in my end is my beginning – just

a rat’s nest coiled in back-shed dust,
a tangle of demented knots

gothic as the Grimms’ dark plots,
a thrumming song of wreak and wreck

(whose satin bed, whose trusting neck?),
the tautened threat from fist to fist,

the carpe diem tug and twist.
My image haunts your DNA,

that tiny ruthless shadow play.
I’m hairshirt-hallowed, gallows shred,

bog-buried hair and voodoo thread,
discord from a black mass choir,

devil’s helix / heaven’s tripwire.
My dreams are rope, I nightly string

up rank despair, the summer swing
to grace the judas tree’s green spread.

Crumble up your holy bread
and feed the crows spaced out along

my cousin wire who codes this song.

This came out of a workshop exercise, a version of Kim’s game – translating objects on a tray: pebble, spoon, nut, string, thimble etc. JJO