We Don't Deserve Love

Laid on white deckchairs 
with history between their bones, 
Orpheus 
and Eurydice 
watch a Haitian sea 
slide backwards, the radio
singing Otis it used
to do when they nudged  
bashful kisses 
on each other's necks 
and the wild smell  
of human wine 
hadn't shrunk to a tasteless word 
peeling itself off your lips.  
The cruise keeps moving.  
Dead couples turn like 
slowly dancing planets  
and the ocean glitters 
so white it hurts to look.
Eurydice just waits 
for the song on the radio to change.
Crucified, then crucified again.  

Joan of Arc sells petrol 
on the M25, her teenage
jaw slacked orange 
as she sucks the flavour  
from her lips. Exhausts 
are forrest-fires 
bleeding smoke 
into her eyes, her mind 
gets thinner
on diesel winds, 
plastic Toyotas with red lights 
for leaving and white ones 
for returning crashing uselessly 
through the night. 
She keeps on sucking -
polish gets into your mouth 
after a while. Then the news 
comes through the television.  
Deep Blue beats Kasparov 
in the final game, 
the match is over, 
and Joan's tongue closes still. 
Crucified, then crucified again.  

A rainy night in New York city, 
Anne Frank falls from the sky.  
Her childish lungs are roadkill now, 
shrivelled like red balloons  
in the light of Times Square,
her white wrists nailed deep
into the peaks of the Macdonald's logo. 
The ferris wheels keep burning blue
and green, the steam of hot dogs
breathes on the rain, and
even the homeless ignore her. 
Even the homeless ignore her. 
We should gather around her tiny corpse 
and pull the rusted nails
from her hands. We should bathe her
body pink and new, we should weed 
the cigarettes out of her eyes, 
we should let the taste 
of her ovaries wash our saturated mouths
so that one day, together, 
we can brush the dead stars out of the sky.