As the evening stretches beyond skyscrapers
sunset cracks windows and voices,
midnight lies as a would-be lover
counting her footsteps across Brooklyn Bridge
to an anonymous apartment, where she imagines
waking to her lipstick on his coffee cup
Washing machine skies spin skeins of colour
red always bleeds into the blue and JFK runway
is nothing more than shingle upon shore,
spent shots across grassy knolls
Spaces on my Christmas card mantlepiece
make me feel like a criminal awaiting arrest,
fingers falling into prayers
as kite strings attached to the electric chair
Dress of sparrows
migrate between thighs,
would nest hinges open wider
if I shared confessions
told to the barman priest
behind his vodka pulpit?
The sea reaches for the moon bleached land
flinging pebbles as broken violin strings
into orchestra of every Christmas eve song never written
and yet more, always more,
whore to my adolescent failings on the Xmas disco floor
Abba or Wham, I just never knew
Love became a hearse between my legs
Forget lung cancer
last cigarette I will ever smoke
will be the ashtray between hope and regret
and the box is running short of matches
As the evening stretches beyond skyscrapers
kindness stitches wounds beyond poetry,
I can hear distant thrum of yellow taxi ferries
and the metronome of hearts pulsing.
Nothing rhymed, alone in a party of 55
syllables are mere cemetery word wreaths
all I can see is the road to the sea
And in the metronome of hearts pulsing
pushing the sky away into boulevard bouquets
ripping December’s flowers from the frost
can you hear me?
