Confabulate

It’s the gaps that matter.

Wiring the blanks with real life

as if real life were there still

not a skydeep hole

nobody  can see you through.

Make sure both ends meet

in the middle, set off

from somewhere the present

makes believable. Cover your tracks

with the fiction of hard facts.

What you don’t know only you

need know. What they don’t know

they don’t need to know.

It’s a fine judgement

how little to admit to.

Living apart from yourself

is a trapeze artist’s art, the safety net

an illusion.  Miss the bar

and you’ll  fall through your own

blank space, instantly forgotten.

Dissemble

Whatever is the case its spun

high tensile web

is strung with decoys

eyeshift   foot-tap   the smile’s

a giveaway   the voice

trips on itself

the wrong prey snared

the wrong cage opened

bury the evidence   

put your conscience

through the shredder

talk to no one  

whoever listens is not

with us    whoever

is with us is not present

Haruspicate

The word waits

like a jagged knife

in a washing-up bowl.

New moon     tinshack     dirt yard

or stone slab on a high moor

mewing wind     gagging dark.

Suburban kitchen even

ouija board semi

windchimes     forsythia.

Wherever

there’s a victim 

blood     gristle     wet   

unnameable parts.

A licked finger

to the wind’s blade

tea-leaves     yarrow stalks

the king of cups      mars

in the wrong house.

Pick up the paper   

switch on the news

a disinterment     silhouettes

behind a makeshift screen.

Or the valley of disappearances

no bodies   

the future      tentative.