Joanne Elizabeth

published in Forward Poetry Near & Far anthology October 2012

Joanne Elizabeth waits.

Beneath a powder blasted
cornflower welkin,
washed by a summer zephyr’s
saline kiss,
she waits.

Atop her rubber footed
iron bed,
on the sand and pebbles
amidst the tidal spume
and detritus
she watches.

A brusque, oily breathed
airborne flotilla,
the sky's very own
flotsam and jetsam,
gyre and gripe
and tarry.

The ocean
is ready now
as garrulous salvos wuther
up peaks and troughs,
and churn the beryl
into muddy soup.

And now there are men,
in a flurry
of flavous oilskins,
who rough house
Joanne Elizabeth
stolidly asea.

Edged mindfully into
the grubby moil
she bucks atop
each tumbling crest
and turns her back
on Neptunes cache

Those brine zested swabs
set fair to the wind
and pitch her alee
once more through the surge
but Joanne Elizabeth
testily abjures

Rebuffed , repulsed
and firmly aground
the mariners surrender
their petulant mount
and humbly drudge
ashore

They stand
forbearingly in the face of
a caustic mizzle
steadfast  gaze
a  good league distant

“No fish today”

Bone

god said “there’s a bone in my soup”

and spat it out

and for many years it crawled

before it learned to stand

and it said “I will make you now a fresh bowl,

from my family’s blood”

MQ-9

seen through the columns of rising smoke

the intention couldn't be clearer

while the tattooed roads wear the organic stains

as footholds for a memory of fallen phosphor rain

yet more caustic the harvest we reap

from the drone grown crone wept bones

even as the stone groves grow over the dead hope of

the pebble eyed children in their dreamless sleep

suffer the children our selfish gains

our bloody games

always the children

Itchy

each night I sleep

entwined in the comfortable branches

of a mossy oak

by day I play

among the lissom saplings

and wonder

how far I might still bend

mild frenzy

they lined up

in their smart suits and executive hair

outside the foundation stone

of a nations ruin ready to eulogise

to heap praise upon a legacy

of division

the traffic slowed

and the tempers frayed in a burg

where there is never enough

most had left by 8PM

save one expecting maybe

a ghost?

returning at the earliest light

most had moved into town

I popped my head inside a truck and said

"she's still dead you know"

one yet remains

awaiting the stone to roll back

my wife, the daughter of a miner,

council bread and margarine raised,

nods, obligingly, at the checkout

as she scans the customers cloying praise

"its nice about the flowers isn’t it"

“yes” she replies “they look great on my fireplace”

she reads people writing

the miners were greedy and she spits

"tell that to those with emphysema,

white knuckle and crippled joints

go stand by the graves of the hundreds that died

better still come here and say it to my face"

revolution runs better on stolen gasoline

every curtain will be stolen from

entitlement

each grain of dirt will raise

it’s raucous voice above

and over manners

while atoms bond

air will ignite for

blood is fuel enough

as gravity exists

believable in it’s force

secure each ideal

under fire from

truthful lies repeated

within freedom’s

monopoly of slaves

these days shall soon decay

and time shall re-cast

the farce of history

lest we stand...

light-up and run

© Paul Sands 2013

i’m working dammit

on the promise of a viscous promiscuity

I would normally shoot first, clean the mess later, ensure no witness survives

in the middleweek each slatternly evening should be bedded early

recently, though, the inclination of a night is to drink

coffee?

right! right! right!

read and write and write and ride a hundred of your dirty looks

in an all night steaming just to thumb fuck the irresistible where

god granted good sense is disavowed

christ my mind tonight where hasn’t it been

a  rattling mess

from the petty penury of the millennium’s silent bells

through a razored grift of oyster shells

via  packet steamed voyage that will never be

and I’m screaming

“why can’t you be my Yoko, passionista,

intravenous burned brown celluloid injector

crowning, howling, screaming blood-letter

leech wife barfly spittle shined philosopher”

instead there waits a world to be shared

by just her and me

wings clipped by vows and golden bands

buried under the demands of continence

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

disappointment is spread so thickly over the sailcloth of expectations

while deep within these tubes lies a germ of posterity

and its beetle glinting crawlspace

spits an imagined this

move

change the frequency, your smoke is staining my ears

move

remain though the matter of my subject

you and your forced finger self-inflicted wounds

if my words don't flow the knives come out

my hands may form a loving fist for the needful dough

I could carve a new you and I have just the tool

but she, already dead, chides

“count your breaths, count your blessings”

which begs me to ask is there too much on the page?

while the dead are still singing the wind must always

beg caution

how much attention does this whore seek?

fracked and sluiced to the point of release

where every kind of juice spills

from pores palm greased

with the patina of slovenly verse

paupered by the diminished returns

of a creased core

what is the call?

I stay, a frog in a pan, of course

warning  shy of every hopeful morning

and in a' very short space of wine'

it will be love again

a visit

I went to visit my mother this morning

and ask her if she had any ideas

at first I couldn’t find her amidst the rows of pheasants calling

the timber testaments swayed & shivered bare

each quondam cortex as crisp as the next

so there I sat awaiting a warmer air

once found though she had nothing to offer

and I gave nothing back

save anger

at the appearance of a mis-dated plaque

far better then to merely watch

four spot shadows along the foundations of the stream

mimic skaters spinning a springtime dream

and a passing frog paused with a question in his throat

so I took out my pen and paper that I might write notes

his words weren’t for me either

what crisis?

nowadays they have to pinch the ends

of their cigarettes before they cross the threshold

no longer allowed to herd the crumbling swarms

of ash across the gingham veldt

outside the window, on the pavement,  lies a bible

and the radio declares their readiness is high

seems like a good night to let the smokers

in and warm around a last embered light

on the table I browse the “priest“ they called him

in the centrefold, deep in the heart, a flyer,

man’s journey into christ,

I guess we’ll find out soon enough the veracity of the divine

but until the young-un and the white horse riders

have decided who can piss the highest

leave us to the daily diary and its tales of

days of fucking each other’s husbands and wives

I bought a Dylan Thomas book one the way home,

from the junk shop,

when I got it back I saw blood on the back cover

I licked my finger to wipe it off but she said “no! you fool“

sure it carried the plague of some cursed lover

I plagiarise myself

a drink is most definitely in order

the tawny coolness tock tick toxic keen as the

sharpest dissection

and then you can find me not just like everybody else but just like

everybody else lying hemi-hydrate below the bridled tension

of life’s meniscus