Poetry

Chameleons

solipsistic     years in urban wilderness

no masks     no mirrors to catch me

only glimpsed in passing window-flashes

  blurred for a moment in wing mirrors

brief impressions left      sweat-scent on

  another’s mattress

learn how to rhyme your surroundings

  rhizomatically     to write as you

     breathe-

 here you feel free-

the tentacular gut-punch of love

  fades       as I exit its body-machine

                                 *

I camouflage our voice and

                                    disrupt

                          recognizable features

                    into pine trees     a headdress

                of bracken     broken oak twigs and ferns

then approach this place

  of past aortic alarm sounds

poncho shrugging off     something like shape

  as your decoded face is absorbed

     by becoming the firs

        becoming the rubble

becoming the tarmac and weeds of the car park

become the door mouse       evading

  the polarised gazes of kestrels and gods

become the earthworms and moss-clods

  that rise chthonic and sprawling from earth-bowels     

cracking the porch-way's pavement

bleed from the cuts in your crawling knees

  shredded by crystalline relics of

    previous break-ins

duck under hangings of guillotine window glass

  split-haired      awaiting their fal

grip your jacket over anti-climb paint

   and slip

                 down

                            my body

                            into the lobby of entropy

Benjamin Dorey

© 2014