KICKING THE BUCKET

The moon has fallen
asleep in a bucket

can't get back out despite
trying to slide over the rim.

It trembles as a train
thunders past midnight.

A child tries to catch it
its tiny hand plunging

through another dimension
through to its nothingness.

The moon takes its chance and
escapes to the sky with a splash.

It's all gone now
( the barn of course )

but the house...the child...that moon
are no longer to be found.

Strange to think
a house can die.

A tree enters through
the kitchen window

lays
its head upon a table.

The bedroom
is without its roof.

A door still stands
without its walls.

It bangs in the breeze
a surreal Morse code.

The living room is home
to a family of nettles.

A sofa moulders
a new line in zombie furniture.

A hare stands upon a chair
barely able to hold itself together.

One of the chair's legs
genuflects to a sunset.

The hare hops upon
the rotting table top

enters the tree's head
and leaves upon its branches.

Somehow the bucket
survives.

Still standing outside
the outhouse.

It is full of storm
right to the brim.

It holds within itself
the moon of now.

Trains no longer
thunder by.

I, that child
now - this man

let the moon
splash through my hand

before throwing it
into the night's sky.

Always wanted to do that
before I kicked the bucket.

SHADOWS LEFT BEHIND

"Eh...excuse me..."
smiled the Neanderthal
on the Circle Line

he wanted to know
where
to get off

"How come I can
understand you?"
I asked without talking

"Oh I took a course
ages ago now
in Telepathy As A Foreign Language."

he wanted to see
his girl
a pretty Denisovan

who was staying
with a palaeontologist
at South Ken or something

he had bought her
a Divje Babe flute as
she dug the pentatonic scale

told me he had been
working in
the Mousterian stone-tool industry

he saw that I was
reading about muons
of all things

"How can you possibly
know about wobbling muons?"
I asked in wild surprise

"Oh when one is
you know...dead
one knows about everything!"

he smirked
"For the snark was
a muon you know!"

told me he was
a big Lewis Carroll fan
as it goes

"May the 5th Force
be with you!"
he deadpanned

"Holy incredulous questioning Quark!"
I exclaimed in
a Batman/Robin tone

but his stop
was coming up and
I told him where to get off

"MIND THE GAP!"
the tannoy warned him
"MIND THE GAP!"

Slán...slán go deo!"
he waved to me
switching to the Irish

"Is  fearr an tsláinte
ná táinte!"
he offered as a parting

"DOORS CLOSING
DOORS...CLOSING!"
the tannoy butted in

and he was gone
from my sight as if
I had only imagined him

back into the depths
of a time I
could not conceive of

chewing a mammoth
sandwich and looking
for an exit

BROKEN ABRACADABRA

My uncle shimmers
as he walks

as if the sun has got him
and shakes him

until he walks
like waves.

His gait all
heat haze.

He's a walking
reflection

as if the air
were water.

He looks like
he's a dream

made of summer

but he is the real thing
a solid Uncle Michael.

I expect his voice
to waver with the heat

but his words
stay steady

whittled out of love
like wood.

I am up a tree.

He can't see me.

The branch below me has sn-
-apped

and I am wondering like a cat
how in hell I am

going to get down.

Up here in the air
the farm is the map

of itself.

I share a branch with a bird
and a small cloud.

Uncle goes on looking for me
his voice searching the everywhere

but I am a nowhere.

His voice trying to pull me
out of thin air

like a magician would
but it's not good.

I am half sky half tree half child
...do the maths.

I feel like a white rabbit
lost inside a top hat.

He died one sunny Sunday
******* a sweet in the blue van.

I still see him
walking out of the sun

his body shivering
with the heat

as if he is a dream
calling my name

like an abracadabra.

I sit in the silence
in the middle of my sky

lost in that forever
summer

wondering how to get back
down on solid ground

calling his name
like a broken magic spell

always trying to find him
even though I can't

INVOCATION  
( for Mary Forde )

See the dead
bring in the hay.

