What Angels?

what angels they?

they that always seem

to be looking

the other way

while in absentia

those robed in blight

and grey

of beak pick the bones of

our grief

genuflecting  promises

on the never-never

of a day

after tomorrow that none

will ever see

what angels they?

they that can no longer play

(Written in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings)

Iced

belly up, seal-suited, booted and solstice shy

the weight under a sickle curved sky-sail, the icicle smile

of a frictionless fear, wears this glass thin but while

wise in countless ways, beyond the power

of n at least, stays wary yet of the sightless beast hidden

behind the curve

above and below 66.5°, you will find your breath tastes

harder where the wait bears down as a ferocious maul

for the sound grows further from your there

and anywhere else

this here is where

the darkness of  a never dawning light

will swallow your whole once the green

curtains close and you can learn

no more

Each Branch I Snap

each branch I snap spills

accusations of every broken neck I ever wished

so out of politeness I bow my head

to show the dotted line,

the hemp tattooed severance knot;

that grace, which allows my hands

such time to forsake the face

of saved history

when everyday swings

the way of an ending that wont be changed

the grass, as always, redder

on that other side of the green line

where helping hands split heads as snakes

mutated under the weight of progress

without in a world where, to corroborate my worth,

to validate the myth of this existence,

I must drink my tea with lemon now

read my books through glass

on the back of an intimate enlargement

where the withering wilt remains

hidden below a flooded view

viable yet crude

I should choose a quieter voice

Policy

the trickle down poetics

coiffed, varnished, double dipped,

lay waste the oubliette of empathy

no balm, no salve

shall expel the foreign body that

thorns it’s path in the digital red apnoea

of each choked fallen promise

as they steal your desecrated breath

your lips are still moving

your lips are still moving even

as your face turns blue

while patience gets sicker

your patient dies bled clean of

ceramic reservoirs leeched and

cupped to a brink of clear relief

where each rating scores higher

dried tears bottled and fried

do little and smaller still

the hiding place for those who always

had another sweater

doctor?

Charabanc

they promised us "no rain" but

here we are

at the aptly named Water Lane

where the trees, be-whiskered of finger,

stroke their leaf free, would be, chins

bemused by roots once dry and thin now

fat and drunk

so let’s begin

we passed a fox

we passed a hound

but then a somewhat grisly mound

mechanically rendered

and from that point south our path

seemed lined with bobbing, robbing, gizzard ripping

grey beaked strippers

the fields, boarded, tortured, gasping for air cry

”enough”

but barely has their breath condensed

than heaven wrings another tide of ill concealed contempt

so there,

in the midst of urbane beds, hip hop sheds and looking up

a pair of legs that stalk the concrete raft across

the links become lagoons

where every complex, golf or god, surrenders

to the mentored runes that follow every bulletin

yet despite the wonder of all to see

we turn away

to define our own stupidity

in a round of yellow car punch

Hole

amidst this company of billowed ghosts

the echo bed of swollen heads belies

a gory hail of rain chined inspiration

for my chiselled host and

hides cathedral vaulted cuts

of the deepest time

where darkness speaks

in resonant rhyme

and breath affords a gaudy boast

yet dies upon the budding lime

belly crawled while underneath

the aven’s insolent draught

or razor sliced upon it’s cusp

of undesired attraction

no hiding place from sightless haste

or haven in forsaken sound

for once your light extinguishes

that fear which breeds in ageless seams

won't presume yourself invisible

while in the company of billowed ghosts

tallulah zeitlos

from now to then and back again

in time; to see

all promise of epiphany roll down between

the cracks that hold you in

such favoured light

your pictures beg to be inhaled

their snapped relief

and Dietrich air of futures trapped in avenues

sing silvered shadows deftly

drawn of umber hued schönheit

© Paul Sands 2013

Curiouser & Curioser

as the dew dropped tulip two-steps over my tongue

so a pubic slaughter of moonbeams and drag queens

leaves so little space in-between the longing

hung, low slung, below the eaves of this curious abode

where pregnant questions await the gaunt relief

of a crucified thief who has chosen his flavour

so sure the house has fallen on the queen of the east

love thy neighbour with the curtains tightly closed

I’ll take all the time I need to be me

but spend so little of it while cheap beauty costs so much

blue in the face of an airless address

every berry ripe hue caulked in a glassy vacuum of it’s own

at an age where it’s easier to count your broken teeth

than piss in the street please

scream down every avenue as your retinue has a propensity to carrion

never too slow to encourage a fatal stupidity

this flesh walking, free, in the air

is so far from that and stands as echo? shadow?  indentured

to the soil and from there who knows whence?

who cares?

my attention you can barely call a span

as it rarely makes the other side of any a stream of consciousness

no song can bridge the collapse or plot the route from a to b

never mind the x y and...what was it again?

so I sit at quarter past ten and hear an echo of the prodigal 

ponder which way my thoughts have run

dancing for the gallows pride wild with Oscar in his Gaol

...zed

now with the fowl roasting and vegetables on the boil

I leave the radio on, to read Lear to the kitchen walls

Policy

the trickle down poetics

coiffed, varnished, double dipped,

lay waste the oubliette of empathy

no balm, no salve

shall expel the foreign body that

thorns it’s path in the digital red apnoea

of each choked fallen promise

as they steal your desecrated breath

your lips are still moving

your lips are still moving even

as your face turns blue

while patience gets sicker

your patient dies bled clean of

ceramic reservoirs leeched and

cupped to a brink of clear relief

where each rating scores higher

dried tears bottled and fried

do little and smaller still

the hiding place for those who always

had another sweater

doctor?

We Chose Hooks

remember 

those nights

we placed hooks in our eyes?

waiting in our sleep

to catch the darting lies

that swam inside our heads

do you remember 

those nights?

we should have walked

the chrome stacked streets

that rolled like silver eels

where stub ends sailed on tarry keels

in that vanishing space between 

the night clubs gaudy hush

and necessities capital morning rush

before the coffee, 

before the bread,

before the morning headlines scream

but we chose hooks

do you remember?