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Fiona Guest Jun 2013
Boldy,
That bird sings joy
And hammers out his songs
In quiet’s place; brave airs before
Nightfall.
Fiona Guest Jun 2013
Look up -
The blue of sky
Can stretch a question out,
Unravelled hugely there, held up
In air.
Fiona Guest Jun 2013
A host
Of heedless gnats;
They fly late in the day,
Get framed in sunlight's final rays,
And dance.
Fiona Guest Jun 2013
A pale
And heatless ray
Of sun split through the blind’s
Small gap. You dropped the blind and it
Was gone.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
Sometimes, I see the God descend to ground.
Lowered on pulleys, creaking as he comes,
He booms his monologue to waiting crowds,
While they - all certain that this God will make
Things right, will get the parents and the kids to talk,
Will mend the broken marriage vows, will fill
The bank accounts, will take the heartbreak out
Of growing old – they hearken to this voice.
But after, when the dummy-God ascends,
Departs in peace to mechanistic skies,
The crowd must stay to watch the empty stage
Repent its trick of mercy by design.

They shiver as it undergoes its shame -
See Faustus at the Hellmouth once again.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
Knuckles in eye sockets
Feel like the blindness of a saint.
Flesh on flesh,
Bone on bone.
I cannot explain
Such an incarnation:
The source, the well-spring and the fall.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
You know I promised to write,
Dropped a line last night
Hoping it might
Reach you.

But when I dropped it it fell,
Like a stone in a well,
Drowning in hell,
Couldn’t reach you.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
I always thought
You’d see the flame
I hold for you
One day.

But now I know
That flames are pale
In the bolder light
Of day.

And colder winds
Will threaten them,
Will pull their course
Awry.

The heat they lend
Is not enough
To warm the heart’s
Cold lie.
Fiona Guest Jun 2011
And sometimes when
My heart has sung
It's tune of unleashed joy,
I know that free
Is on the move
Like that skateboarding boy.
Fiona Guest Jun 2011
Hot today
Road-crossing slow
Couples snail-walk
Love on show

Buses queued
Shoppers bagged
Cars throb-beat
Traffic drag

Mid-road-island
Man is lost
Tiny dog
Seeks lamppost

Time getaway
Stop revolve
Go home vicar
Mystery solved
Fiona Guest Apr 2013
My mother's love got taped on reels and spools,
Cassettes she threw on on an old-school deck,
On wheels that spun straight through our lives and went
Unbreaking. What played in us played there on that
Machine, so we were soundtracked to her old-school
Tunes, to folk stuff - sixties hippy **** -
That pulled our radar-hearts around and made
Our souls attend. We'd be bouyed-up on soundwaves,
Beats her hand MC-ed, her finger soft
On PLAY, and sometimes, when the mood was right,
We heard her too. Who knew that half a world
On, on some late night slot, some other tune-in,
I would find her track, and be rewound?
Her sonic reverb tells me, “dance now, dance”.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
The birds hang dead, paired, on the hook.
Male and female, man and wife, are strung
Up in a brace of everlasting love,
Still warm. But time will soon freeze over
Freshening blood, encrust the opened eye,
Congeal warmth. And what remains is this:
A neck-to-neck unbreaking dull embrace,
The love gone cold, unbeating hearts kept close,
Reciprocating wounds, an unforgiving stare,
The silence in a breathless, parching throat,
A half-bent wing, refusing to enfold -
Time will wear love’s fingers to the bone.

Then bullet-hardened bodies take their course
And undo softly with a rising rot.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
I heard the shot behind the hill,
Pausing to log the dull report,
Thinking that death - or deaths – unseen
Were manifested out of sight,
Not mind. Swift shocks of rising birds
Spoke of events my mind inferred.  

A feathered body writ in flight
Spirals into closer view.
Fluttering quills, the uttering beak,
The watchful eye, the scribing claw.
But all of it has come to ground –
On the verge, a body, found

In dull and heavy silence. This
Is not the body I heard shot
But an old ****. The blood
Dried up, the eyes tight shut,
Half-open beak eternally
Clamp-locked in silent cry.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
The landscape rolls,
The page unfolds,
And letters flood the gap.

The trees entwined,
The words in rhyme,
A sentence spreads its trap.

The world can turn
But paper burns
Until it turns to black.
Fiona Guest Feb 2011
The shop girl and the mannequin appear
Together in their shop front window stage -
It’s here the plastic soul gets cleaned, and here
The brand new body dons the latest rage.
The model feels the former’s hands embrace
Her own, and feels the stressed-out beat
Of heart within the arteries, the trace
Of hurried blood where their pale fingers meet.
The shop girl scrubs the limbs to blanker grace,
And twists the head to meet the staring street.
So all will see the calibrated face,
And all will search the heart that doesn’t beat.

Week coming, in the season’s latest dress,
The shop girl will the mannequin redress.
Fiona Guest Mar 2011
dropping beats, spitting rhymes in this underpass,
you rapped to the rhythm of my darkling heart
laid down that **** like a line of the white
pulse is banging but my head is light
and now it’s like this mix is the styx part II
there’s a river and I’m crossing **** over to you
in this underground we sound like souls apart
i reach out you feel and the blood stream starts
i think i see family in the ghosts who scream
brothers and sisters in the shades i deem
to be like my own when this cipher’s writ down
in this tunnel in this channel in this under the ground
in the dark of this underpass its heavy black
god’s demon throbbed and i hollered back
Fiona Guest Jun 2011
Exhausted by death, we took the car and drove
Away, past gut-torn children and the like -
The stricken hospital, top-heavy despots, dust.
Someone cried, and for a while the earth stood still.
Then on we rushed as sand got in our eyes,
Through states with something rotten at the heart
And effigies that stared with wrinkled lips,
And women crying over families spent,
And gunned-through houses, doors and windows, gone.
And once a grimed-up pick up cut us up,
Tore past in clouds - Land Cruiser tyres churned -
And at the wheel a man's split-second face,
A turban and a beard, fanatic stare,
Long gone in dirt, but at that time,
We knew him to be mad. Then on we drove
To pastures new and sand dunes stretching miles.
At noon, a woman offered food, her children
Clustered round her, shut-up face. We left
Her scratching yet more dust, and sped into
The only sun, into a slap-up village where
The kids in rags kept up their pestering cries
Of hunger, sickness, want, disease, and pain
That stretched back years. They clawed the car,
Tore strands of air between their teeth and we
Were heart-struck at their noise.  By dusk
We headed out again – the clamour died -
Catching the western sun before it sank,
We disembarked and tucked it up in bed,
Knowing ourselves at home, and finally
Slept at last where it was warm and dark.
Fiona Guest Feb 2011
Is this the end
Of which you spake -
The wind's alarm,
The night's opaque,
The city's blind,
The people dim,
(The ambulence offers
The final hymn)
My soul run down,
Run out of light -
Or just bad weather,
And the winter night?
Fiona Guest Jul 2011
We constitute the army of youth, and we
Stand for things that matter far beyond
Breakfasts and dinners, and the chatter of neighbours.
And we also listen to headphone vibes
That spout what's important, and we
Know who our enemies are, and *** and that,
We know too. We know to know news enough
To know there's no matter that matters and
We know everything about injustices
Of the heart and mind, and sometimes
The bone too. Knowledge is fluid in our hands
Like holding an ***** that is warmly wet -
So close but not close enough. We know
More than our parents in all their years and we
Don't care.

— The End —