desert sand - her working's prints blown over, paling skyward toward scentless blue. 2. she's drawn lonely by plaintive calls across vast oceanic distances, clamouring to be heard like sonorous chords piled