Those cranes have earned

their sack of seed

They pulled these pencil turrets

through a sturgeon curd of feckless wet

to leave them where they lay.



Because of this

i sit indifferent, satchelled

in an unmade bed,

a simple- headed almanac

of beige and sable rhetoric.



My heritage;

an Eton mess

of trampled roman candles

left, by careless midnight masses

that come scratching at my door.

Lost leaves ago, before
the bark- clad savage
ruled with iron lung,
when  laurels of
a one- room den, grew
sleek with wet- lid plunder
my sauntering in tousles of
a quick and crease-less happiness
percieved the gifted wish of secret birds.

birds that combed the milking beech
in lemon centred madrigals
to cove their Egypt orison
from dragon banks of slippered fern
Who threw their mooted sermons on
a shivering uncertainty that bubbled
through my vernal rut of optimistic blood


Such useless pleasure, I was told
That I was not a Father's son
yet bore his term an absolute.
As all my nimble colours ran, I
wore his pungent bitterness
Became the thing that he preferred

Before the dungeon keys had turned
basket weaving weeks of youth

I took the gifted wish
of secret birds.

I found myself smiling,
a telescope finding my
own private Jupiter
cooped in the noose
of a bulb

Yes,
its stupid to measure in hope-
-  this I know
but I’m told it's the last
thing to die....

So why would
I sully such luminary
wisdom...

.. . In  kingdoms of
merciless churches I find
myself smiling

  ...the search is still on
for a cause to believe in

but I shall be biding
my time.

A
flame- doom plunge
of full sass waves
stash tears

harsh clatter drags
dishevelled praise
impeccably receding

The
bloom- lunge spray
casts  spume
rashed chandeliers

Tint
Incandescent
cataracts
intelligent
retreat

To Where Tyrolean aurochs
graze in cools of lapis prairie
, I have come,
In A Balthazar of star- led zeal,
my scarlet hunter flown from
urban zodiacs of anxious ports,
of ailing townships steaming in
their millioned yellow orders,
shackled
sick beneath the mountain's boot.



Through dim grimmiores
of softwood press
I sleeve,
In sympathies of woad to glean
the narrative of under_ storey,
bourne to earn my Eagle .
I  chance to know the trip of wind
kissed, sinuous on beaufort scales
balanced on a fingers edge to
turn October
into wine.

I will always be
that enemy
to myself.

Of loud mind
-Restless-
Of unsound habits.

An anthill scratching
at boiling blood , a
fractious, migrained, timpani
taking high- speed bends
on ruptured grips

My surface slipping
ever outwards.

Love in Evolution

There is obvious futility
that lends a potted stoop
to the crippled angles of
our misadventure.
Full- fledged in low obedience,
we are marketed as free, yet
we stumble in the attics of the lost.

What can ease the burden
of our constant measured amble
as we strive for recognition,
or survival- God forbid.
Who can say what matters
in our endless daily questing,
also if it really matters
and if matters ever did.


There's love
in evolution, kid..

Be ******, if I can find it....

The day is hallowed

  A fresco croft of Sunday shire
made Gabriel in stallion- manes,
Decanted into bottled ships
of scalloped Wedgewood
promises.

Trees
***** away in careful rows,

Well- fed matrons
fountain pruned
wear puff-ball cheeks
of flouncing gourd
that curtsey in bewildered
corns of desiccated flora
,
flawed by scorn of August forays
left as unkempt graves
.
Much more than these
stand poplars, ordered
keepers on their plated watch in
ruffled smocks of coppered
lime to tame the knee- worn
names of climate ,buckled
down the yarrowed lanes.

This day retains
its hallowed mien
as I pass through
these borrowed years

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.

There is alchemy in  Blackbird song
an opal paean through early doors
of infant sensing
Sprung limpets of the broad leaf crowns,
Will, heliacal, from chimney spires,
A crocus bowl of canticles
unwritten in the Latin blush.
of uncorrupted eloquence.

