And I watch your close

Clockwork as curtains at the end

Of the day

These three I could say

Linking our arguments like a chain

Of daisies

Once you wreathed round my neck

This way: velvet entitlement

With a slow degrade

What's left will dry up and the rest

Fell away

Some petals we pluck

Cruel as veils from the Mystery

Virgin truths trembling

Before the descending lei

Ravenous we'd be

Sadists scenting blood

Sickle-sweet taste of cherry

Decay in our throats

Would-be rapists, forestayed

By submission

Dismayed

I watch your dismissal

Curt curtains at the end of the day

These three I would beg

Four: stay

If I could make it count flip a coin

Into some fountain and call it

A night, ok call it a play

These three I would pray

Make a scene

I'll steal it

Somehow, somewhere, some-

But for now

I watch your close

Watch you close

Watch you close

Like clockwork

Ticking off the distance by the links

Along our chain

Backing scientifically away

You have mapped with precise measure

The lengths to which you may

Stretch, without quite snapping

Then spring forth again

There is a light inside-

Behind-

Sometimes I stare and think

I find it

A periphery of lesser shade

Sometimes the finest blade

Delineating edges

Four square

And when I try to thieve in there

How sharp

-Ly drawn

In take of-

Self

Stranger you are

Suddenly, as ever.

Stranger than I

Longed to be stranger to you

(Strangers, used and through)

Yet then again

You're here and seeming

With me, waiting

Bating breaths

On lines with hooks

I enter open-eyed

To watch you close

Watch you close

Watch you close

Cold as clockworks and as metal

Inevitable

No bell will ring

No angel wings

I train my gaze upon your windows

Near perceiving

Fear, deceiving

Vague delusions of illumination

Singing in my skin

It's happening

Surely happening

I'll feel a hum beneath my fingers

Start to crawl along my limbs

And the world hereafter funnels down

To this:

Life beyond shadow

A memory of a face

The infinitesimal apprehension

Of stirring down the links...