death day

gloom becomes

inkier

blackcurrant

deeper

dusk warblers

salute the passing

of shapes, perished

outlines -

this soluble day

that inch of edges

buries all, chlorophyll

whisperers, root to

anchor quieten

silhouetted traders

unwrap cinders,

charcoal nocturne’s

its gazing

sea-slowed-muffle,

daylight shrugs off

from lichen liked

boughs

an entirety of sleep

wades thru’  the

shadow molested

grasses

inked air

deepness into

every thorough

window

stars, pinched irises

of chrome-width yet

on full glint, such far-

away sparkles hint-

someone is watching

makes the heart glow

better, knowing, cold

is achieving its collars

a sleek glove of knives

patrols sliding thru’ wind-

whipped-convulsing-fingers,

leaf shiver and muse-

about the near rust that is coming

the plough is left awkward-

elbowed for dew to confess

oxides to fasten, wet and sturdy

for morning

steeples about repeat their

vanish, a raven’s wing

crosses the land where

scarce pheasants scarper

and the mind's

rubble vacates

and

replenishes

a ghosting month

attended to by

another anniversary

attended to by

shadow

here, a copy of

tears is added to,

compiles my ocean

of deep shivering blues

i am sure i see you

roam where the pale

orchids grow and white trees

lean up against the palest hills

a river tends to and is

whispered-upon-caresses,

does the white hawk even

notice?

i am unsure of within my

own heart unsure of grief

that never exerts absence,

colour abandons grey

you are not stood or here

always near my senses,

where you stride in the

whitest of woods, do you

ever glance back to watch

the window occupied where

shade only multiplies? see me

in that wreathe of dusk

that continuous lane

arched over and ached with

rust, silent wrists shuffle

the barely warm sun

i am always thinking of

that certain someone

the voice of which i can

never catch

under a moon’s melted

beam scarce few lit

the footsteps i truly

meant

moth stale

memory leafs there

thru’ the bronze and

quite broken corpses

yet another listening

month for the bare

boughs to approve

and winter to thicken

in hadean velvet

so

the world’s morose feels quieter

feels as if outdoors has been

stoppered

want

the loud sky to quieten more

to succeed with stillness

come mortuary clock

slow your stride, come

collect slowness

rainfuls

hear its lament

heart wise

it yearns to deafen

with abrupt walls

and wet voices

there’s a town out

there with interfering

voltage

with shadow made

churches offering

alternative bliss

knowing that each

person owns darkness

in their own social precipice

so i’ve put the stars out

and pricked the sun to

a numb stutter

seasons don’t consider

here, and days don’t have

hours to hold

refuse the narrative

of unrestrained others,

that’s lunacy enough

shrug the window’s

eyelid, discontinue

outside

here curled like an

ammonite, in a bed

made of dusk

here is rooted whilst

fading all anchors

fading in an envelope

can keep me here

what is contrived as

now

the globe is sleepier

less definite, more of

a hole, more of a plummet

i am un-worded and going,

retracting as a well made

secret likes to lie

unnoticed

and

forgotten

over into elsewhere

surely arrival has been reached

and the sky’s been stoppered?

nearly to the clock’s last minute

will i be nostalgic in its rust grimace

once that rainbow bridge has

been diminished?

tears are only salt nowadays,

only winter cried icicle masks -

thru’ that ice of someone else,

no one eyed for anyone

this the last window looked thru’

that last tapered cloud -

being swallowed by dusk in a red

almost fiery glove

where the horizon is crowded

antigens, skyscraper bodies all

there are no trundled trains coming

snakelike patience, no announcement

no message upon broken confetti or

reversal wither of returning sap

this is that edge that’s waiting to be

leapt, for all stood things must fall

all things must, another starry breath

trying to usurp the lungs, and sheets -

moon patterned cling yet another skin

to be free of once that fastening of

light undoes, awareness like a fading

autumn, replaced by a season of none

with sea in mind

edges are for sucking

smoothed out throating

from that claw of reach,

secrecy hid in each shell

continuous aquamarine

of greasy creases, an estuary

in musical mirrors, each sliding

sequinned dresses

gleams so nautical that

elsewhere is envy and

dull as netherworld water

no soul would wish

jet hair being dragged at

and oily rainbows pulled,

mackerel ghosts and the

wrecks of below

- seldom visited - but

lately waters the colour

of nerves, a moon so

hole like, insists on being

strode into -

like a lane’s rusty handprints

graffitied with almost memories,

rock pools gather childhood nets

glassy and full of lost gazing

a kite left there for agile crabs

to shoulder, as children we drowned

there in the midnight captured ponds

low tide only tho

residential herons stood stilted stance

when the cormorants appear, they aren’t

stiff like dead ballerinas but dropped rags

or messes of inked soaked cloths

there, fleets that groan there for the winds

to gnaw at and whittle, to grimace thru the

empty eyeless cabins, that myth of pilchards

oily as gleam-less-ness suffering the tide’s moan

surgical gulls strut the broken decks, if listened to

a bell is drowning its echo, its fisherman guts,

atoms at neptune’s asking call back to the sea’s

pale winter blood where all rivers go to decease

takes him to where?

chased hares chased by

hawkishness, sunlit chasing

where? knowing nowhere

he follows

up abandoned tracks

where no steel applauds

new, buckled grim, rust

has episodes has death arranged-

old metals organ groans

asleep for ages are the telltale corpses

in fields floated with nodding hazes,

days could be spent here trying to

root himself under, finding nothingness

finding no one finding nothing

there was never a sea here or a

shell to recluse or confide in, washed

up words, wrecks, broken sentences,

prose, poems, tidemark thinking

come follow the petty cloaks of crows

where the bough looks like half a man’s

scrawny limb, there are nettles to be

had around the heart

didn’t know how far to go, perhaps by

the lung’s bellow or a sycamore’s sad

dropping, too many hedges are eyelids

there are silhouettes with gasps in them

there are blazes in the fruition of others

where tongues hang inside and out of

fastidious flowers, they scent those paths

into becoming lost

isn’t that canyon depth inside all of us

where gloom’s musicians hum? whether-

where raced voices go like mad haring

breezes, until going becomes gone

thin crying cries sombre and calling,

curlews outperforming the wind’s

imbalance, where the crouched leaves

hide from grazing, where footsteps touch

weeds furnace their towns into greenish

smother outlasting the word blown elements

outlasting everything that tries to shoot, tries

to burst from beneath, wishes could be him -

in that kind of tremendous sleep what keeps

buried claimed by the soil’s furnished deeps,

thinks what rots behind in old tired hills upon

beds of refusal but dying is eventual as dusk’s

coming, glimpse on by where the dandelions

stagger and fling, a pond’s swollen reflection

dance-floor clamoured suitors, dragonfly

edibles mostly embraceable on the wing

others succumb, there are eyed-killers in black-

sheathed trench coats slick as murder, watching

fly-wearing-theatres, collecting them into cadavers,

into wingless dresses

those who have had their summers faded to

where silence inks most a cemetery slumber,

old ashes, stooped over oaks grumble and

the shrill spruce leaning their sadness

was that what went, fulfilment? but no shadow

can be roamed that long finding himself appears

mayfly as disappearance, and the heart’s poem lies

like basting, lies there being forgetful

a river picks itself by gleam and by prism and

drifts his gaze upon where nothing usually gladdens

thinking “too much water is bad for drowning”

he follows where the sky takes him where such deeps

can only hope to swallow