You’re No John Dunne

 You’re No John Dunne

 

Your interior’s just overcast windows again,

out-staring icicle skies, blue nude trees,

and those same two everyday magpies

recall Corfu Durrell’s rapid Maltese crosses:

what even do they ever do? Bonded for life

you read and they grieve, while last leaves

still cling on stubbornly to Winter’s trees.

Dreaming not writing, your clock’s clucking,

discs spinning memories, vacuums flocking

like birds of a feather and you call this being.

Flea, your blood, it never will mingled be;

a spider between sheets one night did creep,

and as it bit into flesh, I heard you shriek,

it drank deep, it woke you from your sleep

put its poison there as you counted sheep

until with balled fist you clench and sweep

and hurled it blind against an opposing wall.

In the morning, it was there, small dead thing

clutching itself tight, the way dead things do

when all that’s living has been extinguished,

no fight left, a noble death, its last breath,

as somewhere inside your blood lies cooling,

thickens as at this window finds you brooding.

Between separate beds blood is never shared

then again, the truth is you knew it all along,

because face it, fool, you’re no John Dunne.