Life began with a handful of flowers,
marble memorials and guilt;
life whittled to a fine art,
bequeathed its shearings.

My room is dark. Afraid
to draw in the world. Of too much
colour sound and water. And skin
and veins, too much. Life.

The skies, glass-engraved, reach sharply
down to cemented raw earth-
Colour, joy. Cyclic damps.
Mirrors within mirrors on gilded screens.
Multi-functioning blood, spilt, drawn
or communed-

Slow trails of hunger,
skin-whirls over smiling thighs;
my knotted fingers fumble through
brochures of bubbly brazen lands.
Celebrities or cerebral ditties-
longed-for on misty mounts.
Dim-blooded parties, orgies
of commercial consummation.

God brave me, my hold’s slipping!
Gut-frozen in my room,
watching, listening, swooning in the dark.
Parables, phones, friends, duties-
computer-animated life flows by.
Blue-screened I wait. Frozen.

Have you heard the silence
of your brain-
like a puddle rough-tongued
by a thirsty dog before
it scampers away.

Life romps, primps, swishes by.
I only grab glimpses
through my keyhole.