Poetry

Issue #10

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