Showtime

Before birth, curled
in a pool of stars,
we recite the litany
of our histories of passage
and dream about light
from behind sealed eyes.

We can be reborn any day -
postage paid to paradise.
Welcome yourself with open arms,
to Saturday morning breakfast
in a sun strewn lounge.

Stop searching for an airlift out,
thinking with the dial-up access
of the unprepared and do-not-dare's.

Play like you're in a paint-ball game -
let the bruises fade and book a rematch.
There's no rehearsal for this sit-com series,
it's opening night on 'The Best Show Ever.'

National Geographic

She carries a wire cage
balanced on her head.
Two birds perch inside
and view the day
in metal-framed segments.

Her outlook is intercepted
by a grid of pinholes
in fabric chosen by her father
and brothers.
The colour might become her -
but no one will know.

Does she like the view
split into grains passing
between the weave of her chadri?
Is she happy to be a silk-clad ghost
muffled in privacy, marked as devout?

Or is her world a dry pinhole theatre,
where she, like the desert
tenebrionid beetle,walks dowhill
to help moisture roll into her mouth.

Mannequin

Robed in cinnamon dust,
with cloud hair and realistic nipples,

she's a plastic-modelled centrefold
among her pleasure brethren.

Her topaz gaze eyes the reflection
of her life in a display case -

she can't help but notice the seams
where her arms join to her body.

Hollow-filled

No matter how
the sunlight pours in,
still it scribes the shadows of bars
over the floor.

I hunt nightclubs,
libraries, supermarkets,
trashed apartments,
and littered streets,
for entities to sate my appetites,
assuage my hungers.

But bricks line the emptiness
I've walled myself into.
Though I seem for a while
to have filled up spaces -
feel the warmth of fullness
from this man or that,

eventually I find myself once more
soaking up a grid of darkness
that overlays the light.

I must find a way to fill
my hollows myself,
not seek kapok stuffing
from someone else.

Again

The distance between us grows.
Another anniversary has passed
and I should be comfortable
in my new bed now softenings
have developed under me.

But still I wake some mornings
and know that my fingers
dreamed of your skin again.

Storm Light

The painted-flower parasol
shading the lamp
glimmers light along her gown
like moon beams.

She fingers the softness
of splayed petals
mussed in the vase alongside,

a prettily restrained pose,
whilst the touch of his lips and hand
quicken lightning through her veins,

and a thunderstorm shivers
along her thighs.