There is prophecy in blackbird song
from red Victoriana glance
those rippled satin auguries.
Sloe philharmonic oracles
untie the mellow chords of rest,
to sing as they have always sung
in allegories of days to come
beyond the headstone houses.

Head notes

Of loam fringed apple trees,
of near-but- nether fuchsia roots
A timeless travel of ridge top tiles.
Steepled spins of weathervanes,
A sobriquet of pre- dawn rainfall.

Heart notes

Of hornbeam,
of coriander deer path.
Memories of bonfire- hope
in ragwort sprays of yearning.
A hint of feelings half remembered.
Of longbows hewn from churchyard yews.
Of rope swings and of scaffold

Base notes

Of river mist.
Poseidon wreaths of furnace ash,
allied to a merlot tint of afterglow release.
Endings are, valerian,
patchouli heads of linen musk.
A lasting peace of closing lawns
that wait approaching snow.

Saw you descending from Alpha Centauri
Coming in weightless on Geminid halos
an ice bow of swan cry, indelicate nova,
a meandering circus of flame .

Your numinous vision run glossy with travel
surrendering spells of chaotic design
to palace the valiant
light years with presence,
your brigantine embers return.

To shake the powdered atoms
from the flaking cavern walls

That fossil horn
has summoned tribes
from different walks
alive tonight
Loose trousered hounds of pedal drums
are swilling bass for rocket fuel
All spastick in the rinks of treble,
  animating vertebrae
  draw talismanic creatures
rolling planets from
their shoulder blades.
Into the gathered sound

The ritual breaks a rip- tide sweat
A chance to wake the daemon
through those coronets of frequency
for stussy armoured Sufi
whirling
pneuma to humidity
A circled dharma rhythm-grasp
a knowledge passed from
Astronaut cartographers.

Acoustics of the standing stones
the hunting party hill-top chants
a triumph in the sacred groves
two hundred thousand years
of dance,

Have brought us here.

I grind all religion

Into a powder

Put it to flame

So we can be Human

A World Undivided

Perhaps...

Once again.

Tempers edge the need
for your anvil head to break.

The way back from work saw
Lowry people scrape the pavement.
Dog-leg drags of shuffle, of make-up slide,
mixing flea-skin sweat with pollen rub
into a tincture of stench.

This is image that I do not want

I have
half a mind to **** but I
cannot be bothered, the other ,a
a monologue of delirious ramblings
some" French kings versus
squadron mottos" thing...
and , in truth, I am not sure what
it's going on about.

I am indoors, windows open, curtains closed
naked from the waist down, feeding the freedom
of sprawl- but this is mistake of gargantuan order
a cosmic, foolish, schoolboy- error of judgement.

The sofa is leather.

My scar tangled manners are reports of my standing
an amateur tanners spewed stew of expletives.
In a half-arsed way it seems  
I am to remain

part of the furniture

I search for shorts.. long shorts, short longs, whatever,
my legs and **** seek the solace of cloth.

On the canal a coot needs oiling
what feels like 20 minutes of incessant jar is
tapping with my rationale
Testing my love for all things feathered.

Something needs to give.

I am a Gobi taste of sandal straps and
in dire need of irrigation/ rehydration
I have waited way too long for liquid...
Don't get me wrong, this isn't some test
of deprivation- this is heat swung laziness
that is all it is..nothing more
nothing less..

And so..

We will get it tonight
You cannot pull isobars this far apart to
not have them break..
And that ogrish flat-top is thugging
the harbour side rents..

Ah yes...

"Après moi le deluge"

Seems to make sense, now

It is
a lazy nod of orchid shift that sees
the poppies lean in times, where
glockenspiel lanyard clings are
goat herds on a Cretan rise.

Sweet boat-words claim a beltane fare
that calls to mind all Summers gone
in spools of warming solitude
that talk of when the Earth was young.

