Are probably not there for passing giraffes

                                                              to flutter their absurd eyelashes at.

It’s more a case of running to catch sight

                                                              of something as it’s falling.

Maybe they’re pictures of you in various stages of undress

                                                              in pieces like now. Messages way above my head

I’m not supposed to understand, like x loves y

                                                              or the word eternity traced on the beach

with a stick and us underneath as figures in a landscape

                                                              the colours weeping.

You’re telling me about how you’ve placed a tiny picture of a princess

                                                              in a ruff, her plain horse face

 Tudor airbrushed, on a high shelf as a hidden target to verify claims

                                                              about life after death.

 If any out-of-body floating past should view the picture and remember it,

                                                              reality will change forever.

And I’m like, shouldn’t the pictures be bigger, and then you’re climbing

                                                              the ladder like a tree, holding a handful

 of still life with a cabbage and a quince on strings in front of a black void

                                                              and you reach out

 too far and learn the hard way that the human mind is unreachable.

You fall and I’m running but I can’t catch you and the pictures

                                                              still in your arms fall apart.

 There’s a cucumber and a melon cut open on a windowsill, the seeds

                                                               so life like as to tempt a passing bird  

 to peck them and I’m in pieces too, searching for you, thinking

                                                               that you’re not in the picture

anymore or the picture is changing because you’re looking at it.

Then I’m very afraid because I find you lifeless, on the bed under

                                                              a fallen landscape in a huge golden frame

 made to show young men a world where docile pink light is settling

                                                              on mountains and lakes, the natives

 are friendly, it’s very new and the jungle so pretty the temptation

                                                              is just to up sticks and go

see the view for yourself and the beasts with such improbable bodies.

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Have you ever experienced any of the following?

        sensation of another presence in the room?

        seeing a bright light in the sky? (yellow doesn’t count)

        loss of memory for an hour or more?

        paralysis while something takes off your clothes?

        soreness in the genital area which you can’t explain?

        knowledge that you have been chosen to save humanity?

        body elevation and flight?

        a spiral object inside your right nostril?

        dreams of destruction or catastrophe?

        a feeling of being watched much of the time?

        sight of your future alien babies in their cots?

        oneness with God/Nature/The Universe?

        puzzling scars on your body?

        a desire to be special?

If you answered Yes to 10 or more questions, congratulations you’re human.

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Shooting star, too busy scribbling words to care

               how you look, in the cold moonless night,

                                to a child with a mind blown apart by thinking

 of infinity: of nothing to touch at the end

               of the air, and the universes hurrying from her.

                                Fur coat and no knickers, you yet have

a place in the stories as you run across in front

               of the constellations of tears which are decorating

                                her upturned bones. She cries out with her wishes

and you fear that you have come at last, with no gift

               to share, as all the songs are in pieces, rushing

                                away from a mind that is emptying.

Serene in their different orbits, safe in their spheres, helpless

               to love you, other stars are bound into cages

                                of gravity and necklaced with the dignity of light years.

Look up child! The shooting star is falling. Remember

               it is not really stone, but a muted trail

                                of hoping which you see, burning up in that expanding air.

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the air is broken by a body moving in the night

people are staying inside their houses

what I’m most afraid of is the possibility of noises in the wall

he’s face down breathing the shallow air below the smoke

her house is under surveillance

a lonely tower with a red hood and a tiny door

there’s a photo of a face in the priest hole

each body part disappears in turn

impossible to predict we would be unable to make sense of everything

only to reappear as things, your eye is in the kitchen sink

his finger with the gold ring was on the mat

she’s hiding from the people

running up and down the corridors, impossible

to remember that elusive moment just before you fall asleep

like pushing open a door

which he thought would be heavy and falling forward

when it turns out to be light

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