Flight

The energy, the flight, the practice,

which falls to crumbs in the face of eyes, mouth, skin,

real as the earth and the scent of body and grave and sky and wine.

A mournful thought, interrupted…

It is a shapeless wind,

great wedges of poison fruit,

melted in honey tongues

and crystallised and melted, again and again,

in a staggering, heaving series of losses and triumphs.

And I am.

I am run to a thin rag.

My blood is sharp under such a skeleton,

crude exoskeleton of calm.

Faceless rabbit,

drunken and bitter as twists of ochre lemon.

The rise and fall under your hands.

Smooth, strange hands, scraped clean of the day

and only our scarred bodies know our dreams,

in the dark of solace.

Soft ears laid flat. Purr.

Shake the noise out of the night.

Pyromaniac darling, you are,

with whispers crawling from your mouth in the hot morning,

and yet I regain consciousness.

I regain flight.

The sky is bald with blazing light,

and I sear my eyes and climb higher,

twisting in funnels of doubt

that clip tiny pieces of flesh from my bones.

Yet still I climb; up, up, up,

away from teeming streets and cathedral steps,

the litter of a city, the smell of old euphoria,

bottled and grown stale.

Yet I want to be your lover.

I want to split my soul open for your eyes to linger over,

with a tenderness that moves the rocks in me,

moves the slow, aggravating patience of me out of view.

Patience is no virtue with those eyes

drowning out the detail,

making tattoos on my pupils.