Tuesday 28 February 2012

Alcyone

o’er foul turbid beck skims
oblate azurite blowsy of breast
burnished grace not fouled by touch

yet teases tensile feculent kisses
from smoky glass hogbacks
found suddenly galvanised
by emergent spring breath

Monday 27 February 2012

Break It All Down, Throw It All Away

deconstruct all that surrounds
the wired stone brocade
pull the sharps free
one by a little
and sometimes more
than you can bear
then wait for the mule moon
to emerge from around the
curve of the stairs

Sleep Not

espresso to the power of more
137 BPM
dilate fired pools of
smouldered blackness wider
than the vena to my cava
four chambered ode
to a candled burn
twice at the middle
and each vivified end

Sunday 26 February 2012

Clean Lines

I drew my bath to boiling brim
well, I traced it
then I coloured it in

This Song The Sirens Sing

bring your anarchy
showered as you spit broken
dead mariners teeth

relinquished in thrall
to the sturm und drang timber
rocked and wracked foreshore

blister and seethe the
bone and living stone trim of
your merciless stew

but deliver me,
swaddled in your kelpen locks,
safe to harbour home

Walking In The Valedictorian Vale

twitching violet fingers
split the sides of
a vague but violently lazy sky
cleaving a Röntgen exposure
through the backs of my eyes
the briefest flash of a way
though before my mind can claim
even pyrrhic domain I am consumed
by a tarry cloak and in a split decision
choose to choke down the last cereous breath
and spit in the eye of faith while
the skies remain full
I will sleep the longest till I
start awake to the 4-4 beat
that will sound your vanishing

Monday 20 February 2012

All That Befell

rolling deep
does forever feels like this?
exposed as the sluiced
workings of an oily machine
shatter sliced by an unwelcome
digitalis sheen
hollering yellowed halo
crawls and mauls over briared
glassy blaze
don’t breathe
don’t breathe
just swallow whole
the harrowing
plasma of this ravenous
trial of flies
between the quivering pap
and thunder struck
drummer boy battery
bring forth
your urgent portent of sinistral fire
leave me cooked
consumed cold coal
lumpen root
clocked
stopped
wet fish iced and clean
of skin
nailed down
beyond even a mothers eyes

Sunday 19 February 2012

Where Did You Get That Hat?

scabby knee'd
but kings of the wild frontier
where Jim Bowie led us
with raccoon crowned splendour

round our way though
things were a little more frugal
the look de rigueur
squashed cotton tail

Pardon?

I thought I heard you say
she was only daft on one side
so I kept my more serious face
that way inclined

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out To Get You

I feel the absurdity
of my anger
when every animal
I chance to encounter
seems prepped
and trained by Disney

Loose Lips (and Fingertips)

traverse this web of claws
spring-loaded for your peril
none it seems not tied
twixt and twined
by broken lunar blister
or astringent finking tendril

Saturday 18 February 2012

Run

these long scarlet frocks
only prove to show
that the English class war has
a way yet to go
though I hazard, at the risk
of your hoots of derision,
bold llwynog fares better
with the hounds
of tradition
than the high calibre teeth
of rifled munitions

I Pulled The Pin And Let It Go

moping heart surgery
across the pages
a Stendhal squall in pastel
my three legged
Portland rabbit’s luck
set it to race
ocean to freeze poor
little fuck couldn’t taste
past the secondary
squeeze of metered
ologies broadened from
south to now then
cooling ground and
about this high were
it to stand in a puddle right
up to it’s bevelled
bluff

Old Man

the waxy man
with a head of startled hemp turns
his key and shoulder hunched
protective shawl against
the spate stares sightless
miles right through me
inside out, front to back,
scuffles, rattling, townwardly

Friday 17 February 2012

Cast

too much on the page
while the dead are still singing
wind must beg caution

A Pinch Of Childhood

speaking officially
I was from a broken home
misbegotten spawn
half loved twice reviled
fatherless but not rudderless
home wild happy child

penknives matches
nettle thrush scratches
broken maybe but I had
Airfix to mend it

pedal a metal
a ring a roses more Nurburg
than plague but the same
bite and bruises

with a war wound inherited
that hole in my belly
uncles that teased
and a diet of jelly

my first ten years
I just ran and I ranged
given again
I’d ask nothing be changed

broken?
fuck yes but I love
omelettes

© Paul Sands February 17, 2012

Untitled

fleshless fingers
of a wintered birch
gnarl a carpal tunnel
to the council's moon

Thursday 16 February 2012

up Up UP

I am seeking
a marvel of words
rhyme and metaphor so full of wonder
they will claw and split your head asunder
until I find them though
I’ll have to polish turds

Night Time Is The Fight Time

listen all you ragged dolls
to the midnight chimes run
rifled spirits slake a claim
to the rattling lights of your
basal vein plugged
and filled to boiling brim
vinegar, piss
and burning vim quivered
hammer ten fingers wound
redeemed for one look
in most market towns

Wednesday 15 February 2012

A Fever of Separation

I find myself
at the mercy of a wet
Kirilian bloom where
crackling stone acorns are strewn
to join a pyretic line twixt
the Trent and the Severn
and split the difference between
your hell and my heaven