I have to smile
At Oystercatchers

Three came batting through
In straight line flight
A blur of chequered wing-brawl
-throwing on jackets
-crunching carrots
Hailing out-bound aqua taxis,

Their nutbar campanology
Disappearing over warehouse roofs.

They have places to be,
Do Oystercatchers
And times they
Need to be there

Shimmy on an Amen break
belle époque, rockstar
belly dancer.
Hitched up skirt to
crotch-ripped nets , choke
ziggurat louboutins.
A Stratocaster, glitter Sheba
on Hiroshima shadows pouring
snake-hipped ribald, scriptures
from the swelling of her breast

Kneeling, nylon bound and penitent
in a simony of rapture bought
to wet the rubber stamping of
your  cattle-battered soles
Low boneyard serotonin glows a
candle wax communion as your
henna painted carry rose
the rivers of my veins.
Your Aramaic shoe-shine boy
*** *****-slapped drug Messiah
  So Dear Mary, it is over you
that I must prophesy.
As you feed the pigs of my disgrace that
fill your head with meat and seed
I'll sup that broken bottle heat that
percolates between your open thighs....



I will be there in the morning a
renaissance scent of cannabis about
your mirrored ceiling....

Jesus wept,
Sweet Magdalen
The thought of you will
gather storms within me

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat anymore...

I will tidy her bedroom
there is unfinished
homework and washing
to do...

The plate on the floor
with the half-eaten sandwich
was yesterday's tea..
I was all she could manage,
being far too excited to eat..

Her first concert!

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat

anymore.

There is no cover to speak of
So one cannot help but
break horizons....
This hour-glass of grassland runs
through circles of these optic nerves
to impotent obscurity.

There!...
Three fields out and dangling
in a filigree of  lark song...
Lapwings!
Gust-waft synods of ruffled vicars
from Heaven's addled cashmere, asking
"Did we?..No, we didn't...did we? "

We will know no sorrows here..

Dark matter poured taut
in ebon plastic,
elegent, limber, perched on spikes.
Confined in chosen monochrome,
so lithe in gritted temper.

Full fraught on waves of jaw - smoke,
tumble nails from this wretched pelt.
Enscribe my will
on soft , ribbed, levees
Spread and buttered oysters
downed , your earthy spices ground
against my viscid grin.

Now raise the dead in frantic transport
Sound the depths of this cracked voice
Imagining....

We will know no sorrows here.

Called toward familiar compass,
Called by natural order of a rising vernal rage,
that girdles, as a talon grip, on through the songs
of lust and duel that joust above the battled ground.

This restless tread that aches to dance, to lure , impress,
now,tears its clothes to feathered crepe, explodes in sabre - rattled starts,
A host of self forgotten parts , writhe, steered in Vitus throes.

A
Little
Piece
Of
*******
Wood.

Cold stoles the coast in geisha voiles
of pawned Atlantic mourning, where

The plangent skirl of larids
carry through the vast exquisite
plains of February emptiness.

Aloft on coronal ruin, she flew
in free form falling, between the spheres
she grew in brightness, and by her stroke,
the moping shale, appeared , as if transformed.

She blessed the face of stained glass saints
hung loud on hallowed walls, From a
palisade of glinting brinks, she
hauled deserted chapels into
parishes of lambent wake
their majesties , reborn.

When the torque of speech is such
that stapled teeth would seem a wiser lot.
When thought is but a hemlocked lash
of passionate disdain..


..then to the water I return...

A sack of cats for Naiads, hatched
about the reedy bridge, I’ll give
my all to them.
To cross their palms with lighter steps
I call to them from oily depths of
worn illumination.


Here, patience sees them come..

In winter cools of briny shift
to press their vagues upon the lips
of tinkers, by the flotsam slum..

..As Canton sirens pilot tension
through the gentian-violet haze,
so distant trains commemorate

  a quiet absolution.

As above...


