Another Morning

Somewhere between the pollen and the brick dust
Awaits a warden
A witch in broken clothes
A lackie

When paper was poetry
Our riddle was only life
Yuppies jumped a fever
Toddlers danced

These lovers must allow a moment’s rest
For to sway is to waver
And wavering can be to wash

Arrested plans are rubber palaces
Gleaming as they melt in the sun

But there is amongst the broken glass
A shaft of light
A chance
A straggler

Haikus on Change – Autumn ‘15

Changes meet abuts
A figures’ fingers: Starry
Shapes up in the hills

Our backup plan slips
Bricks, all baked on common dust
A story of smoke

Leafy becomes mud
Becomes trouble, becomes blood
Work and Work and Work

I love you, and some
This resetting is in now
Becoming. Hearty.

So thank you, and some!
I gave you my fin, all in
Our gold will differ

At the Great Salt Lake

At the great salt lake

I call for the water to wash me down

Here the water won’t stain

She’ll leave me thirsting for to drown

Caught the next sleeper out to snow

There’s hope if she’s frozen the water won’t go

Hope is a dance with a wave on the ocean

Moving so very slow

You’re frightened your eyes

Betray the raven hiding in the night

But I’m far too tired

To see what a lifetime’s lying in the light

Just as a harvest hangs on a hill

So will a raven caw at your sill

Say what you like, all those you’ve ever loved

Glow hard and bright

I charge at your skin

Don’t say you’ll leave me standing at the gate

I feel more than akin

To those who walk on waves

Somehow we found the outer shore

So begins our journey towards the core

At the great salt lake

I call for water to wash me down

This, our bond

Do you remember summer grass?
Waves in walls of white on silver
Where wheat sheaves scraped our fingers
I followed you like wood to water

Preparing now our winter copses
I put my mind where rain collapses
In every drop lie minute incisions
An entry point for radiant light

And every time light enters, You do
You, who are within (and without) these walls
Experiencing light, somehow I’m rubble
Crumbling I become the fine
dust that mingles in mists of meeting:
Rain on light in the dust are one

***

You instil in me such keenness!
As water to flesh, I wish to meld
Make love without a marked direction
Live life as if life was deathlessly compelled

Where we complete a journey
These three elements compose
Earth expands in silent waves
Still, she’s simply marked on the hill where we rose

Your heart is in my chest tonight
You wonder if I’m sleeping
I’m not, and yet I dream
Having become you, I love you
and this, our bond, is the seamless sea between

 

Forks and Spoons and Silver Moons

Together we turned a distant round
it felt so idle
But coming up beyond her mound
My aim was to sow what the seed had decided

You were silver, green and black
Everything that water wants
We both had to stand right back
Whilst the gods planted a bright and frothy dawn

*

A gun that blows, right or wrong
Her reach, her hands, her song
Skin of slick black slate caked in moss
In these thin arms I’ll cart the cost

Coral water moves so quickly
It gushes onto every pore
Hot and sweet clear and sticky
Here, we all thirst for more

*

Forks and spoons and silver moons
Claw their livings on the sand
I found you thrashing at your runes
I saw you smiling, you had the ocean in your hand

 

How I Digest my Fury

Yesterday I ate a brick
Floury, and hard to swallow
A battle raged, my will was thick
My mouth the colour of a man left fallow

She rinses cups
On a slow moving train
Like some creaking catheter
Her effluence marks a murky plane

I am not clean
Nor no poly-rhythmic stunt
She flips my brain, a trip, I crane
A piece of fruit falls high onto the blunt

Bruises heal on living skin
They rot, then reel. They go from brown to yellow
I’ll cough this brick, spew what’s got in
And through my puke I’ll spy a stalk of yarrow

*

Today I threw six lines
My family first: Renunciate and run.
This day is a wall, I lack the gall
Required to climb the sun

She comes in waves
Vapid to regal. Insipid to rhyme.
Postured for dog-like containers, en masse
Licking and gnawing and grabbing at wine