Hear them call
all the cows by name

as the evening
ambles in.

Take the horse
out of her harness

whisper their thanks
to her.

Hands...rough hands
that mend a fence

fix a hedge
collect eggs...feed pigs.

The thousand tasks
of a farm dressed

in the glorious summer
of long lost ago.

Call them by their names
as you call them then

the child you were
reeling them in.

See them come
eagerly alive again.

Loving that you
have not forgotten them.

"Mikey...Seanie...Sonny...Granny...Nellie!"

Ghost voices
on the wind.

Fields fallow.
Home a ruin.

How time
crumbles away.

I gather you in.
Name you one by one.

Do not allow
time or death

to touch you.

MIST CREEPING SLOWLY

The morning found
only blood & feathers.

The fox leaving
only Death

& its presence

& the gossip of the frightened chickens.

My uncle swearing
‘til the sky was blue

(early morning clouds that the sun shone through) .

An embarrassed ****
like a mad alarm clock

crying like a cartoon “****-a-doodle-do! ”

My uncle dispatching him
with a quick kick.

“Oh yeah, and where the hell were you? ”

I take in the scene of the massacre
& whisper:

“I sure wouldn’t like to be    a chicken! ”

*    *      *

All that next week
my uncle stalked the chicken coup
waiting for the fox

who was clever enough
not to turn up

until the eight day
driven by his hunger & his nature

she stared into my uncle’s cold metallic sight
& the evil acrid smell of a cartridge caught in flight

as both it & the fox(shot through the head)  
fell dead

at my uncle’s muddied boot.

My gentle uncle delirious with Death
the frosted air
stained with his breath.

His voice almost transformed
into an animalistic hoot:

“Hey boy, betcha didn’t know I
could shoot! ”

The good side of the fox’s face
seemed to still laugh
at the very idea of Death.

I whimpered:

“I sure wouldn’t like to be    a fox! ”

The countryside
brutal & Biblical

demanding

a life for a life

Yet all I could see
was Death...Death.

Priest-like...

I knelt & whispered
a quick act of contrition
to the fox’s carcasse

My uncle probably thought
I was barmy.

That night in celebration
my uncle wrung a chicken’s neck

(the chicken’s name was Patricia)  

& I declined the clean
white breast

still haunted

by the chicken & the fox’s

death.

A DISH FIT FOR THE GODS

We had the best table
at the very edge of creation.

Our waiter
( the Devil you know )

looking so
debonaire  and almost human

rattling off
an expensive menu.

Embarrassingly I had to have it translated into Mortal.

The Devil's faux
supernatural accent

really grated
and I could detect

a slight Aberystwyth
tone.

"Now, this night
of nights

we are serving
a very rare Kraken

fried in a rich
imagination.

Or a superb Leviathan
basted in  delicious mythological sauce.

I'm afraid the slightly sautéed  souls are off.

And to drink
we have the finest minds

( from all time )

our cellars are the envy
of the Imaginary.

Or may I be so bold as to suggest
the latest universe?

Or a sparkling non-alcoholic
sub-conscious.

And for starters?
Some screams perhaps?"

God burps:
"I pray thee, pardon!"

I apologised
said I had already eaten

in a previous life
and that I was

anyway
a dreamatarian.

But if I could
have a glass of H2O?

I listened to the table talk
understanding very little

I didn't speak
fluent Creationese.

I politely made my excuses
and left

...before the after dinner
speeches.

ALL TAFFETA & TULLE

frightened by the storm
he crawls under
his mother’s skirts

all taffeta & tulle
clinging to her
ankles

before falling
asleep
upon her feet

she continues playing
her cards right
winning all before her

as the candles
gutter
and almost go out

she remembers her body
wrapped about him
her flesh

protecting his innocence
as now her dress
encloses his sleeping

unconsciously stroking
his hair
with her left foot

his dreams
now
pooled at her feet