Three Poems || C S. Hughes

Dreaming Of The Lengths Of Summer

Yesterday knows
I am tomorrow's fool
Dreaming in false spring
Of the lengths of summer
I will disregard
My harboured myths
Bare of shoulder
Arms that make the necks of birds
Wresting through the fevered sea
Until with a silver kick
Through momentary diffraction
Drowning once again
I am a strange imagined fish

Arson in Winter

The grills of cars shine like parades
Spit shine boots
A shout as loud as faith
Firetrucks paint the shell of night like Christmas
Heaven is a burning bridge
You - you are arson in winter
And railways that unconscionably end
At this masque in complicit celebration
Watch people, pretend that you are human 
Feel the heat of smiles
The hostile cold against your back
The flush of grins
Burning timbers have a pursuasive scent
The second story
Hollow as a child's drawing
Falls, with a swan song sigh
And a gasp in embers rising
The tumbled bricks in red and cinder disarray
Once enduring now chalk and glass as fear
Clicking long lost secrets as they cool
Misunderstanding this bewilderment
Burn it down
I love you the way
Ashes blemish skin
The dawn is coloured paper
The waters run.

Cheiromancy & Bicycle Accident

There is a star upon your chin
Where you once made in shaking limbs
A crooked deal
With the god of buckled wheels and winds
To only take in rivulets
A little blood
The gravel in the palm of your hand
Falls away with a knowing heat
Leaving in the heel and aching wrist
As slow and indefatigable as bitumen
Hieroglyphs of abraded skin
To confound the hierophants and cheiromancers
Who cry to unknown gods and unknown fates
With a sphinx disdain and upraised hands
For a moment flying through the air