smokescreen

lilac curtains frame feet making no sound in

socks

on walnut and polish

Mine squeak bare

your hands


my waist


now and then


I live for those moments


outside, the night is ink in the motes of a get well card


venus is brightest there

as always


everything but you glimmers in awe

black blue evening in d minor

heaven sent

bible bound

fate found

partner


by the spur of the stars


beyond the convention of this world

we are twin gods in another


a gramophone like a copper tampa drill

spins songs that could not be bettered

just as the percussion of your cotton socks

brushes the floorboards

kiss

we make half-circles and edgeless

this pause before

landing

new bends


i will touch your face

once in this lifetime

hair like the floss of a curdle-milk sky

or the strings of a guzheng


from a small mouth

sharp enough


makes indistinguishable

whittled tights on marble sculptures

seem real within a millimetre of their creation


we are a flashfire thought in the mind

of the us that sat and heard the music

swell for the first time


met eyes

turning

suffuse clarity through the ashen ghost of a firework

immortal smoke jelly steps back in time to egg

clutching something like a yolk at the centre of my chest

it dyes me golden with the life it holds

and the rest

is purple,

so purple,

we make purple,


it climbs the spiral staircase and sheds a stained glass slipper

it presses the cool of the back of its hand to the violet heat of its brow


it freezes in the gaze of a hare


it rocks in the crescent ramp of the waning moon

and settles in the middle dip

it drips through

layer thin left by crater impact


travels the world upside-down in a game of pachinko

the stars double our score and

we win


one touch,

try to forget it,

I ask you every day,

what are you thinking about?

worlds will fail us