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.

I
kept
dead flowers
in a vase

they
reminded me
of you

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.

"...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..."

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

We were only ever
moving through..


A transient
encounter pinked
in sprinkled serendipity

had synchronised
our step

and having met
before the bested peaks
of all that seemed unlikely
we stayed close.


Through
needless plays
of problematic metaphor,
we laughed and wept,
deplored enforced morality,
embraced a great unknown,

explored the cultic
sympathies, arrested
in our infancy
and swore an oath
eternal to the greenery
regrown..



..while knowing
well, the day will come
when one moves on
alone

My Kingdom
is a builder,s yard.

A Bethlehem
of measurement
of plasterboard and timbering.
An interwoven sepulchre
of garrulous vernacular.

Expletive-laden badinage,
our handle of the hardstand
is the character of companies
I keep.

And unto these
my time is priced,
my soul is planed,
my name is signed...

but
in the dark
of winter evenings,
watching ancient planets rise,

I contemplate the other lives
another me, might live...

My trepid step
has long abandoned
carefree whips of youth,

Thus, gingerly I test
the bridge for traction,

A full beam darkness
buckles back
the harness of my shame

misleading
ever older bones
across this gaunt canal

The house has gone

that box that grew me wrong
is now
the storage for another's lot

and may the crate be good to them

Let them bring
it love and further, turn
the pile into a home,
to fold the walls around themselves
be welcome in their sanctuary.

God knows
the place deserves it..

but open doors
and windows first,
to set the spirits free,

For I wish you not
the likes of mine
that cowered
in its secrecy

The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land

The candle-****** gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.

The mourn of the Moorland
Has  feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn

As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.

There is a place
In  evergreen wiles
A permanent perfect                  
of boundless dimension,
I tarry untrying in idles of hours
Lost in the halls of this subtle domain


Walk with me there
To where willows thirst
On the banks by the bridge
Where cowslip with meadowsweet
Polka the pasture to pepper
The evening with notes of the rain



Gather me in-

-There,hold me in harvests
Of memory loved,- as when
  You turned your face

To the lights on the water

and smiled the glory of day into shame.

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

Too much thigh to go
unkissed
so wet-look fabric
has my tongue
in swollen lip bit
thirst..
A sunrise skirt
eased over arches,
modest drapes of stolen
passing showers...

Your pointed mouth
has come undone, to
curse the moon in
quiet hours, running
with the liquid thought
that through your thumping mind
becomes, the preaching
of the screaming sea...

Heels, held, high over head,
A bristled language empties
you of easy , urban drag....

Time..

slipping
from the parapets

a rorschach night
laid out below

If mine
is but a little while

then yours is not
for me to know

so, glittering
away, we leapt

from all convention
disavowed

restoring
golden folklores

with our whispering
of owls

Today is a duck
sort of day,

grey and windy
with waves
on lakes..

good for choppy,
                            bobbing,
not so great for
                             dabbling

but ducks find ways...

see,
to our
stuck look,
they're doing
duck-type stuff,

just as
the text book said

or

while they paddle
are they pondering
their station in the universe

expanding on the mysteries
of bread.

I note
the bird sings
beautifully

but does not
sing for me

drank
too much
again last night,
bred fury
through the bars
and taverns...

fed,
the maddened
cannibal, on
vaticidal unions....


came around,
down early bells,
head, supercelled,
expedient..

could not
believe what lay
beneath the subways

of Jerusalem

Stop

       Writing


                     "Notes to self"

You

       attention-seeking

                     ******

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

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.

As I recall
we watched together,

turning off
the upstairs light

we huddled by our
landing window.

bundled
under burgundy

We stared across
the road, toward

that solitary
street lamp

both silenced,
by the wonder
of it all...



So when
the first flakes fall

I become that child,
once more,

my face behind
the curtain

forehead pressed
to freezing glass,

being careful
with the breathing..

living only
for the quiet snow



some part of me
expecting you
to be here

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

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

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.

In the second hand soothing
of darkest address: frost crawls.
Having crept down the alleys
on  serpentine silvers
to pilfer the vaults of an Indian Summer,
in crystalline raiment
the malachite pavements
succumb to its covering sprawl.

