Twilight medicates
the hysterical summer garden.

Laudanum of luminous blue
doping phosphorescent souls
of dehydrated gospel flowers,

panicky silver spirits of dazzled leaves
flashing through the panting trees.

Nurses a last flutter of reluctant butterfly drunks
still gorgeously guzzling the Honeysuckle ghost.

Doctoring her crepuscular perfume –
sugary nocturnal opiates
cultured in blushed gold, nubbed cups
to siren the disturbing moth shift -
snowing unconscious on burned-bark wings
from crashed stars
they took for night’s sparkling compasses.

Tincturing until she dreams in each sweet head:
a coming whirr, wing-breath, intimate burr -
the Hummingbird Hawk Moth, hovering,
a birdish blur,
to enter his freakish long tongue,
rest his delicate, velvet-slippered feet
one shuddering moment.

Dusk’s lavender glove
soothes molten Roses’ sunstroked blood,
cooling their plump, scarlet-fever cheeks
like a powdery old aunt -
through mulberry, plum, navy-wine.

In her calming amethyst palm,
combusting Poppies are extinguished,
leaving only narcotic purple fumes -
enormous owl pupils.

By a spooky mercury kidney-pool
of anaesthetised moon-water,
Victorian Lilies, opium-stoned,
consumptively pale,
swoon to ultra-violet X-rays.

Morphine of mauve light
kills a sick Fuchsia’s spindly neurotic trembling,
gulps Red Hot Pokers
still sizzling in milky shadow
like a fire-eater.

Insane Daisies,
who have stared, defiant, all day
unblinking at the glaring Sun -
frying all over the green-flamed lawn -
tranquilised by sapphire transfusion
to a tiny, numb, violet-starry galaxy.

Sparkling hyperactive flies,
sedated by the smoking lilac gloaming,
yo-yo drowsily on titanium wings -
their exo-skeletal mourning jet,
hellish armour opalised.
With jacked up mercury eyes,
languorously waltz under paralysed trees:
intricate iridescent jewellery
set - live - in pearly air.

Until night clamps black chloroform
over evening’s yawning indigo mouth.

Psychiatrist stars
take out their silver notebooks.