Likestarlings

25 lines not about how you make me feel (about myself)

Numb on my belly in wet grass I offer six
confidences to newts at the canal edge, swear
I’ll care for them if they’ll live in my jar.

Part of me knows all about the Monday stink
of tiny bloated bodies forgotten since Friday
without food, love and air. Heart, man; love, me;

rainbow, zing; mine, be…all share a sound
now Rufus Wainwright sings Garland sings me
(though we’ve never met) whole-hearted Broadway/

Carnegie Hall burlesque from the Palladium.
And for you I am drafting responses to send
with plain chocolate biscuits and jam.

Do I find in myself any cruelty? No.

Do I let myself care that my cat died? I do.
I wanted to take myself out for the night
to the Quaker House, get in some drumming

in the cold, make my hands sore.
Instead I get down to church papers,
wipe my shoes clean and give them a drubbing.

If you listen there’s a whizz as the palette knife scrapes
off paint from a wrong place, too thick. In itself
there’s a pattern that pleases, means more

than reflecting the glow of what’s seen. Colour strong
as the smell of the turps – regardless
if it’s door-frame or elbow or wing.