IS THERE IN ESSENCE A TIME ...

Is there in essence a time that seeks to stride?
A need that whispers through the false acacias
In the cloister calm of this secluded cafe,
Laced with the clink of couples' glasses,
The breeze in silvered trees,
Nodding neighbours
And children playing on gravel paths.
Is there at work behind the manicured lawn,
The Private sign and undulating conversation -
A dynamic presence,
Pulsing like sunburning blood, speaking of
Desire on summer's first weekend?

Is there in essence a time that seeks to strive?
The summer storm brooding the sight of sun away,
The ochre messenger of light on ruddy rooves;
The shafts that gild the new green shoots
Buff the gold and copper spires.
Squalls that blow the day away
Trap shaking feathers in the warning wind,
Join the indigestive rumble of hill thunder as
Heads poke from the cafe windows:
Bronzed figures watching the blushing tiles and
Watching the light. Watching the light
Forever watching for the light.

FROM THE FLAGSTONES 
 
This concrete town with no guts,
no grit where we can only smirk
as galoshered feet slip ‘n’
slide in and out our café where
exhalations of icy conversations
mix with the fog and cigarette smoke.
 
It’s a damp riverbank town
border with riptides
sneak currents
no watchtowers no walls
an escape for the committed
or reckless – the next country
a lucky swim away.
 
You draw down
panelaks, teetering like headstones
(that lost their plots
a regime ago)
pen in flagstones and millstones
flower tubs filled
with butts and dead dogs
tarted up with cans and stencils
subjects of your studies in pencil.
 
Nature’s only concession
(so far as I can see)
is this wedge like a warm slice of pizza -
four fall trees jutting out of the bar
where dogs curl up in corners
and mist pushes in fishermen
selling trout -
 the toxic confetti
swirling around the passing
procession of Saturday weddings
dragging monochrome trains
drawn into this twilight
fugue whisked by an accordian player,
guests laughing back at us
while you’re smirking back at them
cocooned in wine and tuica
almost  lost in your sketch
smudging *** ash for sky
dreamy with relaxed fatigue
of travel and infatuation.
 
Your pad’s our field dressing
that could work for a while
before the gangrene sets back in
so I’d like to amputate this souvenir wedge
for my scraps book.
 
I watch you listening out for the shanty
from the flagstones – about weeds
delicate, green, undamaged,
muscling through the cracks
in the concrete
drawn up to the cut where
we also look effortless and a little green.
 
Tomorrow we head for the border
and only one of us can swim.

THE HAUNTING


The smell of fresh begonias fanned
by rooks and sparrows

from the black ‘n’ white tiled balcony
glowing in a sunset the colourof  lovebites

then the candle-glow dims
in the fanfare of light

you switch on from the hall
filling the frosted door like cancer

announcing another re-run
of a once OK drama

played out night after night
wearing me down with your claims

to what you believe is rightfully yours
Excalibur arm pointing your ways

I’m either paralysed or paralytic,
hard to choose as I’m dumbed down

by the never ending story
of your nightly return mocking

the symmetry of your eviction
which gave me a callous, relieved joy …

I’d put your bags back on the threshold
right back where you’d stood

with your Betty Blue smile
expecting me to invite you in

with a pout and a shout
about that ******* kicking you out

Good God, then as now you struck
fear into the very heart of me

Is it still enchanting?
Do you thrive on eternal return?

You linger, shadow filling in the flakes
With your useless key before knocking.

Stop. You. Again. Shape-shifter
Black strychnine swab

Running through me like a swallowed blood clot
making my emptiness fistula full

Listening to your black-bordered rap
of funeral amazement delivering your message

That you’ll return eery night
to reclaim what you say is yours

buried in these walls like a tic.

I went to a funeral and lied

I went to a funeral and lied
In junk and drink, no grief,
Just cowardice and pride.
Fear of losing you by my side
Losing you to the other side.
Fear that shook with the gloved murderer's hide

I went to my funeral and shied
I didn't want to sleep or hide
I just held your bloodless, jaundiced face
I couldn't help but feel a fake
As two sets of opache eyes
Did not pass a tear and cry.
Just the shivering hands that stopped your last sighs

I went to a funeral and lied
I drank and stood in black and could not cry,
I strung words and made some ineloquent speech
Loved and held but held love out of reach
Spoke in riddles, played hide and seek
With a congregation of perjured freaks.
I laughed at their blindness where my guilt sits.

Last night in our death bed where I slept
Dry-eyed like your cataract eyes
Dumb mouth fish gape
In the old flat, my eyes, dry, dry eyes.

I didn't hear the trains last night
I couldn't hear grief's knock at all
There was no knock,
There was no wake or ball, just
Your bloodless gape and jaundice face
Shining yellow plumbed and spent
****** leech-mouthed, dumb,
Your cataract eyes,
Under clumsy-ashed mascara lids
A shy pass in some gothic flick
A tetany spasm, no shock or awe.
You looked up at me and saw nothing at all.

I share some dead shark surprise;
Opache, tearless rolled-up eyes
And I lay gibbering at your side
And laughed and hated your passion and cries
King over requiem and bride
Healer, dealer, hood and pride
Addicting storm and flushed aside.

I scraped blood off your chessboard marble floors
Wiped the evidence from cold-polished claws
I burned effigies of pagan-hates
Hoodwinked the sentimental double agent spooks
And threw scent off my mistress as a ******* clown.

This morning I went to a funeral and lied
I could not spill one tear from these witness eyes
That watched the hands suffocate your traumatic sighs
I went to a funeral and lied
Conducted proceedings with the murdering hands’ whys
I wanted the last of you, my bride.

SPREADEAGLED

Bucharest,



Spread-eagled and naked

in her crop circle -

this one in a sunflower field:

she’s a wheel of limbs,

some sort of a *******

lusted after by the seed heavy

flowers bowing to her curves

like drooling surgeons.



She’s finished with running,

waiting for the fading light

to join the last of her loves,

faded with processed proclamations

of undying certainty

which were a little worse for wear

after courting

and checked into intensive care

soon after.



Love thought it had

ducked its obligations,

passed again

like a heavy goods train in the night,

shunted across the border

while guards waved it on;

interested only in sleep or beer.



But this time she’s making sure

love returns,

pays its duty and dues

and hits its target.



So, splayed

aryan and vigorous,

apeing a pagan

resurrection,

she waits

for the skydiver

who – with precision

confidence – happens

to be bearing down

on her charity target,

slowly filling her

with his ***** shadow.



She sunbathes under mirrors,

she’s a real

tough nut to crack.

I repeat myself into her.