How long the day,
Delivering letters to friends,
And cranky, bald dog feeders. Home
Is forward, past those poplars.
Always I’ve been in love with
Their almond scent, just as I catch
Past, dragging feet and who knows
How many heartfelt "Thank-you's".
Home is... where the wife is sitting.
She's not keen on laundry, but,
I’m an exception.
Always are my blue shirts blue,
She likes to make sure. Just in case I meet
With him; that carrion shaker,
Mr. Reaper.
“Hello.” I'd say, and tip my cap,
Along my silent nightly rounds;
Perhaps he'd humour me, if he could
See me. He's searching. For me? No.
That’s not right.
The lamps are thickest
In the dark, and that's just how
he likes it.
Even if I tip-toe, tip-toe, tip-toe around
Him, he'll still turn his hood toward me.
A courteous, creaking greeting.
That chill I get.
Matches only the fear
From losing fingers, as I push envelopes,
Catalogues, and restless dreams
Through many metal slats.
But even I, can't quite see,
When the sky turns milky-grey...
That perching, questioning hand
Placed gently on my shoulder;
Pushing down as I bend my back,
Kicking over milk-bottles, sometimes
accidentally. I shake it off.
Get to bed! I say to myself, mostly
Always, to myself.
Slap on some cream
And
Get to bed.

I see that one old woman
Struggling with her plastic shopping bags,
Every single Monday morning.

She climbs the steps to her front door,
Sets down her bags, and brews the tea.
Setting the table out for two.
Her beloved smiles across from her,

In a mottled picture frame.

Your impish, oily, freckled faces
were bright that night on Milton Road.
Where you made the cats claw doors
in a careless wailing stupor,

Of fear. Yes, the men in camper vans
rode in like the silvery knights, just
like the silver-fish that eat the floor-
the ones that chew and reproduce,

The parasites. The one's where society
has no qualms, decisions, answers;
and they sit in their bleak evenings: a
little turret, waiting for anything,

To break down barriers. Like the doors,
Large holes in walls are not enough.
Not large enough to house a bird,
with sticks and bones instead of tongues,
but, in their nests their children pinned,

Down are my legs and long arms kept. Where
road and rocks they turned to flint, as the
morning siren soared. But by my sides, my arms
stood still.

Nor did the

Neighbours wail.

O'er stone paths the roses grow still as a ditty,
  When light lamps are paling the ripe summer oil;
  With a noise that the left ear blocks rushed in a hurry,
The hawthorns are fierce, till the black thorns are pretty.

Where the mind is at once full of peace, full of pieces,
  In shrubs there are stubs made from wagtails and hen,
  Tin, copper, unfathomed: a marvellous city,
In comfort the day loses its din as it ceases.

  Skimming at milk with the tightest lipped marrow,
Left hands, right lobes singed, as it curdles to putty;
  The bones of the fair-folk are lost in the morrow,

And our hands meet the roses, so we'll grasp them in pity.
Our four feet go kicking, at that hard wall we're sitting;
But the hawthorns are wet, and the hawthorns are sticky.

On what day did the Seeker, that foul-shaped gangly
Figure, weep and belly-crawl toward me
Forward winding? In craven eaves, in parsley fields,
I wrinkled sleeves, running, running,
A bare-foot straw sock stuck fast and wide
While crows were nodding, nodding, nodding.

The mansion breaks the parsley skirting; my mouth
Is panting, low, unsightly. A butter cloud of moths
Were dancing, and caught my cheeks with tender tags
Of sickly salt-pan glister. With baked stone walls I
Pushed the tail-bone, and time was wailing fast before
Me, it scratched my back into a cup of clawing,
Chasing fingers.

He seeks me still in wooden boxing, under sweating
Hands are shaking; time atop my crush of raven
Swings a hefty, dullsome, tune. Knees were pulled far
Up and rounded, domed and white, and jade, and black,
Stuck and stinking fragrantly, the skiddish slums of slime
Betrayed me- sleeves were *****, hot, and green.

With backbone slinking down the body, the clock
Grows loud with muffled strumming. In front, the crack,
The door before me, small enough to wholesome hold
Me, blanks the mansion's putty light. Arms that longly *****
The run trail, scoop a crackle from the door frame;
Ones that pester, hound and perish
With longing, longing, longing.

Fixing loose-curl auburn lockets, the pins embed
And turn again. Step, and forward sway the hipbone,
Thirty, forty, a flight of granite looming forward,
Front and back, past my skirt tail – laden laced, pearly

Quiet go the foot pads, front illuminations rest forgotten,
Past the small mouse scuffling four-paw: zigging, zagging
Along the stair stage. Past the morning call in woodpecker
Tongue, squalls and loudly names the dawning. Softly,
I ascend the cold rough stairwell;
careful
Not to spend courage whole.

Wring the rusty thoughts of amorphous dreaming, eat the
Bad thought before the stairwell – ******* orts and morsels thin
Of single tipped barbs, and doubted quenching
alas
Before they mean too much.

Wave with white hands a fare-thee-well, the apparition
That pauses; portentously grinding its nothing on the wall
Seemingly real the whitewash of nothing, he is voided
But lives existent in that other-world well,
Singing, and that much better for it.

Twitch the dreaming skull-bone loose, and question not,
As I mask my tooth-grin with knuckled fingers;
He spots me slinking past the wound in time
and calls me closer,
So that I may meet him.

Apart from my misery
The stony hole, the wilting flower,
Earth took a bud and shaking membrane,
Past the lobe a striking pick
Bending backwards a loping,
Breasted mound.

The earth is shallow.
As I bring clay to cheeks and
Whisper, unto him my ****** water,
In boyish legs, spreading between them
It grins a tepid, milky space
As pick I do at tufts of hair.

Biting lamps out down the walkway
And into the zone of paper grass;
Digging a gloomy bruise with fingernails
And spits of wood
That blood, a brightened slip,
A fattened pathway,
Rests, in part, in that Alley,

Apart from my misery.