Gouging out face-book posts,
the bodies line the sub-text –
streets. Unseen.
Deadheading graveside tokens,
the blood is sifted through eye-
lid epitaph filter to patriotic
blue. Blown into ash.
A man stands, shadowy, death
wannabe; Hitman Cosplay; fancy
-‘dress to kill’ attitude. Tips his
hat and either side of you
parts of you crumble.
You weep, maybe.
I am blessed with tunnel vision to
nullify this melting, my eyes are
sheened with apathetic venom.
Death, I do not fear you.
That class A indulgence.
That whisper on the ear.
That lifestruck babe.
That lovestuck grave.
This superfluous tear.
This frozen moment.
This dreadful climb.
This uplift dread.
Their stupid kneeling.
Their blinding light.
Their needless notes.
Their endless plight.
My oldest foe.
My fearsome trickster.
My toxic marshmallow.
My radioactive high.
Hope, I fear you.
Picture: villageofhopeuganda.com
Sleeping alone, with a song.
Where have all the flowers gone.
Stalks of green straw, rough,
and petals decayed and floated away,
with pretty scents.
Leaving their harsh hay,
and the acidic perfume taste,
of old age.
They were always there, not here.
In a stall, or the sun.
The weak weak yellow push
of the beams of the sun.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Sleeping alone, with a song.
Nine acres of sharp, dry grass and a place; shuttered, closed,
green-mossed windows shield the still foam clouds
and flies on cluttered sills.
This life, your store of cold meat does not appeal to me,
and cherries hold sour memories;
A secret told in the root cellar
Was meant to clear the air
but sent me wild to city walls,
deaf with Verdi, sick with fear.
I sit in lakes, pick leeches from my hair,
wring water from my skin,
weighted by things I almost had.
Bad decisions made.
You start your life in mud.
You craft and learn new tricks.
Your spirit’s born in blood;
You hunt with rocks and sticks.
The day you lost your primal gills,
You worked with tools, you played with fire.
Good manners, words, fine motor skills
All techniques you must acquire.
Many wars and treaties later,
Paint your present like a painter.
Now you’re ready, swap the cavern
For the plastic house with pattern.
Earthly treasures please your pocket;
There’s nothing you’d not buy.
Tricks and lies live in your locket
Play your cards until you die.
Conquer new worlds! Your greatest ambition;
Greeting the nations became your new vision.
You live among stars, within iron and steel,
Competing and beating to find the best deal.
Oh, great deceiver, stir up passions!
Steal their lands and rob them blind!
Power games will be old fashioned;
Schemes and scams left far behind.
Your barren earth expels formations,
None of them are God’s creations.
You.
Too old to be human, too new to be rust;
Begin a new chapter before you are dust.
So Hen lays something
small and creamy perfect
as the sun’s slinging ellipse
certain as the shine of straw.
A Sistine hand collects, connects.
Sheltered by a green hedge,
Hen does not know the cosmic
supermarket stack of graded eggs –
free range, half range or barn –
does not know ballads
or builders breaking fields
or bald men cracking atoms.
She knows this egg,
this eye, this moon
and sea is the start
and stop of it all.
Sad we aren’t cluckmates anymore.
I hear that sickle tongue uproar.
Focused, she fasts on a lonely bed,
A tam’o shanter for five bald heads.
I see her steal my pearls, heel straw,
A miser swathing her fragile store.
Her eyes are deep wells. She needs
The alchemy of cracking seeds
To dandelion clocks. Tipped off the nest,
Today, she frets. Manster may know best,
But how she wails at the water bowl,
Twitching, scrambled, losing control.
When the seedlings have dispersed
We will play wormchew, spiderburst
And combwing, or perhaps it will be
My phase of the shellwarm lunacy.
I may have ended in these flower beds,
But I was farmyard born, grit-gut, half-bred,
Had seven broods and wore the crown,
‘Til Chauntecleer cropped up. I did stand down,
But never let him fully have his way.
I plucked along to his upstart assay.
A trochee – claws in – then a cretic,
Four crochets and a semibreve – pathetic,
And Mr Narcissus crowed on and on,
His scaly legs lit by the morning sun.
My theory is that’s why he’s now deceased,
But call me less a widow, more released.
This rooster crooning is a piece of cake.
Too much, of course, may make my red neck ache.
A few bars will suffice to pave my way,
A touch of primal scream to crack the day,
When hens are cocks and cocks are plucky hens
In a mixed up, shook up world of nearly men.
Lay lay lady crowla.
I wanted sitting ducks, dust-bathing.
My hands raked the air, erring.
Half-ruffled hens shook, shocked,
fled to shade, distressed, distrusting.
Watching, father said take time, tame.
Let the twitching hens come, calm.
Gently fold feather-fingers
to clasp pulsing bodies, buddies.
Now writing, I scribble, scrabble
to catch flighty thoughts, fight
to hold on. They elude, evade,
crouch in hedges aggrieved, afraid.
Envoi
Father’s echo comforts, confirms
not to chase chickens; luck follows fallow
times, melts on the mind, mine,
here to stay, not scared, stroked,
hatching memories that hold him close.
You can taste defiance
in her voice
like the bitter tang of Seville
zest. Screaming,
‘I’m pale strawberry!’
Fierce barbs have echoed
down the years
resisting casual comments
that suggest ginger,
not Titian red like
Pre-Raphaelite muses.
Wide gooseberry grey pupils,
like the texture of heelscrape
on sphagnum covered stones,
freezes them out.
Though she tries
to bleach the ginger,
the stray ends persist.
Not even dyed eyebrows
truly conceal, nor the bronzing
cream on cheeks and neck.
The ginger underlayers,
like a soft feline belly,
whisper down her nape.