...Your sky-dial feline mind, unzips
Bold rose-hip teems of fervour, kept
On ice, throughout the needle of
the duty-bound laborious.

You have geared the slug of
greased machines have
waited tables overseas,
have moved your shoes
to rythms of inconsequence.

So below...

Call talons from your lava skin,
in tracings of a milky way, step
ladders through the cotton fields
to set aside a broken string.

Float, leaf, about your symetries
to crook your spine in Gothic arches.
Sovereign , deep in quicksand warmth
through paths of least resistance.

Dissolve in waves of ageless truth
dashesd amber over Roman tiles.
In wild writhes of curling fern,

Your body shines obsidian.

At Yultide,
The thing that I don't get is:





Is a sprout
just a tiny little lettuce?

You are close...

There is musk about your scattered limbs,
Sweet silvers on your Southern drawl,
Deep heat pinned papillon..

Let us pull these pearls
A little tighter...

Recite the hymns
That stoke the fires

From bended knee

Excite these summoned energies,
To crave these hearsay heresies

And see.....

Our war- paint , wild existence
With a  freedom seldom known.

A Husk of Thule brew..

A Fjord born tang of Fenrir cold
To yawn the must of comet tails
In rings, around the naked oak.

That broke the spineless whims
Of reed, that set the Heron folk to flight
From scrivened rims of frosted pools.

To run in footless constellations
About the broads of bitter miles
And, there to spill the coffered frays
of Autumn’s final standing.

A Robin, sang by lamplight,
unperturbed by herald evening’s
gathering throng..
As if gloom could be dispersed
by an almost, fragrant burst
of poignant song.

The carriage clocks whirr
now the hour has spoken
it ceases to be..
Oh to placate those
untouchable hands
of fortune and destiny.

"...What other sound could be like this?

Which other note could trespass on
to where the likes of tears are formed?

What else speaks so well
of wilderness, of loneliness?

Which alternate voice could manifest
this desolate deliverance?

Such trifling themes as life and death
are kept in Curlew's calls..."

High on Tumuli,
Keeled in sways washed out from brazen oceans...

...the birds may have me now...

Prey!..strip this ageing skin, then take my eyes.

Let the Oort Cloud iris break upon
these lakes of trancing humour,
as Veronicas of astral grace
silk down the valley strides.

We drowned here today...

Sluiced along curious Holloways papered in shell.

We knew few colours by name,
Yet saw how they merged, circled, embraced,
to sweet-talk the senses to parley.

Last night the first Redwings sipped the late air
with the high-muffled chatter of Fieldfares passing.

Morning came garnished in far borrowed glories.

The place where we wonder to drown.

Toss these brackened antlers
to a Babylon of early crows
where slim repels of cirrus
lace the marches of Orion.
I wore you as an amulet
hard pressed upon my pestle arm
as charms of montane lunar drift
rebelled about your peacock gaze.

There is balsam on the Eastern run
in piquant writs of clementine ,
where jubilees of Persian mote
reveille in the waiting still.
As hieroglyphs of scrying palm
lay wraith about the cindered pane
you harried in ancestral bell..

The name of some forgotten God.

What is it she whispers?
Outside..
The brittle bleach decor rustles shy applause
Inside….
half encumbered slumber wins
The aching World to part made play
Arcadian chapels hover in folds
That form in the fields of gathering grey

and still she whispers.

Damp calico dales murmur and shift
in the twist of a tremor.
A cold palm press upon temples that pulse
for the touch of another that passes
high over the way…

What is it, she whispers?

Witch-fingers lift at the filigree latches,
saltwater patches salivate free…..
..lasciviously.
beneath the list of chalking blinds
rim- shot eyes scour windswept causeways

Always searching,

Always waiting,
For some unknown.

And still she whispers...

Evening cleats The Bay,

As cavalcades of passive argon, sulphur on
the ogham slicks,
to treacle ways toward the seeding
cooling of the hours,...

