We are forked creatures who

Can’t help sleeping in each other’s laps

Spindle sided, the sight of daffodils

Prove we are unfulfilled.

I cannot stop being alone

I am a cynic stuck in a barrel

I am a vinegar parsnip 

Flaccid and foul

And my insides out

Outstretched, upturned neck down

A big, long straight road

Tumbling a helix

And I cannot prevent the butcher

From opening my neck

Vinegar spoiled

I spy along a crippled field

Thousands of bird-leg hay-stalks

A mutiny forest with tufts upheaved

Clutching the earth, unsellable

Things are terribly embarrassing 

And they are imaginary –

Things harboured in that head

Curdle in that stomach, perhaps

It is god yourself who creates it.

Human insufficiency starts

With the grown parsnip

In need of pickling -

In the Needle of desire,

revulsion, sex, love and

I think it might be stinging.