Mark Heathcote

Wave on wave these houses
yearn each for their testimonies'
their sepulchres shovel—tick tocks
In the moonlight, midnight, back to back!
In one of those; deepest unpicked locks—
only a poet Houdini might be equipped for.

Stretching, elongated sideways,
like an old oak coffin lid—cradled
with him inside it: he takes a peak outside.
Beneath; the heavily backed maroon drapes
dawn's light defuses, within his strained eyes.
It flusters with those exposures, innermost:

Those drowning, porous, expressions…
How sadly, longing his bloodshot eyes
Dispel those spacious vacuous mysteries…
That comes eternally too him only.

In black and white!
Just as alarmingly, damningly, annoyingly,
as when a bats wing on a'
Stars beam ashen, gets nipped in the bud.