Speaking In Tongues
Scribbling In Voices
A Woman Named Love
On the peninsula of yesterday’s desires
She sang and danced but now, all I know,
She is a cat, she is a cautious liar,
Her hints are broken ski poles in the snow.
She tiptoes past the truth: she can’t afford it.
She clings on to the scraps of past relations.
Her Christmas postcards, carefully worded,
Are dull like winter dawns, no expectations.
Dimensions curl in cosy carpet slippers...
She used to sing but songs are out of place.
A cord of present cut by ruthless nippers
Wiggles its ugly stumps into her face.
The morning china, sleeping on the table,
Its sunlit roundness, its porous whiteness tinkles.
The probability consists of daily labels
With hearts and birds, prescribed for early wrinkles.
Her eyes grow sad. The dust sets on the lashes.
The silence wraps her, eats her like a cancer.
She used to dance but sounds turned to ashes
Inside the music box. A Fairy Dancer
Topples on his crooked spine in awkward ardour
To serve her as before but darkness peers
Out of her vacant eyes and makes him shudder
And cry for her his little angry tears.