* * *

Stuttering static patters
Like fizz-ng raindr-ps in your ears
Sending flutt-r-ngly erratic spats -f music
Echoing down the y–rs

Eventually the metre peters ou-
The baseline th-ds no more
You are left with noisy st-tic sil-nce
As your m-mory l-ses score.

* * *

Standing still on blackened sand
Little Stitch Eyes waits with rod in hand
Despite the sunlight glimmer-fish that glitter underwater
Her stitch eyes cast a net away to some far distant quarter

Her hook, a thing to catch thoughts on
Her mind, a lure where daydreams shone
Careful, now
The sound of ripples could pull you in
Leave you dreaming, world a-spin

So if you see her standing lonesome, like an empty fisherman’s daughter
Leave her peaceful with the glimmer-fish
Silent at the water.

* * *

The box appears upside-down
But only if you look at it from a certain angle.
If you change perspective: turn around

Step sideways into an Escher painting
And remember that your feet weren’t on the ground.

* * *

Sniffle-Whiskers sniffs the cheese
Little risks are worth the tease
Nudge it gentle, tug with ease—

The trap claps
Tail snaps
Rat yaps

Sniffle-Whiskers sniffs the cheese
Wagging stump of tail with new unease
Missed his death by mere degrees.

* * *

We wear our expressions like a carapace
Emotions crawl like beetles underneath
Buzzing at the cracks of eyes and mouth
Where overspill might split the sheath

Ignore my smiling exo-shell
Displaying dried-out sun-fractured happiness
Note the flash of fluorescent husk
Before I crush the tell-tale beetle abscess.

* * *

Soft steps leave stitched footprints sewn into the fabric of the ground
Each cracked twig a patch in need of darning
The soil lovingly embroiders the path most trodden
with seams of sweet-scented leafmould
and silent earthworms.

A glowing light sends shadows flickering
Bounding away like scared rabbits over the bracken
It carries a promise, a mere wisp
of hope, or something more

If you follow it, you might end up on the path least trodden
and leave your stitched-up footprints scattered over flawless forest floor.

* * *

I wanted to make friends with my skull
I poked sociable thumbs into eye sockets
Invaded nostrils with odorous friendship
Shouted greetings into wide-open jaw
Got nothing back but echoes in cavities.

* * *

I prefer my stitch-eyes anyway

They see the world in greater shades

Of black and white and black and white…

… and sometimes, even grey.

* * *

Smiling, pigtails
Laughter lines
These things that make you
Seem benign

Pinprick pupils
Greasy hair
These things reveal you in the
Mirror’s glare

Gentle eyes and
Manic mouth
These things betray what you’re
About

Ageless smile
Withered soul
God help us if you
Lose control.

* * *

Some people sew words into prayers
Weaving tapestries of disgrace and desire and desperation
Disguised as redemption, pleas, and mindless adulation

I like to sew prayers into people
Lacing strands of fear and hope and dreams
With love, like a frayed but sturdy central thread

I cradle these new personalities like psalms in the palm of my hand
And sing them to life on the eve of an Eden
Picked out in cross-stitch on a brand-new band of cotton
Placed in their eternal, perfect, needlepoint motherland.