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Yummy

with this mushroom
I thee dead
and take you
to my mossy bed

when rosy
is the fungal head
try a little
cake instead

Exposed

silent winter slides clean through powdered soda dell
where I present vetruvian me
in arboreal frame, skeletal, covered
my core brisk, black from hoar-bitten lover's tokens
while amnesic sun overlooks heedless
my perverse perihelion

Monday 13 February 2012

I’m Not Going Anywhere

awake?
have I emerged
from one more
ctrl alt delete
of haphazard sleep
into the habitual
diurnal

I wont meet
the day
but stare the world
down
blink
and have my play
in a green residual
retinal echo

Saturday 11 February 2012

Winter Low

Vetr’s razor
besets
with twin edged slice
cruel breath hones
the diamond bite

while Sumarr’s ghost
hangs enervate witness
to kerfs so pure
that draw human flesh
bloodless

Head Money

poor jimming spadger
a ha’penny on your head
from a taste for grain

fly into my house
and between the two of us
but one can remain

Ice

ripped and torn
every drop
awakes into a dawn
rimy transformed
crystalline
butterfly atoms befriended
for an ephemeral stay
with new bonds
until the solar spray
of jigsaw rainbow
reconstructed
returns you to the slumber
of a gurgling river bed
or retailored
once more
to feathery hammock
in the high azure

Friday 10 February 2012

The Flight Of The White Trash Can

seagulls scrap and skreel
over morsels discarded
by genteel and boor

no inequity
in commission to cloy the
ever open maw

Thursday 9 February 2012

True Romance

true romantic?

do not kid yourself

commercially coerced
you have been told
so therefore you observe

mechanical gestures
from your panicked heart
deliver the automatic dictate
of a hallmark card

Billow

bare on Ægir’s marl
nine skerry-brides fan ashore
sharp brackish kisses

Beside

I crave
the solar bite
of a day
too long spent
at the beck
of the
North Sea’s
song

days
where the
word
sandwich
takes on new
meaning
and your egg
full of grit
leaves your stomach
keening

Our Nation's Malaise

the source
of our woes
now clear
as air

we no longer
wear our
socks
in pairs

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Spray

"it's all too much"
I heard her pray
"but can I really
end it this way?
if I hold my breath
and count to eleven
will I wake to find
myself in heaven?"

Tuesday 7 February 2012

A Funeral


penguins
on snow
huddled below a brume
that strikes the mood
for greatcoats
and choked throats

straining
worn smiles
some which have travelled
thousands of miles
for one last farewell

amidst
a vague
recognition of blood
thought forgotten
come final arrival of
bloom strewn package
naught but box of memories

after
prim words
from a man who was stranger
and hard fought tears
from one who was closer
a gathering, of sorts,
in a homelier fug where

shared
hollow compacts
offer not to leave it so long
and on a happier footing
but I know we shall wait
for death to gather us anon

raw
amongst the realisation
through silent homeward slide
that with one more
struck from the account
your position moves up
while the spotlight swings around

Monday 6 February 2012

Super

hey hey
there’s a party in
the USA,

but I hazard not
in Foxborough MA,

this night
where every bowl is super
and overflows
with chips and dips
and the brewski’s
flow so freely
both regular
and super light

(Giants snatch Superbowl 21 -17 from Patriots)

Sunday 5 February 2012

I Must Take You To Meet My Mother

two girls jump from car
drop pants squat and piss in snow
winter wonderland

Scar Tissue

I, virtuoso,
forced life’s sword
down my own throat
though archimage
of my own belief
the implacable
vitreous rebuke
granted my craw
no thaumaturge
or scarified rescue for
such a tainted motif

Saturday 4 February 2012

White Tonight

through my
highball salted
flurry downtown
the cocaine crystal sneeze
of tonight’s downy fall
delivers
a chilling high
for such a
mercurial low

Good Grief

time to shop
for the apocalypse
good Britons

it’s raining panic
as the down
dusts your screens

fear the white furred
bear and his
savage attack

stuff your sacs
with siege worthy wares
for who knows

this could well last
a day…
or two

Om-Nom

a scything silence
augurs your arrival to
soon crimson waters

Friday 3 February 2012

Cold Snap

those guests
until now
so noticeably absent
twitch
fluff’n’puffed
noisy and expectant
while uninvited
pristine
paper kites
glow circles
in the short
and snappy
bright

Thursday 2 February 2012

1,000 Channels of Shit

when did I get
Hitler TV
cupcake secrets
of The Nazis?
oh
I’m so sorry
it’s His-tory

Maybe Not You (But Definitely Me)

I’m an
art vandal
pencil chewer
circus freak
and trouble brewer
why?
because!
it’s fucking fun
it’s not therapy
just the way I run
I spin fabled
lies
it’s called
storytelling
a suitable
disguise
for articulating
a thousand stories
through a hundred faces
you know
the shit you do
in public places

and I'm probably lying now

Family Entertainment

stretching
is uniform

this full screen exposure
ensures
my eyes crave so much more

than any
big hearted whore
reclined on those dreams

or
split through the seams

could coax
from the hardest

and its
hand drawn reliefs