Comets

1

There’s a white-blue nerve burning
across my night sky

I wish it hurt to watch

because then
       I might stop.

2

In my brain scan
is a white bullet

what will it plug
for my birthday?

Every year I ask for
less of the same

every year I ask for
a  fiery surprise.

3

What voice of dirty ice
is talking in my head?

I can’t watch the sky anymore
without ringing Heaven.

My heart ticking as slowly
as poison
over its hissing dial tone.

Pick up, Heaven.
Please pick up.

It’s me.

4

I pray for 
a virulent visitor

my body fluids rushing
         to meet it

I’ll replicate
       replicate

my celestial virus.

5

When the Earth passed through
the vaporous tail of the comet

you were there

it rained forty days
and forty nights
on your uplifted face.

Someone was there
enjoying you

they passionately 
took your photo


I’m looking at it now.

Thank God
for rain.

Thank God
for comets.

6

A comet processed
as a negative
is black.

Space is white
with melanoma spots
for stars.

Let me end in fire
on a night of low smog
bright on the horizon.

Will my lips stream
a black tail?

7

Cats and comets
are cousins.

With arching tails
and bright orbiting 
mating swoops.

I used to sleep
hugging my cat

I used to sleep
my nose buried
in her fur.

Now I wake up
seared happy


a bull’s eye scorched
right through my chest.

8

I’m finished
with generously swerving 
into barren arms

and fostering out
my bacteria babies.

I don’t trust you
  anymore
childless planets.

There’s no milk
in your irradiated 
    old tits.

There’s celibate cruelty
in your trap
of dusty craters
and thin gas gruel.

You only grow to hate
and abuse
my cheeky scum.

9

After sunset
above the horizon
near the hunched bright arch
of the Westgate Bridge

through binoculars
shivering 

you looked  looked  looked.

But what difference
does the looking 
of a finite terrestrial
neurally aglow mammal
really make?


Let your own watery
chemistry’s delusions 
boil
for a pulsing moment.

And believe
your squinting eyes
your warm breath
kept this fuzzy speck
      blazing in and out
      of the night clouds
going.

10

Stop trying to remember
the swarming pong
off extinct broth.

Stop scuttling
through antique shellgrit.

Stand
in the comet’s 
tickling path.

Let its blue tail
snag
in your nose.