twilight blurs edges
collapses distance
‘i miss you’
pen say
‘I’m right here’
i say
she live as if it reel
her hung coat
her hall
her boots lined up
her rented bones
her alpha beta
her fish and bird tile
her fluid and a razor
peace-frog pen
i burrow place to be
in the scent of her
love is the best
anaesthetic i know
alcohol
a picture-book second
i watch chicago dying
come pen
and she comes me
by return
pen a gift
pretty to behold
and done with
once unwrapped
halfway down the stair
is a stair where
this human conundrum
perplexes me
i love and i love
but the skull is empty
hey tonight
from berkeley
to carmel
as if i were here
were there
were elsewhere
as if i
were anywhere
i’m a bitch for conclusion
want great epiphanies
to spill onto the carpet
expect god
to manifest before me
open his tiny golden books
then depart and give me
time alone to read them
‘am i confusing you?’
pen say
‘are you confusing me
with somebody else?’
zen is the art
of turning implicit
which blind watchmaker
is rending the render
i switch channels
another corpse on the slab
future ex-wife in my lap
i kiss her forehead
with lips that
don’t yet know her name
star-racked sky
you’re as much a grave
as the soil i straddle
more dead stars
than living stars in you
.
.
Darren Francis
Picture Nick Victor
.