Abutment

 

Peonies burst from the border,
red shot on the wind
flung up to a downing sky.

These are the flowers beside your bed.
They’ve been dropping since morning, the petals,
clotting the wood while your breathing slows. 

Arthur’s Seat

 

You climb. I slip whole.

The grass bloodies,

crows crack overhead.

It’s too late for more, you say.

The loch’s wide water

blackens behind us.

Time to go back.

Tracked over peaks

the last crow dips,

flicks into silence.

How it Ends

 

We exist beyond aching,

weak at the end

as a free hawk

drops into gravity,

resolving the hunter’s shot.

Faith travels no further 
than hope in the search 
for life in crabs that fall
from the relative branch:

strength turns lonely

when rowan roots withdraw
from the mountain.

Where is the absolute pulse 
in a lamb’s death in winter folds, 
through the heart that beats 
for what stays whole beyond 
the slicing burn in summer?

The night turns here:

the moon plays lucid.

I map uncertain stars,

count revolutions and rulers

while the world spins,

tips under my feet.

Enmeshed, Struggled, Snapped

For David Kelly

Not ten hours dead and velvet shines rainbows

stark against fields where streams sluice over stone;

upended and dropping from taut, country gallows,

moles are transfixed. Their trapper alone

climbs to the copse, where keepers in plainclothes

search out another set up to atone

for frenzied top-feeders, who, hunting in shallows,

shear flesh from the bones of - Ah, there he is! Prone.

Down by sharp reeds scraping dirges to minnows,

blood-snouted signallers, dancing, make known

to ambulance-drivers, who haul past the meadows

a red-wristed corpse, its essences flown,

that up at the house with dark-curtained windows

a widow and family wait till a phone

whispers the message, “It’s sad, but what follows

needs delicate hands to level death’s tone.”

Back on the wire where moles shift in shadows,

a fly slickens eggs over eyes that have grown

impartial, if blighted by blank-stares at sideshows

propped to the beams with the dead and the blown.

Cut and Parry

 


No quarter,
there will be no quarter,
Wing-Heeled Walker,
not a coin shifted
where the Styx dribbles thin.

You, Boy,
bare-arsed,
that back to me!
There will be no gilt 
to flick in your fingers,
not a glint, not a glimmer
on the grim stair down.

I have paid in slices,
Snake-Snarler,
inch after inch slashed
on the slide, cold eyes
shearing tight cells
shattered to lace 
as the loom tips,
loose woof warps,
the shuttle stutters
along the weave.

Fabric was never
your forte, not
the rip and stitch of it,
Shoddy-Cutter,
light hand dissembling
white-trembled
gauze glossed 
over the nipped
thread. But I
have crafted

twopenny taffeta,
the sleek of satin,
canvas,
cut work,
crewel work,
shot silk
and the long wind of smooth linen.

P=L=O=P

fish member
rays a chamber
therein wallows
pishpot activity

'ware pike's
clean-up duties
bottomwise
poetic pond

mouth ever open?
blowing bubbles?
phhhhut!

...........

pop lips grab
jam doughnut
nut smeared
dribble drivel
preens! yuk! preens!

babble puffs
thriced sized
hot air hollows
flipped lips

tu'penny teacake
glazed a-top
nowt beneath
commercial flop

waffle ego up
piffle int'rest down
boored
goin' 'ome
good book

.............

plonks-a-poem coddecayed
bubbles putrid
skinwise flayed

flopped disaster
heaping stupid
falls like every poetaster

The Art of Non-Seduction

 


A Pox on Rochester, the Bore!

All that one does is stuff in more

purple words relentlessly.

He’s hounded by Necessity,

it seems. Kindlier Nature culled,

he plies his vigorous Pen; is pulled

to slap his parts on the Page so fast

you’d think his Time and not his Whore

had come - if she did. I’d cast

some doubt on that; our Peer is more

concerned with loucher takes on Lust.

Ah well, it happens when Love’s gone bust.

Admire the Poet? His work is slick,

but, basically, the man’s a Prick.

Waiting at Longjumeau

Fields were soft as mist in England

and here glare green in the shaken air.

The bed jitters where roses shatter

their petals, spatter concrete red:

a train's brakes shriek.

I fold the morning's news to a scene

where soldiers stroll down a village street,

blood black on the page.