So I run. So I retreat.
So I contain all the screams, all the meat
Shaking off blisters like rapids on rocks
One strip of words might – just might – have stopped the clocks

But water will wherever
It heals us in a bliss
Swimming must be living then
And life must bounce on lists

*

Tomorrow (today!) I’ll deliver
The seventh line’s a return to air
No fallow man could plot my plans
No pocket pulling quarters forge despair

She’ll under-dress
Lap circles as the barber slides
We are metal tied to rubber
Footsteps that fade beneath the tide

Corrugated schemes like these
Are many, mean, malignant and mad
This I am, some tides are planned
Our effigies had honour at the designated hour

Then sighing somehow ceases
In time, or luck, with sunshine
The upper balconies get loaded
Crowds bay blindly while an engine cuts the line

 

Stepping Back

We seek out imperfection
A promise made by brains
Reach for indignation
Stunted anti-addled games

Something in me shudders
Collapses on the bridge
I’ve looked beyond all windows
What I’ve seen gives me the shits

There’s green, and broken yellows
Muck across our scape
Then blue in swathes, and silver
Movement infinite in shape

When straps come into contact
Skin grips plastic nets
I’m moulded by that racket
Cool beneath the sweat

One copper coloured remnant
Sets dimly out to shore
I reach without intent
My smile becomes a law

 

Fading Love

I’ll pass your eyes to Martha
She’s only up one flight of stairs
She knows you’ve been in Paris
I warned her but she wouldn’t care

I’ll write her up this letter
Your hand is broken, feeble, paused
She’ll kiss it if I let her
Though I’d say she thinks it’s for a cause

I’ll pop another nipple
That photo of the last one’s faded
Skin should rip and ripple
Martha knows a way to make it

I’ll fuss your fingers lightly
Correct the errors made in earnest
Martha is delighted
At the suffering on another’s surface

I’ll link a rail to London
You’re waiting at the station quietly
Cold winters are uncommon
Some still stiffen friendships politely

I’ll cough until it hurts her
Then rushing comes a generous smile
You’ll know by how I murmur
Insults written in spiting guile

I’ll leave your lungs with Martha
She deserves that kind of honour
One fuck and it’s all over
I’ll give you what you never gave her

 

Intray

I visualise raw men, a bucketful

Posing on my own, living for cream

Pursued by thirst, and flicking switches

 

I visualise latent crumbs, coughing strips

Lapels upheld, strands of foggy air

I’ve licked her rotting face, in circles

 

so I visualise loops, hammering and squirming

under heaps I curl my tongue, force haemorrhage

Poppies inherit us, rota by rota

 

I visualise you, I visualise you new

We’ve paid rails to go, copied all their words

Surfing on the sun, a day-jobs’ click click

 

I visualise tightly drawn skin, glowing

Bell birds bark, unseen amongst a yellowish green

Livid, lusty, and free. We can glean

 

I visualise a candle, forms of leaving

Pacing trucks, drivers mouths filled with figs

Chucking up a role, pulsars at the gloaming

 

I visualise Oedipus, the lashings of a raw man

Naked, stamping feet, concrete, sweat

Lies left unperturbed. Now chafing

 

I visualise a flood, Polyanna’s moans

Courage as she runs, sapphires belching

Lurking under fire, deft spasms, our corridor…

 

A Plathian Wobble

Seratonin

In lost flecks, a sinless wondering

I flee years

 

Crumpling pillows

Light, and

Thrusting onto white

Pillars

 

People, shipwrecked people

Our colliers gone

Grey, injected

 

Stamina coughing sand and

I go on prowling

Arching

Selling

 

Brothered eyes

Unfeared. Napes rub

Beacons in their laughter

 

Plates, or spikes

Threshing

 

Copying out a mile by rote

Resting at crowds

 

Make my skin a leash

Grace

In kin, just smile