Dusk and Petrol
If you cross your eyes slightly then the lawn is on fire.
I watch a plane flying low, flaring through the dusk.
I stir my coffee twice and wait for it to settle
as the man on the radio with a voice like sinking bread
tells the nation that dousing yourself in petrol
isn’t a good thing to do. Spontaneous rainfalls of rolling eyes
are swooping across the country, they see everything,
so don’t go out of the house, don’t stay in the house,
don’t move, run for your life. My coffee is too hot,
I now have a mouth like the bottom of a steaming pipe
and it’s too early to go to bed. I think about hospitals
to pass the time, think about memories seeping through scars,
think about fainting surgeons.
‘The doctors said there was nothing they could do.’
Why do we have doctors that can’t do anything?
Can they walk, talk, keep a clean house?
The lawn is burning itself out now, I pick up the phone
then put it down, repeat the action. Love
is a double-bladed knife. I find it much easier to make enemies,
I can make them out of gingerbread, playdoh, leaves,
I can model them to look like you.
I can place them face-down in the sink.