My fingers have ground to a halt,
Their prints run dry and blisters bloat the muscle behind my skin.
Words no longer flow with such fluidity now they’ve been rubbed so thin.
My sight is crinkled at the seams —
Exhaustion is usually a breeding ground for poetry,
But from this early-morning darkness I’ve spun out only fragments of stories;
If knickknacks were words and scrapped books came together,
That would be a picture of my poetry.
I can hardly breathe for fear and cold,
These empty words have stolen the hearth on which I warm my soul,
And I am left alone with little to hold, and time again ticks out its close.
New clichés are born in my head,
Whispering uninspired, uninspired,
To the body rotting in this bed.
Candleships 