One More Pound Of Flesh Please

hemi-hydrate
lying below
the bridled tension
of life’s meniscus
not just like
everybody else
but
just like
everybody else

Stupid Is

with beatific calm
I stared
and reasoned
how well
that finger fit
with the frozen sausages
and where they sit

the rubicund blush
of ragged end
and jagged steely drip
the only
tell-tale that this
was not
what should be

until of course
the scarlet jus
began to pour
the hearty pump
of ruddy gore

and nerves
enkindled like
a three barred fire
rang keenly
through snipped
barbing wire

and smutty towel
all I could find
to plug the dam
of living wine
until a blue light
carried me
with a sense of
shall we say
urgency

to a stage
of limelight
where green masked
magicians
spent
six and some hours
of magnificent
stitching

These Are The Ways Of An Old House

the walls
are breathing
through each
rasping crack
a wheezing
contrary
eupnea

the air is
talking
with a
backwards chatter
an hermetic
arbiter laced
with menace

the boards
are walking
as invisible
footfalls
creak and
crawl to
warped demise

and I am
laying
dripping fear
as strangled
queer mewls
resound

I Table A Question

on this stone scale
of evil
are you a 22?
is this something you
are born with
or a trait
you must accrue?

Messianic

I anoint myself
maven

fox in the coop

such
delicious dilettantes
too many to consume

no cockerels near

you hens can
field the havoc

my vandal
vision
of opportunity
arisen

The Butcher Of Gregory Boulevard

climbing broken stairs
through pendulum haunted hall
where red giant waits

no laughing matter
that cruel lullaby into
rusted nitrous sleep

of masked gassed descent
chased in dark by limber loaf
in a pork pie hat

bloody wakening
to expulsion and hours of
bedding soaked in gore

When Confronting Ducks

“so why did you do it?”
I asked them straight
then
before they had chance
to contemplate
their answer
I follow
“its plain to see
your webbed prints all over
this graffiti
you’ve been bad
since you were
just a yolk sac”
but they flipped
me the bird
and hollered back
“quack”

Animals

the creatures and me
we talk
you see?
well I talk
and they
just roll their eyes
and nod
indulgingly

How To Respond To A Polar Bear

we'll agree then
you can't rhyme orange

but perhaps maybe

we could arrange

to use instead

mandarin

that or possibly
tangerine

Slick

rubbered up
in the spit
now
halted by an
imperfect rainbow

..RED
….ORANGE
......GREEN (nothing beyond or between)

a cough
a shudder
then split

my
greasy deposit
remains
as contradiction

a defacing beauty

peacocks eye
feathered
within the swelling plashet

Awkwardly Mobile

the peripatetic
spur
sundered
marrow spoon
hollowed
and forsaken
in the
soured grass
where
lost co-ordinates
of days of
grace
and grand
escapes
offer no cue
for
slagged
ambulant dreams
laid to rest
in choked and
over worked
seams

Low

this disappointment
is to be spread thickly
over the sailcloth of my expectations

deep within these tubes
lies a germ of posterity

from its beetle glinting crawlspace
spat an imagined this

oh yes
I can picture it all
the abalone egress
of invited gall

instead
a scratched dog
assembly fugs
over stepped frowns

behests this whetted tongue
lay waste my malignant
blithe trance

Chance Encounter

the pile of rocks rises
slicks back the velveteen
and re-tunes
the wires beneath it’s nose
tokes one last draw
tips me a wink
and shambles off

For The Light Doesn't Shine

supine
dead moth trapped
in the lantern room’s
aseptic fulgor

overwrought
words
too long
thought
turned prosaic
alone in this
infested station

here where I lay
my mind to rest
blowfly fresh
a torrefied
shadowy macula

that lamp now eclipsed
my stark umbra
chalks the hills
black smudged
“memoria in aeterna”

Shameless

the culpable blind
grant monkey of injustice
home on their shoulders

Capel

they each bear it
that sobriquet...

those slate capped
stone arks
all wear it
over their door
… I thought them
full of chimney topped
witches or something
much worse
… the name
black blood painted
or devil fire burned
in stone...

a word for peace
that implies
such hateful violence
…salem

Kingfisher

cold by dirty banks
unexpected splash announced
nacreous delight

opalescent dart
glimmering whirl emerges
with flopping foil snack

perched within my reach
crosses the beck to enjoy
a more private feast

Go?

itching feet bait me
gravid germ of wanderlust
seeding my reason

Contrails

a quartet of
sallow
fattening lazy loops
garland
the blistered moon

she
so late to bed
and still at play
in the morning’s
cornflower bloom

Rise

here the ocean rose
sliding hyaline mountain
silent towards me

slow burning summit
sibilating and seething
its voice discovered

with tympanic glee
casts its moiling progeny
splintered on the shore

diamonds in the strand
dancing on a salty wheeze
seascaped to sunbake

Somnambulant

sunday
is for drowning

a morning's
morphine riddle of
words and stolen
rhymes

unkempt in
dubious time
and exorcised
design

Lakeside Return

deep
in the pellucid bell
of a glassy morning
I crunch over brittle
sugar sharp grass
to reach
pooled in spectral
mercury
a salamagundi
of avian fancy

bequiffed and billed
slow trains coming

synchronised submarine
spearing
rolling
under
emerging where?
ah yes there..no there !

