3 MINUTES

Stop. Time is come slowed. The machine
is making a breath in me. I am aware
some people are panicking.
I sound like I am drowning. Stillness.

Still slower. Lights are beginning to flicker
and blink. A beep. Coming small.
Everything is turning inside out like a flower.
I can hear the atoms of sweat bead his nose.

A beep. These are ghosts. Shadows.
Dust and windows. Things there and not there.
Someone is in the room with you.
Someone knows what it is you must do.

They do not call it names. Death. It did not come.
Sterilise the theatre. We were not here.

HAUNTS

for IM

The image haunts me.
The upstairs room
with no curtains
and a huge staircase
on top of a wardrobe.

The wardrobe haunts me.
The upstairs image
with no room
and a huge curtains
on top of a staircase.

The staircase haunts me.
The upstairs wardrobe
with no image
and a huge room
on top of a curtains.

The curtains haunts me.
The upstairs staircase
with no wardrobe
and a huge image
on top of a room.

The room haunts me.
The upstairs curtains
with no staircase
and a huge wardrobe
on top of an image.

ALL HALLOWS YEAR

I saw her peering from a black cab circling Seven Dials;
a paper-thin, powdery leer, a skeleton's smile

in a blue velvet cowl. I swear she held a scythe
and carried a burning torch that blazed

and blackened windows where it passed. Her ladies
in waiting were succubi, a swarm of flies

who stalked behind the carriage, stone-locusts
wearing the brick of the buildings to dust,

swept smoke blown, people going bone, gone ghost
after the funeral march. The taxi turned hearse.

Danse Macabre. Dogs and children thinned, scourged,
emaciated in the flow. Meanwhile the corpse, gorged,

fattens and bloats until it reaches the Thames edge
where it emerges and floats. The river runs black sludge.

Storm drains. Red and blue ministers drown in the bilge
pumped water. The streets are rinsed with blood.