Author Information
Burrs
Wandering around inside myself
Secrets appear – drifting passengers of hush
Fingers to their lips and stilted
Something in my blood gets this going and renders my brain
a fidgety occupant of my skull
Being or feeling like Plath’s moon and tulips
I bunch myself into each day
In beats, beats
Heartbeats, the heart contracts
You’d think everything I see
would be all red, but
Instead, the world I see is yellow
It looks like an old photograph
I think maybe now it is all ice
My hands too – glittery ice sculptures splitting light
into hundreds of pieces, like birds coming home
A fog of wings settling on grey stonework
In my First House, the Lord of the Oceans resides
sometimes the awkward ingénue rising
often the master magician mystifying the masses
It has a soul, yet it borrows mine too
It is the base of a gas flame, all blue
And its blue face makes me itch
An itch vague and insatiable
I would like to touch it – its impossibility
I’m sure it feels like stars – countless buttons
to tightly close the darkness
Beautiful small burrs, little devil-smiles
Eager to prickle and scratch
my white and naked arms
NJP 5 July 2005
