A wind screams through crepuscular fingers
of white trees
chalking cryptic graffiti over flaking paint
lacquered
by the spray of waves breaking
the shoal
spits pebbles against grimy windows.
The door latches -- front and back -- rattle
the whey-faced man
sandblasts his warm and whisky breath
against the glass
over his victims’ desperate little handprints
dappled in red
sand whispers from within the basement.
The house moans.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 1:08 AM UTC
Pathos puddles in young dimples when she raises the gun,
a teardrop reflected in Grandfather’s blurry eye.
She ***** the hammer, aligns the bullet
on the stroke of sepia midnight.
Misery, reflected in her tears when he looks up,
ears ringing before she squeezes the trigger;
wags his tail to Grandfather’s rhythmic chime,
licks his tumour-filled belly one more time.
Like a bandit cloaked in purple and ochre camouflage,
a stale breeze slips through the window and thieves;
the last glimmer of hope kidnapped and forced
into mushroom cloud getaway cars.
Beyond empty stables, prairie grass whispers last rites,
dry and silver solemn sympathy-words
that fill the room, watercolours of life
reflected in death, as it is, in bloom.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 12:58 AM UTC
Sharon was picking at the scab over the mole on the back of her neck
where the hairdresser had shaved too close to the skin:
Water under the bridge, she thought, and licked at her salty fingertips.
By focusing on the sound of her new high heels over the metal steps,
she blocked out twisted traffic audio below;
the wind whistled a tune through the rust over her painted toenails.
She liked the way some of the pedestrians down there looked up at her.
Sharon felt so elegant when the wind lifted her skirt,
just like Marilyn Monroe in that picture, except that Sharon didn’t smile;
her skirt had been lifted up more times than she could (or wanted to) remember.
He always looked down at her. There. Below.
Sharon flicked her new purse into the wind, and ripped off the matching blouse.
The Samurai sword, tight between her ******* felt hot and cold at the same time,
like the red of her peach blossom skirt glistening white against midday sun;
memories of her only child freeze-burned the empty love caverns in her heart.
A river of emotions rippled through her body but she didn’t utter a sound;
that was reserved for the impact with the oncoming bus,
and the tip of the sword that ripped through the driver’s leather-sandaled heart.
May 9, 2011
May 9, 2011 at 3:15 AM UTC
The fifth day took a turn for the worst:
a sand shark swallowed three scouts,
protective glasses and all;
one second they were there,
the next
regurgitated bones pushed up from under the dune.
Uncle Mohammed picked up two kids,
one under each arm, like sacks,
and rolled down the rocky side
where the predator doesn’t hunt;
the beast
devoured two more women, and blasted out of the dune.
Its body shadow-blocked the Sun,
and irony engraved itself
on the travelers’ foreheads
in the form of twisted frowns—
a mix
of silence for the dead and for shade on the dune.
An utterance of names echoed
within a heat-waved skyline.
Accounting for the dead
proved tougher than expected:
no-one
answered, except for the vultures circling the dune.
Mar 15, 2011
Mar 15, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
Semisynthetic illumination faded over the land.
The dunes sighed;
women and children (wide-eyed)
emerged from humble homes,
hands in the air, guns in their backs.
Still on hands and knees, as if in prayer,
Ahmed’s body slumped forward,
his beard and robes leaving tracks in the sand.
Hand-rolled cigarettes glowed over Mona Lisa soldier-sniggers;
village men,
lined up like sheep near the fence
were being stripped of their clothes—
they shivered in the face of death.
Fadwa’s back door creaked open;
two soldiers, high on poppies’ finest,
tiptoed through desert darkness, fingers on triggers.
Billy the Kid wasn’t named ‘Billy the Kid’ for no reason,
“kicks like a mule”,
so Uncle Mohammad had said;
The first soldier was winded,
the second not quite so lucky.
Fadwa picked up the man’s rifle,
popped the winded soldier in the face.
Billy and Fadwa took the brunt of the bullets; the rest fled.
Mar 9, 2011
Mar 9, 2011 at 3:40 AM UTC
All it took was for Ahmed
who had been sleeping in his hut
(built at least twenty meters away from the rest of the village),
to stop snoring
to realize that something was out of the ordinary.
Silence crawled over the land,
bringing with it the sensation
of a severed hand in desperate need to attach itself
(any arm would do),
scraping over the sand, against the walls of mud dwellings.
Fadwa touched her wrist, looked up
through a hole in the roof covering;
synthetic satellite blinks took over a clear pre-dawn sky—
the stars cowered,
some even fell away at the sight of their man-made twitters.
Tweets and twitters in the sky
“… news had said they’d blocked the Net,
that a kind-hearted group in the Netherlands had opened their servers
for those folk
either in need to contact loved ones or to tell the ****** truth that stains this sand.”
