What can I show you in this town..
The drear of horizons blocked,
tired light slumping over callous concrete cubes.
The background smell of estuary mud,
God forbid we scratch the surface, let the stench out.
Broken men in stained trousers walk their dogs
House, shop, cigarettes, cider.
Wind , trying to carry the scent of green, merely stirs the dead hopes that writhe drily in the gutter, earthworms caught in the sun .
Women sit, brightness long faded, waiting for daylight to cough its way through misery stained-glass.
Cathedrals of emptiness echo hollow, as the wait for nothing to happen drags by.

Four crows, black on cloud,
Dark, sordid wings parry and ******—
Murdering white skies.

My window frames me in reflection,
I gaze out to the snowy mountains
Beyond myself, yet before such places
You have run to, it has been so long,
Now comes another new winter, I see
Snow drifts reaching, winds to the sky,
High atop the autumn white mountains
Paler than loneliness, white as my hair.

So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.

The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.  

The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night.  Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.

O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.

In plain sight, the Peacocks ply their wearisome
Colours.  Awkwardly swaying, pompously preening,
They cry to be seen, their voices are gurgling  
And gawking.  The direction of wind is their vane.

Overhead, in the secret sky fleet wings are truth.
In the sun the searing Falcon is seeing all;
His talons turn and steal away, they are mad,  
Playful fingers— they will have their say.

In a drearing height on grave dead bones of branch,
Where leaves conspicuously kept craven distance,
Forsaken lovers set about to roost on topple-
Down sprig to break each side of their own family
Tree.  With a clutch of ruff stones, pulled hardly
Rare, with green hearts a-glowing from gizzards,
They fed six hatchling harpies, all tooth and wail
But one, whom they feared would not take to tearing
Flesh and to them appeared a foundling, not a rock,
But some down weathered creature, without lift,
All weight and no sun, savage grace had shaped
A new bound Prometheus, still dying for sleep.

                                                                  Provided
At birth, with nest and wings, each lashing rigged
In wax.  My father, who from a race of lions,
A king and the last of his kind, built, whilst mother
Destroyed and she, the culling raptor, by incestuous
Murdering, would pick and scrape to clean the marrow
From our souls, preening, like a clip winged eagle,
Would screech throughout all season, suffering close
To the essence of faith, my father, who with her formed
Two halves of a wounded gryphon, un-noble in pride
With a bent on fatal flights of his own undoing,
Marveled at her eyes, gray and gay as accusers,
She cursed in sight of angels, all wings below
Heaven.

My brothers, exotic birds all, limbo dancers,
Preferring the colder climes, flopped after me
And never became fliers, for feathers to them
Were but fantails for a harpy, or for gathering
Dust or at best, something to support their own
Lying.  And I found myself, the mid-heiring brood,
In a state when the soul is after dreaming to its body,
Hobbled-de-boyed at the abyss and I saw through
That air and my fold, I dreaded like omens and echoes
Of extinction, like mixed messages of flightless birds
And managed to pierce the innards of ovate shrouds,
To spike that filmy firmament and the yoke, fell away
And the seep hole ground was spurting and the sky,
An ocean of bloom, in all direction, winked—
With a maelstrom eye, for amongst my family, full
Of strangers, I heard that soul lifting love only God
Could send, sleepwalking on thresholds of faith.

I awoke from a dream and felt that I could fly,
Not like the yearning Icarus but, like a rash
Of spirit or that Arabian bird— simply leave
This earth and make my way through its mantle, blithely
Fallow, shedding my harrowed bone, I dropped off,
Sprung from my ashen bed of down and rose—
Out of doors, splintering from the smote that cut
Down the youth of my days, almost smothered away
And I blazed above the icy coal pelted perch,
My wings spreading far from gross flames as they died,
Unfettered in judgements, scaled so feathery, they conceived
That weight was a lie and the waste I kept, from eyes,
As leaves, became a parish of open palms as I spred
My plume and breath now bore an atmosphere
And lungs, they powered the wind and streaming rays;
My frozen veins, burst, blinding an earthen sun
And fled my shadow, transfigured in flight, into
Being, some aerial creature— not a pure spirit,
But like a child soaring, whose wound was as a wing,
On the heal.

I saw a hunter by a country road,
In tandem with me he sailed as I drove.

His hoody-head set monkish to the soil
Conjured up music so soundful, sacred,
And I unmoving over a tired flesh—
Coloured vehicle felt naked and dead

For he so saintly robed and dressed to ****
In the colours of the sky prayed with wings,
My harrier, his eyes cleansed purity and gold
While mine unsightly piebald pale and blue.

But want of food dovetailed two craving
Creatures, yet— over fed I felt rusty
Below his steely hunger and what saving
Grace God might offer either mice or men.

From out of the smoke,
And impromptu silences,
A lone piper plays at reels,
Beyond the borders, his knees
In a trinity of keys, breaching
Low dun black ****** hearts,
The public house is enclosed
Out in the open, under a plow
Of mossy stars, peat and bog,
Wrapped, within chanters throat.

In the temple of the mind— flash,
Mortal pegs are but fingers shape,
The light of dreariest day, told lash,
All for the rush, conspiring too late.

Above, this morning, on another plain
Over bogland and tundra rising snows drift
Darting birds white, unlike you, they strain
Fleeing on wing to save some earthen kin.
Blood runs as they race, your shadows cast,
Their hearts beating to some distant dawn.
Under the pale sun, white burns on their backs,
Daylight sings, their ears are horned, little faun
White as snow, the prince of the sky is blessed
On high by drops of rain, and dusted freeze,
Then blood and breast sacrament and eucharist,
Their tale ends in glory, risen as a breeze.

(Song)

Remember when, proud walks in bonny glens,
I took her hand, we did pretend
And she became, princess of daisy chains,
O how those days still refrain.

When spring appears, wee birds sing their love songs,
Of the winds, in her hair.

We made a bed in the pine needles fine,
Misty rains fell and tasted of wine
And the sun made its way cross the skies,
Little moons welling in our eyes.

When spring appears, wee birds sing their love songs,
Of the winds, in her hair.

[ Bridge ]

Summer bled into autumn so red
And the seasons sweet, they all fled,

Now winter comes and the valley is run
And the wee singing birds have all gone.

I walk alone down the mountain sides,
To the sea of dreams, close in my eyes,
For she once was a true love of mine,
The north wind blows, out of time.

*Seasons sweet in bonny glens.

Sheer little sun dress,
Lustful Gods gifted my eyes,
Rain took off her clothes.