Cold Inside

It looks on in, on and on.

It waits. The pink light bleeds purple
on the pale persimmon petals. Their silk cheeks,
like blossoming stars, seem soft as dust.

The smell is heady, decadent,
exorbitant - with the odour of round-rouge rhubarb and cloves.
Sharp like needles, the stink of spices burns,
burns up. A spectacular plum fruit squelches as squashed
and the blueblack blood bubbles in the bowl.

Light, high up and far away,
does not shiver behind the sheen of unbreakable panes.
It is yellow and mellow, drifting in melodic
waves across the walls and floor as shadows slink,
careful as cats, across the carpets
and along the curtains.
It seems a long way away.

It huddles round the chromium spade
with it's micasilver tray, half buried in a smooth white blanket
that offers no warmth.
The blanket is cool, lit up in blue and pink light
from the sun as it slips down and shatters into shards
in the twilight darkness. The spiny branches of scratching
teasel flowers, seem to join in, tapping at the window,
trying to peek in at the empty affection.

Like a dark dead lake, the cold envelops it
as it looks in lidless and listless on snow steps.
The hunched in house on the hostile estate
is unwelcoming. And the pulse of the chatter is separate and alien.
The heartbeat inside is short. The soft chiffon drapery
that slips over it
snaps a blind over the eyes of those inside.

Squinting through the glass, there is it's reflection.
It is so much I. The weed wrinkled waters
of the pistachio sea in its turbulent disaster.
And now the blue light of the sky bruises purple and black
meeting the bony fingers of pitiless trees.

I wait. And white as a canvas, feathers fall as hungry butterflies.
But still the light beckons.
Alone in my night I am only it.

It looks on in, on and on.