Or something like that; Fadwa yawned—
she wasn’t sure what the Net was
but it sounded like “serious business”— that’s what he had said,
Uncle Mohammed,
who came for dinner the night before; there’d been terror in his voice.
A stifled yelp broke the stillness.
Within seconds the dunes were lit,
strewn with military-style boots, the rubber soles of which reeked
of corruption
carried in from army bases located not far from where the city ***** souls.
Ahmed was on his hands and knees
Fadwa was peeking through the key hole,
or what was left of the door; Billy the Kid, Fadwa’s goat
had been at it.
Two troops held handguns to his head but Ahmed had already departed.
Mar 6, 2011
Mar 6, 2011 at 2:44 AM UTC
The journey was harder than expected,
a struggle;
the sky spoke in dragon tongue,
and sand gnawed away at the skin,
grating to pulp those sensitive regions of the body.
Disaster struck on the third night in the desert;
a child
who’d been walking with the scouts,
and of whom every-one had been fond of,
slipped through a crevice in the mountain side.
They spent the better half of the early morning
picking
at the gangrenous green flesh
protruding from within fissure fangs,
swollen fingers of rot and despair that reeked of death.
Before they knew it, the dunes had shifted;
disgruntled
by their own negligence,
they packed up and loaded the camels.
The child’s parents remained and prayed for a miracle.
The caravan held two minutes’ silence.
The vultures
didn’t give a flying ****
skipped miraculous death rehearsal,
and hot-shadow-torpedoed mother, father, and trapped daughter.
The Sun oozed mustard-pus and black blood,
so perceived
by those who didn’t have time
to ****** their protective goggles and
Go!
The government troops had been onto them in a flash.
Mar 3, 2011
Mar 3, 2011 at 6:25 PM UTC
There’s a dry voice that chokes;
a sandy tongue that grates dust-vowels over chipped-blue lips,
explosive puffs that cause the heart to race,
from somewhere behind the cherry wood bookcase.
Let the flames do the talking – keep that fire stoked.
Hold your breath and pray he won’t come stalking,
for his teeth are geared with gold-sneer,
and they rip through bone to the beat of tortured soul-fear.
Never make eye-cont—
In his left hand a discarded, crumpled page – the letters broken and twisted,
his name rearranged to spell out the victim’s, yours;
the author who thought it ‘wise’ to exclude him from the last ‘bestseller’ –
King’s had a run-in, and so, maybe, has Heller.
act! Your feet are frozen to t—
An utterance of disapproval as he drags himself across the floor planks,
a crust of dust where his nostrils should be flaring,
a gob of phlegm on the chin as he turns
and slaps himself on a limp leg that drags behind like a heavy shadow.
he spotted you! Grab—
The harsh noise of nails scraping over the floor’s drawing closer,
as is the groaning of painful sighs with each heave –
splinters in open sores on a right hand that’s swollen green,
yet strong enough to clutch tight
the letter opener!
Feb 28, 2011
Feb 28, 2011 at 3:03 PM UTC
Only step on light-coloured paving slabs;
there are gaping voids under the darker ones
filled with a twisted-mustard fog made up of cut-off hands, heads, and genitals
that ***** **** and squirt foul-smelling, luminous goo all over you
as you go down, down, down –
your screams will fall on deaf ears, and your voice will drown you;
your voice will be your downfall.
Never sleep with a gun under your pillow;
someone you love might annoy you in the slightest – and vice versa –
nightmares are so much more frightening when they become reality.
You will cry, cry, cry
(your cries won’t be heard if you swallow a bullet first, of course),
and cleaning the corners, where the Witness Spiders sneer, is a *****
Never sleep with a book under your pillow;
you might wake up thinking Wow, what a beautiful day,
not knowing that you’ve been ****** into one of the author’s stories –
leaked from his pen, though not inked;
the fleeting thought of a madman
who dreams about writing a bestseller on family murders.
You will scrub, scrub, scrub.
Avoid reading silly poetry about superstitions;
the words might be those of a madman who writes with a cheap pen,
the ink spilled all over the page on purpose.
Feb 24, 2011
Feb 24, 2011 at 7:47 PM UTC
The winded willow wailed,
and the wild flowers hung on every sigh of the tree’s weathered leaves.
The shed door yawned each time he raised the axe;
blade-on-bark gave him a fractional sense of ‘being there’,
and a wry smile — thin, like dawn’s frost-moustache on the Chevy’s windshield —
shaped his lips into worn wiper blades,
which stifled the sound of his teeth chipping away at winter’s breath.
Feb 24, 2011
Feb 24, 2011 at 3:20 AM UTC