Keyhole

Point of entry matched
with point of loss,
your ghosted umbilicus,

discretion here poetic
in its aptness, tidily
hiding the new scar

inside the very first. You’d hardly
notice this one spot, deadlock
left upon exit

though sometimes it twinges
with sex, with stretching,
with lifting children,

where he nipped in
while you were out to it
and shut you off —

tubes as wayward
as thin blown glass
clamped and fashioned

to pure ornament,
minimalism
putting to shame

the baroque convolutions
of your reasoning,
your indecision.

Passionfruit

The faintest trace on fingers
and we know you
instantly, by scent

and that’s just the outside,
belle-laide,

elaborate
as a Fabergé egg

useless really to feed us —

pure aesthetics
tangled there
on the bare fence,

basking in the same sun
as concrete, asbestos

where it glances off
but you are absorption

light transmuted
to elusive dulcet
concentration,

time biding,
we watch you drop
unapprehended,

purple patches
in the baldest story.

Inside your chamber
a viscous lining —
it feels like thieving —
resistant sac,

the truth of the matter,
thing-in-itself

without purpose
save to draw out
the essence of other things

grace note and garnish,
pitted mnemonic,
philosopher’s stone,

bittersweet
encapsulation.

Tagging his clothes

It’s like writing lines
for punishment

or learning lines, my latest
role, this repetition,

little variant
on my own signature
the hand
wants to fall back on,

so I stick to full capitals, square
as an architect’s, formal
as a cartouche

like learning to use
a married name
or resume the maiden one,

pain
in modification.

Pain of nuance, new usage
sending him forth like this
where a name is needed,

into the outside
where others will learn him,
hiving him off.

Thin strips I weld
when the iron is hot
to familiar items,
my grafting skin,

my styptic pencil,
my cauterising.