double parking my burst bubble

aerated to the hilt, there were no pigeonholes left when I arrived, so through the arcade of shuttle I traipsed

to the cranky haunts known by heart

adding footnotes to any caricature

to slink behind the stage-managed
and blow the cover of shadows, perhaps to fudge even that

symptoms mime a certain lack of punctuation leaving fingers crossed

a thingummyjig-ism

did I ever mention coming clean as a speech impediment

in my attempts to get off spiel I still require proof-reading

as I skate on double edged blades / a dishevelled premonition

the apparition that your voice became

with fingers in your ears, attentive fantasies trespassed on each other’s lusts, calling over cautious tributes to lost lovers, from the tannoy of the soul, flexing timely muscles disguised as miracles in the hat and beard so befitting my sensibilities, then at the peak of retreat comes faulty blossoming

when you recite the word ‘shimmering’- shimmering, shimmering – you say, the very ‘mmmm’s’ moved me, layers of light found the sound in you, in that moment I knew that ‘when’ didn’t exist

when you go skating on footnotes
telling it as it is
all punctuation heads for the bottle
perhaps you never had to cross your fingers before a blade
perhaps you never peaked at dishevelment
I’m assuming you cast me to skate upon

talk to the wall
feel the drag that waters me down
and skirts around multiple
self-raising, self-rafting

ever the heavy-handed repent
at the sight of dismantled scaffolding
even you took anatomy lessons just in case
such paper-thin tenacity
signals the carcass to breath
and without splitting silence
into be-and-quiet
your echo retaliates

did you know there is a warrant out for your (in)sensitivities

multiple choice fluency – cancel all sweetnothings
whose plight tacks down ditto
smacks of fake mimicry,
travesty

hit it off
bickering about how even the keel is

in a lopsided rapture
a photo-finish flush with redress

no refund of identity, the ocean can’t be bargained with
or sneezed at

towering over your shortfall

manikin idolised
a second fiddle’s worth of shabbiness
boils down to a
concrete bubble

trip with sincerity

mutually recovered after capsize, let’s pester convention for disenchantment’s narrative, unresolved as it may be

is there still time?

after the illusions of centuries
becoming suspicious of irony in general
retelling excuses to the mortification of someone
to whom everything was miraculous, crouching closest to all the plucky strangers asking for freedoms

scarcity constricts what might appear bittersweet

making a crossing from the minutiae that double parks on my defences

to shooting down
or maybe just frisking, all euphemisms for the direct opposite

and being a dead-ringer for a burst bubble, I wonder if a motley crew of chameleons should learn to diversify

or, before the inevitable, wangle a better deal on costumes

from the not understood, not still standing, point of realisation that to be who you are is not up for debate

in this moment, in this moment only, does I know I as two marks in the alphabet of being

something vague in agreement

uncertainty: the not fully confident, not fully fidentally conned
like the banter between me and em
“oh sure” they say

on the verge of sincerity
is a ledge marked “don’t trip!”
from the sheer face of taunt

I reached no agreement with myself
to succeed in touching

while being inundated with obscurity that melts before wrapped up descriptions of excessive prescience - useful, but interrupted

lurid light shone up through the ground of having to bear

in the early days of holding white you used to fascinate even what was lost to you and still you didn’t understand that interminable pattern

and still I didn’t understand
all this was an attempt to trust something vague

something vague in agreement
vying for inundated, fully confident banter
between, say, a face marked by touch and
a face marked by interruptions shone on understanding,
interminably early, still you verge on bearing all attempts at description, holding used patterns over a ledge so narrow there is no room to trip with sincerity