TROUBLE

(NEW POEM)

(network)

trouble is to crowd or stir. yes. between mischief and reprieve, the night: a circle of soldiers, leathery stench from the rendering plant, moon, at the acme of its languor. i wrestle this parenthesis open, plant myself inside the sweetshop frequencies of heat and acetone, a freak-show hallelujah! that sticks to my lips. here, u were young. on nights like this, of torpor or noise. moon, moon, moon, a perforated strainer through which yr mess must pass. i mean, yr life. i am not u, have slipped through the net that i myself wove. but here, nonetheless. end days of delirium and siege. grief in the guise of earworm, returns to us by loop, by fold, like miracle. to be saturated and consumed by the same wild colour. monarch of limpid mercies, mouthing. yr frail, discerning eye is flicky. i was never young. the ache of envy. an impeccable rage. my chastened utopia, u cruise and pose, poised with salubrious flowers, under the slink of exception, the cover of night. mine was the dirge: chilly iambic umbilic to this place. how do i love u? as a knife arrives in the mind, fully formed, brings its own serrated weather. foreboding, on the waterfront. i love u in joyride’s dubious pursuit, and morning’s desolate scald. i love u by dreary endearment, in elaborately trembling light outside of bars where safety’s razored, rinsed clean. trouble is muddy, cloudy, restless. yes. flayed awake inside this fury, thoughts flapping over the frozen ground like geese. the canal, of course, an algal flush. eyewash. the journal is full of syrup and shrouds, but no one really means it. i look for u everywhere. u said that earnestness and honesty are not the same thing, decorum isn’t emotion, and i am full of it. yes, like the claggy praline of dusk. my ungainly body, diligent misstep. home, and its requisite menace. we ran all night. in circles. now, there are women of substance and gusto, going about. their pity is delicious when they look at me. in the heat we fantasise and fry. the pinkly frivolous thing of it is – i can never return, u can never get out. i escalated into life: admin, arbitration, the actionable moon above another set of towers. life is a beige swath, goes with nothing. between wastrel commerce and commercial waste, ha-ha. and yr t-shirt says: look out, here comes trouble. as if this wrecking were a rhapsode. because, it was. it is.