I Am Bad (but you would)

I am fiendish
I am fickle
I will break you
if you’re brittle
I am reckless
I am hateful
I am Cain
slaying Abel
I am feckless
I am feral
And my words are
so very cruel
I am heinous
I am hostile
my tongue will cut
you like a scalpel
I am callous
I am carnal
when I take you
you will buckle
I am scabrous
I’m a scoundrel
but I know you’d still
let me fuck you

Bag It

once green knotty glade
bespoiled by hasty repast
our selfish discard
leaves
wind gathered aegis
now caskets for the careless
in the dirty shade

Enough

for each trigger pulled
another mothers child lies
lost beyond all sight

Spider Town

It’s suddenly
that time of year
spiders,
SPIDERS!
everywhere
crawling up my bedroom wall
racing down my wooden hall
lodging in the bathroom fitments
laying claim to dingy basement

I’ve said before
they don’t agree
with wife
and daughters
all quivering three
but these intruders they abound
not even hiding in the background
and brazenly they chase around
their polished laminate playground

Morning Fog (Wednesday)

Woden clamps frigid
gauze over my hungry eyes
masking all but grey

Wind

roots entrenched
though now
dismembered
haggard stone,
drawn and quartered,
an ancient demise,
suffered this venerable
harvester of wind

looked over
from high
remembered
and risen anew
modern Titans
offer new solution
agents burning fire
caught fresh from the sky

Morning Fog

sleepy Earth breathing
opaque dreams spun gold fire by
the Sun’s waking rays

Autumn’s sharp fingers
roll a coruscate quilt over
somnolent glebe

Bod Teircaill

From below a trail
of floury footprints
aspic set
in the high deep lapis

tired of dancing
the up down round
of rain above
the furrowed ground

Bod Teircaill shakes and
with arms arrayed,
fanned fingers wide,
shrugs of the Earth

catching full hold
of Cymbeline’s draught
he peeee-uu’s aloft
and re-marries the sky

domus phasmatis

that wraith
often
no more
than
backwards glanced
down
dim corridor

legs alone,
nothing
less or
sure
phantom danced
stone
trapped echo

ashen, dusted
vexed
shadow
now reanimate
come
forth
grim memoir

Like Smoke

Weeds

Domestic Godhead

Yes I bake
So fuck you!
If you leave me your wife
I’ll fuck her too

I'm Batman

Dirty towels tied tight
around neck, down back
each little boy thinks
he’s the man come bat.

But terry cloth just wasn’t
fine enough for me
and to my ever patient mum
I did tearfully plead

“Make me a cape
of the darkest black
with that badge so yellow
of my hero’s bat”.

And when next I gazed down
from my bedroom lair
a little girl pointed
and shouted “Look there!”

Then I rushed down the stairs
in my cowl of nylon
stood hand hipped on the street
and decreed “I’m Batman!”

Did I Really?

can I have a singular heart
when my heart’s not in it,
be averse to risk
but never shy of a kiss?

so you thought me sleeping with the enemy
though we weren’t really sleeping
and now you’re keeping me awake
with all your gnashing and crying
all that “how could you”, “I hate you”
and “what the hell was I thinking?”
I thought it was just a friendly kiss
but, well, I had been drinking

we’ve been through thick and thin,
the both of us, and back to fatter
and I thought we’d reached the kind of place
where this sort of shit really didn’t matter
now twenty years long beyond that night
with tankers of oil poured on that water
in our abiding winter of fragile détente
I probably shouldn’t show you this photo

social

liking,
commenting,
following,
tweeting,
clandestine glancing,
surreptitious crushing,
circling,
plussing,
friending,
replying,
social networking
or indentured stalking?

Hello Again

Dawn’s flashlight
scours the high bellied stratus
while retreating billows
feed aurous rays
like the spreading fingers
of a child covering a torch

NO Doubt

so many faces of guilt

but once reason is stripped

and justness is kicked

into the long grass at the side of the road

the mere fraction of doubt

remains doubt enough

to arrest that

which cannot be undone

for no matter how we deliver

a man his final breath

there is no parole

from the singular face of death

Why?

why do I feel?
responsible
for every hurt this world has to offer
why do I feel?
the need
to cradle every broken bird left on the roadside
why do I feel?
grief doubled
for every tale of caustic loneliness
why do I feel?
why do I feel?

Behold

TRUTH written down is truth denied
TRUTH revealed is truth ignored
TRUTH explored is truth defied
TRUTH, once observed,
is truth distorted,
the altered state
of measured fact
TRUTH abhorred is TRUTH

Dawn Redux

From the Eastern Marches
a Battenburg dawn
boils and scorches
the puffed, gilled denizens
swimming through
a pelagic heaven
rising higher and deeper
braided then shredded
by a roaring whisper
laying tracks of gold

Fallen Leaves

the arborary mantle slips,
dowager dry lentigo browned,
to dance tiny pirouettes
with devils of dust & grit

I Should Stay Blind

I look,
but know I must never touch,
this beauteous raven
garlanded with bewitching jet
silken and slick cascading
over her troubled coronet

Morning Reflections

my morning begins
in diurnal margin still
black as my coffee

then

rose and tangerine
a pastel explosion through
smutty cornflower

while

feathered filaments
paint a hazy smudged montage
of smoky misfits

as

speeding on & by
the relentless passage of
steel caged isolation

by

commuter driven
rush of single occupant
selfish luxury

when

rent final grimace
begs bloody reflection on
my fragile tenure

We All Float

And then the echo from beyond

Drowned in the mud pool
Stripped to the bone
You nailed my skin to the dragon tree
But there is no gravity now
No attraction here to hold me down
So count the footsteps as you walk
Hear the dread echo in your heart

Bitch!