each downy
scrit scratched
shivered ablution
sending quivering
amplified circles
to echo off the shore

of lordly
tangled island
each vine
inclined to play host
to grey hunched
assassins
patient
with steel lapels
drawn up high
to arrest the
shadowy chill

The Difference Is

look to the heavens
do we observe the same moon
or do you see cheese

Fashionista

hear them
the chattering classes

high mass

atop
crystal hoar

chiffon
gloved ligneous
claw

barely a glance
for winters
shabby suitors

just squalled
barbed spears

shrill
squabbles
that grace
our ears

On A Möbius (s)Trip

I
await
my other
awakened
and unslaked
spoiled glue
boxed
yet
broken loose
quietly roared
revelation
august
the chiral me

Flappers

she
they called WYTCH
now muscles twitch
as her neck
stretches
on a bloody gibbet

together
they form
a holy chorus line
dancing from that loose limbed
hallowed gallows tree
all
in the dawns delight

he
NECROMANCER
dead converser
when pressed
had no impression
uttered no confession
his last review “more weight”

Quack

suicidal ducks
elvis curl towards heaven
must not tickle them

Night Terrors

ptera is latin
for wings and screaming I fall
from my lack of them

Heart Burn

so savagely burned
pendulous wasted clinker
in an empty chest

I Forget Things

when I raise that shell
to my ear there is never
anybody there

every time I raise
a shell to my ear there is
no-one ever there

Runner

the sound of a spring
uncoiling inside my gut
raises an alarm

no trust while my mind
questions internal function
am I replicant

Monster

never as scary
when you look through your fingers
but will still eat you

Earthen Ware

she is air
strigine
feather tumbling
on thermals
raised by dracish fire
through my earthen
hook
till kindled dart
cleaves her hips
and bodies
reclaimed
by gravity
collide
in mantle harrowing
crowned fullness

Howling Sky

unbound
sky wolves
slavering
granite miasma
grizzle above
and around.

Odin’s bane,
biding
such furious
discharge
set amongst
to scourge

a panic
of flight
where divided
are devoured
in a geratz
ecstasy

Washed

cracks in the pavement
will never heal while cold rain
still sluices the wound

Spoon-fed

in three lines expect
not the minutiae of life
fill the gaps yourself

Quackering

dearest mister drake
I have one question only
are your feet not cold

Table d’hôte

once this shuddering feast
has broken it’s back
and run
complete
each course survived
of perfervid inflammation
locked lips
licked
dried
let me now grow
backwards
inside
you
then ooze guiltily out
pausing only
to gaze
and whisper through
your eyes

Drip

I try to catch raindrops
then sound them off one by one
my army of tears

The General Synopsis At 0600

the four stags bellow
a chilling blast
of spittle drenched
breath

Yggdrasil’s children
tremble and
shake their wiry heads

then pliant,
as the tossed vessels
forged of their progenitors
osseous sacrifice,
become compelled to stoop
and kiss their
mother’s back

while the aged hurl death,
with their breaking bones,
into the midst of this
wailing blue
rage of harts

yet raven’s
maintain a recondite
reserve

await the scavengers
dividend
with no words
for Odin’s ears

No Respite

through the strident
sibilating
crystal shards
of my splintered repose

this whistling top
internal
chthonian skirl
igneous and
immutable
affords
no hope of slumber

no amplitude
for the nocturnal comfort
of a lovers shallow breathing
under the covers
with the tickety clock

and now even I would welcome
the dulled drone
of passing cars
and their less predictable
transit

but they as one
become obscured
by the sine wave intrusion
of these relentless hertz

Leviathan

oh leviathan

dashed bereft
under hanging skies
that mirror
your sagging pall
I stand
Ishmael
to your unquiet
demise

amidst the niveous
fulmination
of hovering nebs
where Neptune
saw fit to serve
your hulk
for its absolute picking
by those which need
and others
that greed
with no affect
to your fabled past

and your jaw
mute in life
thunders now
in death
of the avarice
that was your scourge
proclaiming,
even in your finality,
Ahab lives yet

Eso Teric

high voltage friction
so dangerous in this wet
someone could get hurt
as
beneath the silk net
butterfly seeks her succour
on the veins of Mars

Many a Hog

this twenty twelve
has not arrived quietly
see dandelions of every hue
roar its ascendency
and lanterns of hope carry prayers
to their oblivion
while ill attired and worse tempered
the Wife Beaters consorts
surge clanging and clattering
through a wide awake slumber
where the revellers whoop and greet
though behind the curtains of the lonely
there is weeping
and I
cannot sleep for fear
of forgetting
yet I dare not write
for fear

Resolve

one month no drinking
is it February yet
I could kill a pint