TRICKS

My mind does this (When it needs sleep): It makes a diving pool - A high-dive pool - and Fills it up with death. Death, Is like a tar deposit, It shimmers slightly Like it wants to move, itself. Then inside, Well, under the velveteen Surface, is as small as the Mind can be. The universal violence Has succumbed In place of me.

This poem is due to appear in "Escape Artists: An Anthology" (ed. Ruth Skillbeck), published in 2016.