Anger Management, a Wistful Gesture and Sketchy Regret

Scantling Saywas

Even though the walls

Collapsed like lungs

Even though to speak

Burnt like a grate

Even though your body

Melted into space

Even though the blank

Was flamed through with holes

The morning still maintained

A message from before

The paths still proclaimed

Footfall echo maps

And afternoons still basked

A scent of light turning

Over on an open river

Five finger exercises (a la TSE)

                 Two Primitive Nocturnes

                               (i)

All night the rain has argued with the wind.

A balloon turns at its mooring, as if adrift

in the hushed pillowed weather of my head.

Our foxes hide as the dawn’s throats wake.

                             (ii)

Each night all a cabinet’s drawers hurtle

open, its filing flung as if wind-blown.

A twisted aerial crooks to a sinking signal.

I dig out my heads from a light dung loam.