The sleights of crimson, fringe
the bruising cower of the West, to
brightly die behind the leathered hill.

From a wrist of tallowed amethyst,
a Tiercel purls a last ellipse, and in
his sinking helix ships, the Sommes
of curdled estuaries, to brood
the closing Mill....

Peered through the ideal imagery
of petty dream-spun avenues.
Brushed the quiet tides that rose
in fluid blends of milky down.
The clamour of the Westbound flocks
that scarred the last in pulsing chevrons
told of lands beyond the lay
of harlequin recline.

The lilac swathes that bled to blue
then proffered airs a saintly glow
cooled in easy idiom, the rapid
pyroclastic flow of dry diurnal doubt.

Aromatic night descended,
petals closed on avenues
to the path, the stars attended
cold eternal retinue.
Far ushers of the dew gilt foot
in concert with the silver seethe,
the mist in supple opulence,
an ***** to breathe.

The melting toll of empty hours,- chaste

Among the dry-stone steeples,-stirs

The cobbled rune of foetal wonder.

Forgotten waifs, in teasing, see

The scheming torpor of our ways

Then mingle in the vaults of our regret,



Through half closed eyes the

Unremembered rise on drafts

Of innocence, to spell their names

In Spirit in these scuttled, pin drop Realms.

The utters of an arcane tongue  that

Whittled horses from the hill,  now merge

Into the chiseled henge of lanterned Citadels.

A brackish lance of squandered resin,
Hurdles from the beacon shale, soldiered
To a least of blinding dwindles.

In epitaphs of silhouette
The spindle miradors retire
Earthbound castles martyred to
The coming of the rain

"How you loved me once",
he whispered, to those who
gathered around his bed...

"You gave me strength
through your convictions
upon my mystery you fed
and I in turn, would comfort those,
who -while in suffering- chose to
turn to me....

Conceived through need
of explanation, my kind
in many guises mastered
******* Lords of all creation
"Eternal Minds"-or so you thought

From grotto walls to burning growth
the ineffable, osmosing oaths
the cultured banners of excuse
the mansioned rulers
void of proof......

...........for "Us" you fought

As ages altered my kin expired
want mutated, as you flowered
knowledge spread as awe retreated
unseated were the ways of Old..

Now stricken by the minds
that made me,my immortality
has left me...
...and with few to fan the embers of
my reason- I grow cold.

So I ask of you to turn and leave
It was never I that penned your creeds
It is you who brought idolitary
to justify your every deed

Now all is empty on those
pages- nothing breathes
upon the air, as the lines
upon my fading face are
features of your disrepair


But as I pass, I leave you this:
That is, you know not more but less.
for all the gifts that you were given
so treasured under hope of Heaven-
mean nothing...

Drenched in oil, rising seas,
pollution, avarice, war, disease

Your present...

Not a vision.

I need to be inside.

To bend your bones around me,
To fill your throat with rabid flesh
to claw your shiny hide..

I hurt to break your prim veneer,
Your fingers pulled in knots of hair
Your lupine drool upon my hand
Your spike of stammered sigh..

I need to be inside

How low lies the line, the thin
Separation of Earth and Sky, far, far,
Beyond the bending ambles, the
Solitary gables, where descending pylons,
Unroll their cables, deep into the womb
Of distant cities.

Bellicose clouds in league with
The sea wind, wrest samphire fragments
From a sentinel peace, while folding
The hamlet in pitying glamours
Of harridan water on slate.

In Spartan gardens, Bu-gloss leans
Bruised petals hard, by rusted stanchions,
as bind-**** , knots the flaking perch
Of tumbled gantries, in a throttled
Slew of searching.

Melancholy anthems, quiver and hail
In the breeze-plucked tune of loose
Slung wire. Pleas of long gone mariners
Mutter and choir through salted gorse,..
..
Hurry inland to rattle at doors of
Norman churches, as if seeking
Some last sanctuary.