I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.

i remember in the good old days when i was just a lad
all the different cars different ones i had
triumph herald. ford anglia and the mini to
morris 1000 standard 10 they was just a few

cars that you could fix with  a toolbox in boot
fix it by the roadside get back on your route
now things have changed there run by ecu
if you breakdown now nothing you can do

now you need a garage that has computor to
so they can fix the problem retune the ecu
not like the good old days with toolbox in the boot
fix it by the road side get back on your route

HOW MANY REMEMBER THEM DAYS

On our way into
Santa Anita one day,
an old man had tipped
over in his wheelchair.
There was a pool of blood
beneath his smooth head.
I was with my Dad.
He was around the same
age as the poor injured man.
I was 12.

Seeing that man, and watching
the blank stares of the apathetic
crowd gathering around the
man, and the blood, and the
fallen wheelchair, I knew that
nobody would win, and the
horses that ran were the luckiest
of us all.

Between earth and sky
Wings as blue as ocean light
Sea lavender sways