by Tom Saer

Please, my deer, sell your tiger’s hides and
Harvest my empathy
I promise it’s worth it?

In an anxious Greek murmur of the brazen-clad
I found your stone antlers
Weeping words from a cherry tree

In a fucking dance
I will grind you into a paste

I’ve met you before
synthesised waltz in a corridor
Those times are oceans away now

This happens to me too often
Stay timid

Taste my voice and the fate of my nation
I see your sadness too
It sounds like chlorine to me
double-tongued and Tyrian

“On the blacksmith’s canvas are
maps of the mountainsides
wreathed in sand” — by the stormfather?

The doorbell sounds
Reminding me of a pledge to the garden shear
and a microwaveable meal
and one more pilgrimage to Sainsbury’s

ahah, who knew that making soup would be so Sisyphean?
…Let me go to fucking bed

The snowstorm
And the sacred visage of a man waiting to die
Finally instigated change inside me

I happen to this too often
I happen to this too often