The Centre is Missing

Ogasa Shin

Here is a line of tongue rust wire scarecrow tangled
In a dream field sunset ochre barbed and acutely angled
To catch the horizontal beams of cold sunlight falling
Into the vault of senseless days of winter calling

Here your footsteps tattoo tread the silence shattered
Your thoughts hang air lung ragged exhale tattered
Writ their lines on open graves but failed to save the world
From apologists and scientologists with crooked fingers curled

Here your kisses to my pursed lips cross black stitched
All thoughts of silver flight wing clipped fever ditched
Prohibiting escape to a dictionary of ripped loose words
Corralled lacklustre with the gut-wrench grass-graze herds

Here all talk of lungs and tongues will be declared taboo
Baited breath and sotto-voice will be the deserving end of you
Spine and stitch and binding sucked from all your treasured books
All pages, leaves, harlequin sleeves and unbaited guitar hooks

Here force-fed with belief deceit and loose atomic grief
Scarred by visions fetid, fecund - brutal beyond belief
Stitched into your vertebrae to hang on hooks of hate
All the pretty horrors of a species too close to late