Now your new is routine

Look in the mirror. Examine the flesh, the eyeball.
Skin like stone, like starlight, like urinal porcelain.
Take stock of those insignificant, attractive, biological things you do
that make you so important,

all available at the cost of a nail.
Greatly helped along, like gum disease. But whilst you're there,
staring, you know that it's all just a conflation of rumour and bad dental hygiene. And you're the only receiver who took it personally.

How much further back can you look?
How far behind the flesh, the fat, the bone and the marrow, the blood vessels, and the arteries can you stare, taking in the mirror, which is serving you the best it can without asking for gratitude.
Can you see your responses, what you said, pumping away like an organ?
There is no light back there, there should never be light,
which is why these things come into the light
undeveloped, weak, and revolting to those who listen.

And yet, if luck was there to help along the premature birth, to gently usher this brain damaged, writhing thing into existence, maybe it would all be okay.
But as long as you remember; luck is fleeting and treacherous.
And it's not like you're going to break that mirror any time soon.
But if you did, take a shard,
and make use.

Time needed more you

This was my finger, running along the stitching of your jeans,
looking for imperfection,
and feeling failure
at finding nothing but perfection. Perhaps it
was just the light. Nothing should be
this correct.

We mistake yearning for grief
- and at this, you nod,
bringing the impetus for that tear to fall, a singular,
pioneering cascade of sorrow,
absolutely and,
yes, now I see it,
perfectly silent and clear.

See the weeks later, laid out
like a meal far too big for two.
Where to begin, and who will
eat what?
The sun has changed you, and also me,
I do not point the finger of blame one way.
Yet can you be blamed for the change?

I say this on a full stomach, when all I
really want to do is sleep or starve.
I am tired of the salt,
and there continues your tear,
drying to invisible powder,
its moisture re-absorbed by
your skin.
Devoured and nourishing,
repeating,
returning to the self.

It finds its way back in, like food,
through a most necessary fracture.
swallowed, gently torn apart,
digested.
Nothing is wasted when it comes
to feeding a hunger.
It must be fulfilled, it
cannot be anything else.
It cannot be a feeling unstitched, its
perfection does not allow it.

Speak in delve tones

A morning routine, faithful.
Stir the coffee to temperature.
Glance out of the window,
Take it all in,
Make it all correct and digestable.

When the tar black is once more still,
Notice the reflection of the gull,
The image then
Of an upside down, skeletal wingspan
As it elopes across the slick.

It captures the eye,
But is gone before
It is fully seen.
But it was noticed,
I noticed that,
Therefore -

This galaxy shifts and pivots
On the sharpness of a concentration,
Wrapped up against
The death of winter.

All is shifting,
Expanding, infinite,
And ready to be
Ignored out of existence.

Here it is again -
The accepted smell of evening.
Toxic whispers,
Paralysing,
Open up the tear ducts.

Are we getting used to this?
Night after night?
I crave the mornings these days -

I give you the same thanks
A doctor gives when
Offered a disease to cure.