I’ve known fear in a handful of dust

The consequence of a slip of the tongue

Words gone wrong

The vestiges of rain

Primeval instinct trusts nothing

Human error cannot set us free

Find a mirror, smash it, the fragility of the body remains

The devil’s in the detail

Condemned at the root

Old-fashioned dread conjures

The slumber of the dead.

The tones of solemn music

Quiver in the dust-mote air.

.......

Such peculiar ways of thinking

Welcome the iconography of smog

As a false prologue to a shape-shifter deliverance

With a savagery that terrifies.

Like the perfume of roses,

Street lights on a coal-black night,

Footsteps echo into heart beat,

Coughing dispels the gloom

As burnt opium infests the room

That stinks of sepsis

Infests the pretend civility of

The everyday

.......