Niggle

You put a word in the centre,

wrap around it long sheets

of silence with stripes of

light beams. The way you wrap it

the word looks like a rose,

one that radiates pink-blaze

across my liferoom. I try to

pluck it out, I want the thorns too,

but what I really want is to touch it,

leave fingerprints all over it,

rip out the beautiful petal-like packaging.

I want to take the word-rose

out for dinner, maybe some coffee

and cookies, walk through a shadowy mangrove.

We will only be touching, not moving, not speaking,

this is the only way I give

form to my desire.

****

There are too many things growing in/around me,

too much noise, too much heat,

too many both obvious and

opaque metaphors. That one word-rose

image that you beamed into the dirty

sky still remains captured in my damaged memory

like the only definition of my desire.

Intact that was the only gift that didn’t need

giving. I look at it for hours drinking

all its fantasy, eventually image cracking,

taking form of a device that will only exchange

intimate information. This is still something I think

I need, this is still something that gives form to

organised decay.

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