A Small Selection From The Many
 

Down Deep



Birdsong sloughed assnakeskin

The marinated dreams

Spilled like a child’s icecream

Our waves aren’t what theyseem

Reflecting violins.



The shadow of the sun

Catches bone in its eye

And what the wrecks imply

Is not for you and I

As spider silk is sung.



Cold leaves reject theirlimbs

Slipping inside the dusk

That with a gibbet’s musk

Hangs brief colours of trust

In hearts where no shapesswim.



Winds over naked hills

Snap at the softened sea

Splicing their guarantee

Into all there is to see

When the wombs revert tochill.



Under a night-numbed swell

Thick as the blood of whales

Stroking through ghosts ofsails

Watch as the shore lamps pale

Waving one last farewell.

***


Rudiments



I am

Black wood bent under blackstone

Thoughts of shore-shell andkicked sand

Harried by a sharpened hand

One wish short of a wishbone



I am

Closer than the stars tonight

A stream breathing turpentine

Often a knot in the vine

The first death of the lastlight



I am

One word stretching over time

A drum beat preserved inglass

This thin wind shaving thegrass

That mutter of mangled rhyme



I am

Ash falling across skinnedmeat

As blunt as a bloody snow

A harp string tricked to abow

Other shoes on other feet



I am

An affordable taboo

A headache without a head

Still better if left unsaid

Honest as all burning blue



And what is not me is you

***


Back



Morning’s precise bleaknessstretches

The light like old skin,sticking fast

To the walls of my cigarette.

There is not time left toforget

Or rinse out the words.Strange sketches

Of a stranger, or stronger,past



Thrust out from the palepage. The last

Fragrant line, cold now,fetches

Its fists and beats itssilhouette

Against the glass of myregret.

This something, this never,so vast

Inside. Still the silencewatches.

***


Tangible



The quiet lapping of words

Against wood in the leaf-dark

Between green glades bringsto mind

That crackle of lilac silk

And the long light of yourchords:

Little birds over the ice.

***


Mass



The original reproduction, you watch

Me through my own eyes, crying fragments of night.



We are pinned insipid in the carnival

Of the ignorant mouth, a muzzle on thought.



Orphaned meanings receding with our hair; each

Shakes sticks at a finite sky. We are as coal



Smashed from fire; our bloodless page belittles

Itself rhythmically. Bent by the settle



Of a sackcloth sun, silence soaks the flowers.

See how their blossoms appear quite black, like full



Stops. The garden is shut you say, but briars,

Dissonant and lovely, shoulder its strike. Whole,



My meat rack relics will be clinging skin-tight

To this trick; preserved for the value of dirt



Into a fresher fold,

As naked words grow old.

***


Cleaved



This is the last garden, with its green

Stinging. Notice the pond-skater scratch

A moebius sigh. Crippled routines



Are cast as its thick heart sticks. We snatch

Up pine shells for our pockets whilst mists,

Ancient as all love, crack at the catch



Of warmth. What is it that still exists?

These beams of bracken cannot hold their

Harmony. New rope rubs at wild wrists



In the oak glade with the used trees, bare,

And somehow bland. We can only wait

With them, repurpose our wits to stare



East as the sun sets, or, as the straight

Pain pulls down dreams, relinquish light. Stuff

Up the leaf-sounds. I will simply sate



A head no more sublime than a rough

Axe haft. Perhaps it is now enough.

***


Stirred



In the holes beneath thought, beneath all blue

Words and grey words - just words in night - I still

Remember nineteen-ninety-six. I do



Not think it with the same shapes, and the shrill

Air is only an ash with his opaque

Words and grey words. Just words? In night I still



My sounding head for the heart’s cry, to shake

Back from the beat of what, drifting over

Air, is only an ash. With his opaque



Hands held like pieces of flame, time’s drover,

Drenched in his own certainty, herds us all

Back from the beat. Of what drifting, over



What torn skies does this light, still stinging, fall

Cold? I dream only as I ask does he,

Drenched in his own. Certainty herds us all



Towards the dim west of will so we see,

In the holes beneath thought, beneath all, blue

Cold. I dream, only as I ask: does he

Remember nineteen-ninety-six? I do.