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.

Without Maps

             
            

                             Pytheas passed it by,

                   off to the ultimate

                             fog-drift.

 
  Whales shriek,              sad in the sound,
  heralds of ice                inching in valleys
  above mud’s bubble     and mustering tremble,
  great with the gush      of the geyser-thrust,
  raking roots                 ripened in fire                 

  till Helgafel                   halts and humps,

 

                        waits, waits.

                   Pytheas sailed,

                   sailed and rowed

                             to the end of the world

 

Angels of the North

 


Being so caught up in coop and stay,
those yawed wings will not sway, nor shatter the coldest calm of winter's play
over the moor:

clumped feet clamped on the mound
root all angels fast. Air on their ground trails the high jets’ sound
over the moor;

their blood-rust drums on the clipped sky.
Staved backs to the east, eyeless, they face inland. Here they’ll die,
over the moor. 



“Being so caught up...” a phrase from “Leda and the Swan” by W.B. Yeats

Indian Summer

      
        
       

          Clouds harrowed each day 
          as  the weeks rained down, 
          all summer contained by cold 

          to this turn of the year

a bonfire marks.

Ripe leaves die hard

when their gold is not yet dry.

I light the slow fire

          to burst their green veins.

The swans’ wide wing-beats

alert me and I hear the splash

of weight on water, your call gone.

My sly cat purrs,

her head a nudging wedge of need

beneath my elbow,

a rainbow on every hair

down her used, barred back

where the evening light has clung.

Shafts of a burnt sun

awaken the tones

of the Afghan rug you loved,

swell the haul of their warmth

as they brighten, then season

the full, mauled air.

 

Double

I signal compound, my leaves fingered,

splayed to the brown of Autumn’s droop

fumbling down to crowns

two inches under.

I am green till blooming, crimson cup

busted by feathering reds, gold heart

shambled as bees shuffle

beneath the rags.

I am perfume, faint on a drag of summer

down to the time of rains and greys

rilling along the gutter,

glitter slopped,

none of your blowsy drugging here.

I am core-fat by winter, rootlets twitching

for nitrates locked below

their usual stock.

I am green and splayed, locked and shambled,

core-fat and cup-busted, red and fumbled

where I am guttered and fingered,

where I twitch.