Blood Orange

Autumn moon bloody revolt is unwrapping
the sky orange riot like a motherfucker and

I am swing seat fresh yearning sweet on her
slinging myself senseless into pendulum eye,

ladder, and rope. Come harvest time, I bleed
white noise pooling around two fingers, and

the moon sweltering cool around scream is a
disk in my throat. We steam-train across the 

tracks, across the cracks in the rinds of cities
once ancient now dripping fust tripping up

tardy over other eyes burying us dead soaking
wet between jagged rock and fall. I am a body

of sighs beneath you, but everything is February
and pebble-skinned like the muffled moon and
​
the crisp of your tread is red-hot simmer and
sprawl skimming across a stomach of stone.

Vanishing Point
​
Paint-smell. Black aprons and
a blue sketchbook. The giant press
which we weren't allowed near.
An older boy flecking away
at a gathering of spanners,
clamps, screwdrivers and other
such tools for a lino print–there,
somewhere in the background.
 
All I was trying was one-point
perspective. Indicate plane, set
vanishing point, draw out some
parallel lines. I knew even then
I could never be a draughtsman–
What could I make real, or just
to look it?–and yet did better,
given time, with colouring pencil.
I remember an artfully-mad mess
of my dad's ties overtaking
a double-page, and then you'd turn
to see my owl-face, haunted
by dissolving into so many shapes.
 
I wasn't there, though. Loyally
I sat and practiced my perspective.
 
A quick fuck in the background.
He'd nicked a finger, I think. 

"John Donne's Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward"
(graffiti by an unknown hand)