absence

DEAD INSIDE

And here we end
word chef-ing mixed media whispers with
tears fought in unison after the war

paperback cuts and empty pages to line our
tongues: a vastness, like stale bread
and un-gardened fence lines.

Here we end our story where
it never began: with hollowed sights
and enemy trenches and
bonbonnieres filled with armories
and dartboard calendars

– riding shotgun with fries to go –

carrying anthrax and V-shaped saliva
in white pockets of revenge

bleating our way
between dichotomy and conflict, where,
in this absence of hope we are just
zombies in a dollar bin –
half the value promised
and reduced to clear.

STOIC

There is nothing,
short of absence

flocked as well in chasm as expanse;
deplete of all and nourishment
in trance with echoed dance,
which,
farmed as wealth for plunder
wears a cold and faceless frieze;

as lingering and as formless,
it, bequeathed in whole disease
whilst bounded by detachment
mirrored, stale
and faint,
and seized

as broken hearts denied repair
to leak, unprized, uneased

SILENCE LIKE WINE

it is not okay
to spill silence like wine
into my emptied heart
for it is already filling with emotion
and the hungry spaces in between
are not for getting drunk