Since my brother and I

Sit stitching wings

Onto butterflies

cross stitch

knit one

pearl one

Release from the jar

We speak not

Of family matters

Of trivial demeanours

Like our mother

Lying in effluence

While my father

Unravels like a spool of thread

We speak not

Of the debt

The dogma

The destruction of

Our beautiful wives

 

Since my brother and I

Create sweet music with

Each other’s ribcages

Like flesh and form

Snuff boxed silhouette

Black crow dreamscapes

We daren’t speak

Of little boy blue

Deciduous trees

Death incarnate

And the rattle and hum

Of our mothers

Bronchial fire

 

Since my brother and I

Lay still inside one another

Acid reflux and shameful glances

Boiled sweet reflections

Mist eye menders

Hospital trolleys ambushed

Sent back to whence they came

We do not have time

For trivialities

Such as life

Death

And the flames that lick

Suck and caress

At our parents ethereal chaos

 

Since my brother and I

Plough fields of youthful ambivalence

With rusted tractor wheels

And rabbits slit from ear

To twitching ear

We do not have time

To discuss the cancer

Or the amputation of limbs

The war in the east

Or the son in the west

 

Since my brother and I

Live only for ourselves

We do not have time

To attend funerals

And light pyres

For those we love

And those we lost

While we were trading places

And melting like wax

Into the eyes of eternity.