did I ever say I was “good people”?

some days I miss the hasty shouting

the crack of fist on salted cheekbones

 

better that than the nauseous choice

of considered upholstery or designer phones

never weather appropriate, rather, accident

 

ripped and bleeding, waiting for some other

and days my head will fill with men of war

always in shock yet mostly in awe

 

as old words rattle inside my skull

brass cased

cheap beer, cheap vodka, cheap meat, cheap life

 

it’s so much easier to smile once

your shit has sailed, once your dream has failed

and there’s nothing left to prove

 

free to crawl amongst the humming, cumming, fauna

rolling amongst the underwear, lying dead, in the street

where the bus route and late doors chip shop meet

 

stretching every buttonfly in my drive through jeans

for her, stern and sweatless as a celluloid queen,

teasing nonsense thoughts stowed under my be

 

where ten percent of the two breathed criminal intent

always made it seem like everybody else in the world

was getting it, apart from me, whatever it might have been

 

the caffeine and preservatives served me ill

and now the air is clear enough to hear

an echo of those angina beats

 

the rhythm of compressed time

where mild maturity becomes entwined

in curious calamity,

 

cut down, boxed up,

for all to see the choke hold slip the sterling buckle

with teeth around your stubbled throat

 

and nylon strained constricted waste

belies a filthy lack of alibi

for guilty biology draws the crimes and rhymes through dangerous times

 

 

 

though this winter sketch of pallid raiments,

the stretched sad sack of retiring flesh,

erases the lines of entry through sharp regret

 

and in doubt of the wealth of its worth

now points me towards a more formal light

the scratched windows of differing sight

 

that vie for attention in the bottle smashed remains

of this salt dried blink

too long is never too long to wait for beauty

 

though, while riding as untrained participant,

your mind may break with the horse

as the ground reddening around the space

 

it’s crown once filled forces a remembered, gory,

glory spilled between your lovers sheets

but I’ve exceeded my quota of homicidal tropes, those

hopes of long abandoned reason

 

so…