Marmalade

My marmalade markings
rotate within midnight clouds.

I’m a fire in a grate.
An orange sun on a black pitch.

My heartbeat is freedom –
the sound of thunder
reverberating your soul
as handheld maracas.

I’m tangy sharp,
exotic as pineapple marmalade
in the hungry hands of a Tudor.

My thoughts are tumbled rice
churning electrical pulses,
neon-sharp, pincer-predatory.

I shake your hand,
inviting you to moonlit shores
where your body disappears,
floating in empty ether
as I unbutton your thoughts,
emptying them as caught crabs
from seaside buckets of sunshine.

They happily dispel,
morphing to marmalade murmurs;
once sticky mirages of the mind
dissipate as tidal ribbons,
lost in tiger sheen,
washed clean of purpose.