Midnight

Midnight Juliet
Why can't you talk?
You turn, face motionless—
revolving, inhibitions freezing you
dead as ice
Yet I saw you, midnight Juliet
naked last night, wanking in a
snowstorm, covered with a strange
light, suffering from overexposure
Chillblains on the clitoris?

Today you cannot talk
freezing under the counterpane
face blue as ice and half as
embarrassed. Chipping me with
your cold stare, you wear your
sex like a striped lifebelt, a
loincloth of frost that my
warmth cannot penetrate.

Tomorrow you will stride
Wild as the whispering wind
staring at me in scorn back over
your ivory shoulder to where
I sit in sorrow
And tomorrow you can speak
Why? Why won't you love?
She whispers, moans
"It's this place, this
godawful place, it freezes
my bones."

Willpower

I spent a whole hour last night
eating salted peanuts
and writing a 3-page Biology Essay
without one sexual reference
what-so-ever

Dead Shark

honest it was all a big mistake
I didn't mean to I didn't I didn't
but that really doesn't make it any easier
cue-shaped holes continue to ventilate
his nether regions
and his heart

(from The Seed Garden Manual for Planting)
the fantail
his small god divided
and divided
asking each stranger
where am I

2
he is the dream we only half
remember
catching a spark in a tin cup
a ship from the fire
the ash of a fern

3
the forest is a cold nest
when it rains
leaves fall to the bottom
half rotten stumps
are eaten white
with fungus
the colour
of the inside of an egg
or a discarded feather

4
too far up a rubbed tree
where the antlers
loose their first years
he tells me the faults
each sin
the ones I'd forgotten
somehow I'm pleased
there were enough to fill his brain