On shellac returns of lamp delta falls
minutiae maraud in bitter sweet symmetry
shattering petals, encasing in glass
the Stella shot run of the vine.
A glacier tourniquet scuppers the mold
an accomplished assassin of natural device,
with icy indifference it hushes the *****:

The Moon, for the life in her eyes.

Still

And
Strangely so
It seems

As if
the splendid
Earth lay wait

Inert
in barefoot,
open-door
propensity
suspended


Then to
this end abide
by quiet rules

Take mind to ****
the unintended
word that turns
through all of this

But know

I miss you

Still

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





Is a sprout
just a tiny little lettuce?

I was going
to text you

to let you know
I have your phone

but I have your phone,
so I couldn't text you,

but I guess you
didn't know...

I tried
to call you

you were out,

left a message
for you, bro..

like, I said,
I have your phone..

The beryl high land smoulders….

Where skinny manes of cloven trailing, cuff
the rake of jumbled scree,
a porous crux of timbered carol
matins from the mossy shrine
to urchin on the bluff and draft
in nooks of birch and bilberry.

On that high dais, Corvid tribals
potter on the reeks of gale.
Fell boatman of the troubled storeys
quarter in some sleet cabal
to throw their onyx gauntlet down
a slating arc of fallow sky.

As
if from
nowhere,

a dimple
of that far-off laughter

ripples through
the wavered spaces

fainter
than it used to be

indubitably
yours

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.

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.

I have to unhand her, unhold her,
spell a widdershins wander
to unpick the stitches of time
sewn together.

I have to unlive her, unlove her,
-muster a fiction, a line of defence,
a charm of protection, a cobbled pretence
to convince that I'm better without her,

- but to court a dementia
that summons a shade
to centre upon the mistakes
that we made-
is, itself, a deceit.

For there were such pleasures
embossed on the soul
to remain in forevers
that cannot be changed.

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...

In
our culture
of elusive truth

I
place
my faith
in doubt

A singeing bleak...

Eye water, colors from thistle gripped nothings
Numb from a dissident space
Absence is minded by pale phased etchings
Embellishing braids of cinnamon briar, while
flushing the tumbles of Old Man’s Beard.

Mercury drops...

a Starling backed brush to the blackening fields
all riddled with meddling shoals
Turned ermine surrenders a rumour
Of solstice, remembers the Ploughmen
The tread of the horses that folded the beds
Of the cold, tired Earth,
While, over, the Plovers wheel.

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

No sound disturbs
The cloud curled steeps of sea green pines
whose clinging oceanic thoughts
are freed, released from malted slopes.
Respired slow , the sallow spirals
herd to high, still, corrugations,
Their purse; a billion brooches
For their keep.


And, then a Raven
Barks its gloat across the drab pavilions
A dauntless hermit sculls away,
on myth buoyed strokes, to beat the bounds.
Carried from the pinioned ridge
away to secret monasteries.
Climbing from embroidered
oriental looms of Beech

I grind all religion

Into a powder

Put it to flame

So we can be Human

A World Undivided

Perhaps...

Once again.

A quarter past
The afternoon,
back on the chair
of bevelled legs
Baffled
with the hex
of number
Tested
by the brooding
threat, incumbent.

Never been too
good at tables,
Better that
I eat alone
Seen, faceless men
in grim apparel
waiting for
a chance
to come,

Convincing
with their
bare contempt.

And, I
the part
of all my sums,
cannot explain
where it went wrong.

Sat playing
with the cornerstones
of new denominations.

In the future
they may scrutinise
the age we mislaid wonder.
Evaluate the epoch
of our long-forgotten grace

Landfill
for the Burial Ground

Trolleys
for the River Gods

Spray cans
for the Painted cave,

and say,

"This,
is when they
lost their way"

The trick is
to break the fall,

prepare soft landings

roll forward with
some standing joke,

calling-in the softball laughter

drawing on that coruscating
excellence of company

the fool congeniality
we coaxed in all conditions

We'll repeat this to ourselves
as we go about our
business....



Time will take the evidence,
possessions from the locker

but nothing is forgotten

as you're always
with The Boys..