A bartered dark
of full shone armours
gallowed brooks in
shins of alder
trod the clays of stilted copse
that crest the low slung chestnut rides

To inglenooks of scuttled hamlets
strung in river- maiden's hair ,
a haven for the last ascendant
flinted from the steeping turf.

A subtle art of arcane movement
starboard cupped
in stone- pocked pewter

sparks the grailed pain
of foxes harrowed
in that sudden wood.

You, Sweet Wild, come evergreen, as
Ink-shake from the Book of Kells,
cleaned ivories of Egret vellum,
aspen mantled infidel, a pheromone
of elsewhere Islands, here to hand me
quarried gems of bold and bloodied
petulance.

In the long-room wait of
untamed reverie
you rise,
On apple cores of chalk cliff
laughter, hoist your storm-mad
urchin noise throughout the flag
of sickened orchards.

Emerald to this ruby thirst,
Bind fruitless words
to thoughtless choice


For you alone shall split my lips
cruel libertine of gorgeous vice,

Imperious,
Ephemeral

I hurried...

a hooded scrape
of epaulette through
rhododendron corridors
an exit to the brace.

All tradition is mine
so I threw her a peace sign
that caught in the ivy

both long-tooth
and way-tied

I walked....

a slow Nantucket sleigh ride
to the field where she waited,
tall,
sheep- skinned in her cuneiform

We talked..

Met, smoking by the ringers net
sequestered in the biscuit verge.

Too long into the bison grass
of Pompeii afternoons, is how

We slept

Beware the Incredible ******

The One who comes in the night.

He's a fleet footed ******
of minimal morals,

and he will steal your bike.

From
An open cage of aberrance crow
the secrets that torment the globes
of doctored equilibrium
watching for that taci-turning
vital sign of change
that onyx collared stare that
needs to drift the dared bubonic lanes
alone.

to skirmish with those corvids
flown from aviaries of reckoning.
To meet with past life memories
in some overrun Gethsemane of
remembrance and shame.

And you know that I am waiting ...

...a warm malaise of liberty that spiders
at the corner of your crumbling resolve
I know  the colour of your squalor,
horoscopes of hopeless coping
written by your every sign and sealed.

I deal in escapology.

I, Corvus Medicinae,
am a Gentleman of medicine.

I shall lace the flavours for your taste
so you will think no more of me.

Until I let you go.

I would swear
we are the last of our kind,
blinkered end-time visionaries
perhaps.
Implausible romantics
shaping formless
ideology with exhausted
sensibilities

And

I know we shall
not reach outside
this century.

Yet there remains
that perfect space

between my fingers

for your hand.

Give me
the darkened doorway
the cause behind
the bricked up window.
Indigo shipwrecks
of tatty saloons
on ill lit streets of moody repute,
where the glorious truth of
of all imperfection
is welcomed,
accepted,

made beautiful.

Here I am among my people.

Give me the handshake
of needle on vinyl,
the tannin stained chapters
of Gideon bibles to burn
in the grate of
a derelict crib.

There is nothing as wry
as the smile
of children, in thrall
to the cancerous faiths
they were given
who grieve for the loss
of a parent still living
in legends.

Those
hereditary tenants of sediment means
examining tea- leaves in tardy
canteens off a tenement floor, while
studying fates in a library of faces,
one eye to the weather.

So waltz with the dealing
Phoenician itinerants, clevered
in scandal of travellers tattle,
to bring out
the stories of war.

I embrace Undesire

Come
tambourine laughter
of river Bohemia redeemed
with the nurturing sapphire of gin,
that I take as a galloping flame
to a dry August heath.



We are
all of us ever
but one step from ******,

All of us ever
one breath from release.