GREYSCALE

When Greyscale seeps into your life
he brings vistas of smoking crematoria
and ash that settles on sleeping trees.
A soundless howl of monochrome
cars and vans that stop at damp motels
on motorways from nowhere to nowhere,
where a tired girl sits behind the counter,
her armpits transmitting through the night.
Exhausted rest stops where sandwiches
curl and juice curdles. He smells
of newly emptied ashtrays and stars
dying unseen in unknown galaxies.
Like rats on Underground rail tracks,
he moves like dust and toxic smoke.
His colour is of dead fish and ghosts;
he sucks the life from potted plants
and clouds your eyes with cataracts.
His sound is the colonic gurgle
of radiators that need bleeding,
the creaking of cemetery gates.
To live with Greyscale is to die every day,
to sleep with him is to die every night.