Some sink their open mouths into feather pillows

And tremble on the bed like beached dolphins.

Some people are bent as question marks when they weep

And some are straight as exclamation marks.

Some are soaking in emotional dew when they wake,

Salt street maps etched into their faces.

Some find rooms and fall to the floor as if praying to Allah. Noiseless

Faces contorted in that silent scream that seems like laughter.

Why is there not a tissue-giver? A man who looks for tears,

Who makes the finest silk tissues and offers them for free?

It seems to me that around each corner, beneath each stone,

Are humans quietly looking for a place to cry on their own.

Mourning Breaks

Mourning Breaks

They always said I was over the edge

And now I am. I really am over the edge!

But as I dropped, in a gasp of air, I grasped a branch

That, I hoped, had its roots in the rock or rock solid roots.

But there’s a breeze blowing, a stunning storm coming,

Thickening ink spills and swills on a bleating paper sky.

A crowd of rain on the horizon staggers nearer,

I sway so. I know so. I slip a little more.

I know so I sway so. I grip a little more.

These tender fingers in a clenched fist.

I must have slit my back. It hurts like a howl.

It stings like a scowl, weeps and stings again.

The skin splitting and spitting from my spine sides

And a pain develops muscles that create mouths

That simulate sounds of whole cities screaming.

There’s a storm coming. A coming storm.

Dust spits from the clifftop into my river-eyes,

Forcing tears over the banks to flood me.

I will not drown in them. I will not drown.

I am hanging on. I am hanging on. I am hanging on.

In the zip of a thick ribbon of wind

A god or a devil appears floating in front of me

And tells me in a hunch of a NY accent

‘Let go, let go – Death is just the beginning

Of the end of the beginning of the end . . . ’

And continued for forty-one days and forty-one nights,

‘Of the end of the beginning of the end . . . ’

And in a crack of lightning the devil or the god vanished.

Nothing more to concentrate on. But a storm,

The sky. And my breaching back. And the cliff

And the edge. And the uprooting branch.

And my knuckles so sore, cracked and numb

They favour a knot of bleeding wood.

If I look down (and I do look down) I see

That blood has poured from my back; seeped

Along the smoothness of my backside; slid under

My testicles and coiled its way seductively

Around my thighs, knees and ebonised legs.

It pours in abundance from my feet and skydives.

I watch these red tears fall for ever and transform

Into explicit flowers as they reach the floor.