Pavement

The stale shrew shrunken

Like breadcrumbs, spit-ball-bathed pale

On a pavement, half-opened

Pulse glut grimace failed.

Your shame. Our words once

Woke illocutionary, littered each other

Lusting for blood, when surveillance suffered.

My nails on your cheek

Chastised chinks in the wood, as if adjoining

The vice of your heart, and the mind of the other.

In blood, or

Perhaps it was gold. But you were ashamed

My face failed you

Bitterly, the lamp-light you had stumbled through

To battle my own conscience. Swill wayward

Your dreams

In each awful clasp

Unconscious, Round the back of a failure. Rusty nails reigned

Of eyes, inside, a lapse into labour

Of life, and of toil, this meandering macabre

The chassis of corpse. Burned

Broken in nine

Sweet flints – the sooted air shook to rain

Washed the face of the final scenario.

The hot circular scream of abandoned babe

Red as the frosted fruit which fell

In faces, and grew

Abstract faces, in ages, into the groves.