Rupert Loydell & Robert Sheppard

from RISK ASSESSMENT

GHOST-CAST GLANCES


Ghost-cast glances castaway revisions   changes must as needs
incite abandoned future spirit   golden age splinters the meaning
monocular fact or fate   time set snares for timeshare
fraternities intent on fake memory   patient lying on grand piano

a woman plays numb wounds   oddly angled flashes of white
secret flesh worn out   to float contaminated fields in
a dream of skipping ropes   empty playgrounds broken swings
old bloodstains on the floor   from cot to prime shove

doomed to push and blunder   a perfectly ordinary smile
a perfected odious simile   for accoutrements of desolate beauty
reign in unbearable vacancy   abandoned highways and timelines
slipping into disuse   leeching poison from your ‘disinterest’

I have learned to read illegible patterns of desire and control
the air crackling with ‘interest’   a charged ethos of ether
rooms alive with wraiths and spirits imagined into being
death’s splintered features stare back from the cast