'Never satiated' (published in Big Red Cat Issue #2)

published
Scream if you need to go faster, if that's your desire, say the old adage: the customer is always right, is king, and so survey their subjects with dispassionate eyes, demanding. I order some nibbles and remain at the bar with every fibre, despondently slotting them in like a 10p machine rigged against us, until the bowl is clean. The light dims and kitchen closes so I settle and slip home. Never satiated with another bite, another course; a cigarette with the ash hanging on. Drag this skinny fry through that mayo and swallow whole. I feel like an eclair slammed in a car door, dairy on passenger seat, on headrests, which detach if you were sinking as weapons with which to smash through a window and escape. I keep one to hand now. The rest is articulated elsewhere, not in words but senseless consonants clattering in gibberish. I have no business to settle with you. The conversation ends, and here you are: playing chess as both colours to win.
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'Only promises' (published in Glasgow's City of Poets Annual Review 2025)

published
Give it a reason
and the burden loses weight;
as though lifted a fraction, you wriggle free.
Cog sticking, fog thickening,
where no day breaks.
A solo figure aghast but passive,
calmly trying each lock in turn,
makes fools of tormentors with their faces
smeared against the glass, leering, expectant.

Ambiguous remarks and inconsistencies
do not evaporate in the balmy air
which the fan circulates but cannot replace.
Craning necks, waning wrecks
that the long day breaks down.
Justify, clarify, know the path.
Soon sapped are good intentions and fresh linen.
The collective when all is well,
but when fortunes turn, the blame is allocated.

I cannot stress enough,
so it seems, but the system works for some.
A chosen few destined for the layer above.
Cracks showing, attacks growing
to action when the day breaks.
Defeated; the centre collapses, peace missing
and the maze is unfairly structured:
dead end, dead end, dead end.
There was no route to the centre; only promises.

- giuliano

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