hooked up
locked down
stitched up
on board

you had it

all tied up with string.

all of the men
were pulling up
the train tracks
they had laid
the night before.

i took a long bath
and shaved off every hair
on my body

you found me just
before i started
on the skin.

***

waking this morning
as if rising from a coma,
the world a sketch book
slowly
filling itself in.

i stumble home,
stoned & cold,
with bags of unassembled
curtains
and dirty clothes.

***

i could have used
cardboard boxes
to build
a home for you

but we marched away
like emperor penguins,

empty handed.

trees bulge
with translucent
bulbs

series of strange numbers
appear in
unidentifiable patterns

crowds of people
burn furniture
on their front lawns

layers of sound
fall like a universe
of curtains.

during that period of my life i was only eating sugar.

i cooked copious sugar meals and kept what i could not eat in the freezer.

i hunted down fresh fairy floss with the unhinged menace of a vietnam veteran.

i stalked through fields of sugar cane drinking diluted sugar juice.

even when the sugar insomnia hit i could not stop. sugar haunted my dreams.

i quickly began to resemble a speed freak. it became impossible to concentrate or keep still.

i was constantly under attack by swarms of invisible sugar mosquitos.
i swatted frantically, but nothing could repel the insects from the taste of my saccharine blood.

despite all this, i continued to consume nothing but sugar.

i became a connoisseur of different varieties and blends of sugar.

hard white cubes
soft moist brown
fine caster
crunchy raw
powdery icing
runny treacle
cane and palm
golden demera

it was plain to see that this had progressed from merely
searching for something sweet.

i was completely under the sugar spell.

there were 12 seconds
of perfect pitch

the frequency of a nuclear bomb

sound as clear as light

we closed our eyes
and brought our fingers
to our lips

an instant detox

bodies empty of everything.

we slept in the ocean all night.
it was the only place i could take you
to regulate your body temperature.

you dissapeard
into that warm dark mass
that holds its heat
like a palm.