Rupert Mallin on the Other Side of the
The Dead Thing We Love to Feel
Dear Heather
Is it one's heavy heart or a heavy meal -- the heaving cake hole,
Strange wound, a clawing crag beneath red reindeer nose?
Are we in ruins full of sharks and pointy darts in the darkness?
Are we more tender than tripe in our tender-most touches?
Is it one's heaving, heavy metal hurt or dinosaur eyeballs --
Their sunken pits, poisonous sockets above pale cheek walls?
Are these my runes or your dice? Fool's gold or pebbles,
Gluey in their slits, searching for the blind and terrible?
Is it one's huey hut, that hefty mop, one's top-not, one's haircut?
It's perched, parked and oft' parted over cranium's dry biscuit.
Shall we dress right, left or otherwise? It's one's own imbecile,
One's face frame. Ornate or plain, it's this dead thing we feel.
© Copyright Rupert Mallin 2003