Friday 5 June 2020

Don’t Think About It Too Closely


Don’t Think About It Too Closely




I can’t think
that you ever felt love
when you tell me
all women cut after leaving.
Never look back,
some scratching words like that.


I mirror your smile
but backwards,
trust in you to scissor
our photos in two,
seen it in cheap afternoon films
on those cheap afternoon channels,
where a jilted serial kidnapper,
always someone recently close,
holes himself in a rotting windmill
of her pinboard ticker tape mind.


Never short of hostages on TV,
zoom into charcoal cookie-cutter
mascara streaks then fade to white.
She’s so self published,
bottled her vanity potions
of half wept tears,
for the coma’s so deep dug
in this next partner
that he'd sleep to miss the wake.


Rip out his one pound of flesh,
slash it up fifty percent,
to sell minced heart bits.
Mix oatmeal and stir in end-trails;
straight, forward-facing paths,
no bends, no kinks, no surprises,
no divergence in a yellow wood:
watch her tear with careless scorn
along the dotted line and torn.


I can’t think
that you ever knew love
when you can’t tell me
of those left in your backwash,
nor show any line of diary
that you’d never write,
blank cards decay at birthdays
unbought, left on shelves
to mustard yellow.
Never even unscrew a pen
to mark any cross on any map
where my end becomes
your start again.





No comments:

Post a Comment