A Flutter Of Lashes

Cast iron grey,
new paint dripping
from the rust of the old -
that's how the stomach
feels upon waking,
it wants to vomit
itself back into dream state.
But awake is flicked about
like coloured winks
across poetic control.

Language vanishes,
perfume of yesterday,
its scent fades slowly -
like fresh bread memory.
It's all downhill thereon,
or is that a matter of perspective?
Perhaps it is an uphill struggle,
the weight of alive hunched
into far away shoulders.

Even the stutters
have broken their echoes
and returned to silence,
while sheets of smoke assemble
themselves into coughs,
readying their billows,
sailors saluting waves to come
crashing down upon the curls,
mechanical movement,
open-close-open-close,
in-out-in-out-stop.

Eyes that just stare at one place
for years - within the mind,
then a flutter of lashes
before they rest on another tired space.
Thunderclaps announce themselves
but it is like another life,
the body just shivers the present
while the past flicks the chest.

Love: as dead as skin
on the floor of a dream,
there are no mourners
with handkerchiefs tapping
against the thoughts
of - where's the buffet?

The new day swerves
past the birdsong
and the pillows catch hair,
tangles it into new shapes,
it saves the strands for the night,
for the sweat shading brows
as sleep is found once more.
But that's the future,
already in mind before
the covers are thrown.

And with a final mental wave,
the heart just stops -- caring.