The Collection of Struck Matches

What happens after the light

Matches are now an emergency

Of antiquity

Retracing the past

As the contours of clothes fall

At the edge of the bath.

The candles like conversations

From long ago

You  are past recollection

The combinations

The old motions, of  match against box

At first

Dragging the conscience, across the old ash

Shocks.

Light stands as a verb

Then

On the edge of the lips

A momentary frustration

Will not light, will not work

And the water there like a judgement.

Monitoring the moves

As your body slips.

The gas lighter

Seemed too direct, too determined

For your thirst

Deep in the pit of your stomach

.

You were waiting in your touch

For the fall of the mask

The release of flame.

You  yearned for that moment

To leave name and agenda

And watch fire from the friction

Society  shames our retreat from

Into personal space.

There on the windowsill

You stack the struck matches

Worthless to electric expectations

But there in the dark

They speak of removal

Punctuating the pile of clothes

With their upside exclamation

Still tipped with the tincture

Of the lone human heart. 

Veil

I must have knitted myself

In those strange plains of sleep

Bourne with the needles

Vaccinating, the terrible teeth

Tipped with paste.

The net

Coughed from, caught on my lips

Screens my face. Adulthood

Stirs underneath

-          Then accessorised

The metal brace, grief

To educate the smile.

With fins

They wait to tickle the silver

In my eyes.

For it is hollowed, the meat

Torn away from the shell

Of the crab-curve, the cheek

Of a child’s sense of self.

The school uniform clung

Like a dressing that day

That week. Those long years

I was served to the world

As a boat

Hollow

Caught on the tide of parental desire

With a row, row, row

Yelled from the sidelines.

Short staccato strokes.

I became their vessel

Dragging the shore, against my skin

Which become the waterproofed body

Boarded by hurt, by sin.

Now 

They are giving me way to ideals

The aisles, where we start

To pick external objects

Which will constitute ‘living’

Or failing that – art.

The veil assumed a landscape

Across my legs

Crawled to stand on my spine

But I was younger then

 Now

It has dried.

Starts as a spool on the cheek

Serves to top every rib

Which they put pressure upon

The seats in the ship

And I am caught in their hands

The fingers

Still fail.  For they

Have determined a net of it

The long, stinking veil

Which glints in my stomach

Pierced with holes

As they sit either side of my chest

And throw, throw, throw.