by Nick Gisburne
Her candy-coloured lipstick tastes of pain,
A portent of her punishing embrace.
She bellows in the winter’s burning rain
To drive the painted whispers from her face.
A nightingale tornado tips the sky,
Reviving ancient deities of dust,
Who carve their names in cotton as they fly
Beyond the world’s obscene, corrupted crust.
She cracks, and as the puzzled planets crash,
Her gills return their glamour to the sea,
But in the toxic, elemental ash
She offers immortality to me.
Temptation is the bane from which I bend,
But heroin I highly recommend.
