Sand buried parched skull
exposed by excavation,
jaw-gaping in silent
death’s head yawn.

Is eternal sleep so boring?  
Or do you scream
down the centuries
“Let me be!”  

Impotent rage, as trowel
scrapes on bone,
desecrating thy memory
in pursuit of knowledge.

Arcing head over heel,
gleaming redly beneath
roadside halogen lights,
I rise and fall.  

Impact ripples flood outwards
as I cut the still waters
of some nearby pond.

I drift haphazardly now,
past torpid winter fish,
down into cold sedimented depths.  

The outer world soon becomes
a distant memory as I settle quietly
in a small cloud of softly rising mud
amongst dead and forgotten things.

Unwanted by the hand
that caressed me, I am a pariah,
spurned by he who used me once to ****.  

And I, even tempered,
my body honed to perfection,
can now only look forward
to corrosion’s living death.

By boulder-strewn cold misted ways
I moved in bitter northern lands
where ice once groaned with prophecy
I turned my back on Man.

Beneath Great Shunner Fell I danced
where curlews cry to wake the ******  
I scattered hail upon the ground
by ancient rocks I sang.

I fell, and in my falling turned
so many eyes and hearts and hands
yet Hardraw Force's roaring lays
they'll never understand.

She danced ‘til dawn around the blaze
the ****** cauldron’s steamy haze
disguised her proud and preening stance
her wicked leer, her lustful glance

She coveted her Master’s love
yet he ignored her from above
and so below she envied those
who writhed in their ecstatic throes

So angrily she swore and cursed
her fellow beings, for being worse
than gluttons drowning in their broth
until at last she slept from sloth

A mild, damp breeze blows,
dislodging decayed yellow leaves
that slide along misty currents,
down and down again onto wet,
algae-smeared tombstones.

Behind the church a tired sun sets,
casting vague shadows
across a sodden graveyard
where slugs slide effortlessly
destroying rotting floral tributes.

The old man wipes his brow,
recalling a distant youth
when sharp frosts chilled October’s bones,
and keen, bright stars twinkled
beneath a bleached and bone white moon.

Unseasonable winds never blew back then,
not when he stole apples
from the vicar’s bursting shed,
laughing with his pals as holy fury
raged behind diamond panes!

Standing by the open lych-gate,
he mused how times have changed.
Lost innocence of youth?  You can keep it!
He’d seen his own grandchildren laughing at him,
reflected in the corner-shop windows.

The old man sighed at his ***** suit,
his mildewed shoes and faded plastic buttonhole.
His memory wasn’t all that good,
and he didn’t get out much these days.
Was it really a year since they’d buried him?

Lying supine on a child’s bed,
new sunlight plays upon her golden ringlets
as another day awakes

Bright blue eyes blink at the new morning;
she sighs at the sound of
grown-ups making breakfast.

Afraid to rise, she clutches the duvet
and asks her Maker for the millionth time,
“Why am I so?”

Throwback!  Alien!  Changeling!  Freak!  
How cruel the spoken word.  
Insults hurled - or whispered in fear . . .

Ah, but “One in a million!” her mother proclaims,  
“So great a heart!  So great a spirit!”  
If only she knew.

Angelina smiles a bitter smile,
and pushes her tiny face deep into the down-filled pillow.  
She begs for death, and whispers “I am nothing.”

Bitter is the wind tonight,
ruffling tawny feathers
as silent owl swoops low
to snare oblivious vole.

Bat flits haphazard beneath dark boughs;
***** watches sly from hidden thicket,
scenting reckless rabbit, hapless hare.

By sunken ponds where old gorse rustles
alongside tired hawthorn,
snail writes glimmering messages
in liquefying mud.

And along byways lit by a golden moon,
polished bright by passing rags of cloud,
I walk homewards through cold centuries.