The Reeling Wheeling Constellation

(for the dead)

It is nigh the broken-glass dawn

With its charade of dew and birds

Already its cool wet tongue

Licks my toes like a dog's

I arise from a bed of mud

Drunk still and floating

Several inches above the ground

And I hit my head on the sky

I have dreamt this place, I think

With its watercolour trees

That stretch their limbs across the world

Like drunk wallpaper

or dead dancers

There is sky falling through the branches

In a raid of silent divebombers

And the heady scented poppies

Are the ever-loving bombs

I have tried to hit the ground running

Sunk as I was and legless

I have felt twinges of yearning

Between the sweet blows of the sunshine

They condemn me these rays of gold

That tear at the fluff of the clouds

And etch their anger at the back of my eyes

To bliss atrocious

or razorblade tenderness

I have felt the love of the murdered for the blade.

Summer 2004 - woke up in the forest, hungover for the first time in my life.