A word of warning. A lot of my work is observational and does not reflect the person that is me, especially this one. I have anger but it is never focused in the direction of these words. I'm not sure it works so any comments gratefully received, public or private


do you love me? I love you
if you loved me
you would
a jar
a jug
the pollywog thug
the welt
the stripe
backhand swipe
be a good girl
I told you
I warned you
you’re mine
you cant leave
you wont breathe
if I choose
you might die
then I’ll lie
next to your
fathomless sleep
mine to keep

Flown

Empty timbered cradles
float in the sky
like ruinous piles
exposed on a crag high

above the reach
of earthbound danger
now stripped of all façade
no hint of comfort or cover

an arbour of skeletal fingers
twisted and twitching
in brittle ebullience
threatens to send all crashing

Like, Whatever

Yesterday I wasn’t here
Today I will tarry
Tomorrow I will be no more
This my only certainty

Well I Never

I never questioned that torn photograph
of my young, beautiful, blond mother
sat on a rock with a phantom arm
draped around her slim shoulder

I never understood her eager receipt
of those brown manila letters
addressed to someone not quite her
that she hid with such discomfiture

I never knew until she was gone
even the name of my absent father
that I was officially “bastard child”
of a man they called Trevor.

September Hares

Amid the long shadows
of a furrowed field
sunwashed by a chill
Autumn sunrise
I delight in
the lopsided loping
of those lop eared
children of dirt

Wind Rover

Still,
still,
head stock still
while fingers of heat, raised up
to caress my downy plume,
gimbal me and hold aloft
my obdurate observation
Down
my quilled sweep
rapidly whirs
while eyes track
through grass,
over stone
There!
Down!
I see you now!
I will hang steady
with effortless demeanour
though without
those invisible breathy hands
I could not prevail
Down…
Down…
Drop!
The callous scimitars
that lead me earthward
hail you, bringing tidings of
a singular minacity
though I bear no malice
I have one purpose
Kill!

Burst

Like freshly dug earth
I smell it before I see
that advancing wall

of swarming silver
peardrop bullets from above
singly crystal clear

but at muster
a turbid shock of steel to
sack and claim the land

The Beat Goes On

Disregard
the dogma
abstract
from itself
which still marching
to the
avaricious
blinkered
count of
consumerism
persists in its
relentless pursuit
of wealth

Respite

In my garden I
can physically grapple
those deep rooted anxieties
and thorned dilemma

grasp a real nettle
it’s a place I can show
my true mettle
and should the rhizome

prove elusive or slip
from my grasp
I can chose to dig deeper
or let things lie until

implacable shoots once more
beg my attention so
their basis might be addressed
or buried "de novo"

Enjoy

In a foretaste
of ecstasy
I consider
your firm
plumpness,
rain dashed
and sun splashed,
where my tongue
slips along that
curved groove
until my teeth tease
a tiny stalk
atop your swollen
violet fullness.
Overwhelmed
I split you
and revel
in your entirety,
as your essence
pools a purple nectar
upon my lips

And In No Time At All (testament to youth)

Smoking
Drinking
Toking
Joking

Laughing
Running
Fighting
Fucking

Driving
Racing
Wrecking
Raging

Singing
Dancing
Ligging
Gigging

Working
Bluffing
Earning
Changing

Chasing
Coupling
Swelling
Wedding

Sink

This is the whole
of the swallow me hole
that almost stole
my careless soul

while out for a stroll.
Waiting like troll
this hall of mole
‘neath grassy knoll

which pressed by sole
needed none more to cajole
and greedily bowl
me one fathom below

This Is How It Goes

A thought and a pen
and it usually happens
on a busy road

Drive Around The Corner

A fat morning sun
sat poised on the horizon
ready for ambush

THAT Day

We were all American

THAT day.

A shock stock still

multitude of

mirrored Munch

we watched,

as helpless infants

in an infernal pit,

the devil at play.

While the

corollary citadels

static and inviolate until

THAT day

burned and crumpled,

razed in seconds

what took years to raise,

in a surge of sinew

and iron and dust

We attest that matter

cannot be destroyed,

that from which were are made

will last forever,

but too much that mattered

passed beyond our belief

so our hearts hardened

then you bared you teeth

THAT day

Precious

My sweet daughter
she still skips along
at an age where in many
innocence has gone

Face

I thought I saw
such sweet sadness masked
within the whisper of your smile,
but staring past the ties
that cheese wire our hearts
your eyes betray
a disintegrating lie
and you’re showing me more faces
than a game of ”Guess Who?”

All Our Fears

There are people
in this world
who would kill
my little girl
just because
she was born...

...you finish this tale
of fear that is universal

The Change Is Unchanging

Ululating
black ribbons,
flesh and feather and bone,
ripple the sky twixt and around.

Rattling
copper backed
scarlet jowled rollers
in fear of shot hug the ground.

Flashing
red white smudged
tardy ebony arrows
pack their bellies, Africa bound.

I went to sleep
in Summertime,
I next awoke
to find Autumn crowned.

Contrition

Eschewed
the kernel
which is me,
Free
immolation!
Roll up
take your shot
bring your fires
your bowls of pitch,
the feathers
are on me.

Agape

Consider the dismal
assemblage before me.

Where the pearl jewelled trove
with such beautiful lustre

that which I plundered
amid the bespattered bluster?