Jealousy Poem by Jean Bernard Parr

I shuffled down in my rough dressing gown
black-eyed windows denying the dawn
and stood behind the chair you had occupied
they were blind those kitchen windows, blind
as I worked out the geometry of where
your head had been, and the still-life on the table
the populated ashtray, refinery of wine
that your tumbling fruit machine eyes had seen
three shapes reflected crooked in those dark panes
and I wondered as I held your constellation
between my hands what shallow words
he would have lisped through that rock-star grin
catching your silk in his old snake skin
thinking easy lust as your Cinderella foot
opened the carburettor door and made the car roar

they are not opaque now, these eyeless windows
there is a grey wound growing in the night
a million sided world is coming to give me a fright
better to slope between night and day
where there is no sharp detail, befriend shadows
become inert, become a gnarled root in some
bleak fissure, storm bashed, numb, eke out
succour where there should be none, but first
there is a game to be played; can I start a fire from
this single glowing coal, to fail is to see the dead grey
planet spin, and all lifeless within