Beside his heavy-shouldered team
thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,
he weathered all the striding years
till they ran widdershins in his brain:

Till the long solitary tracks
etched deeper with each lurching load
were populous before his eyes,
and fiends and angels used his road.

All the long straining journey grew
a mad apocalyptic dream,
and he old Moses, and the slaves
his suffering and stubborn team.

Then in his evening camp beneath
the half-light pillars of the trees
he filled the steepled cone of night
with shouted prayers and prophecies.

While past the campfire's crimson ring
the star struck darkness cupped him round.
and centuries of cattle-bells
rang with their sweet uneasy sound.

Grass is across the wagon-tracks,
and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,
and vineyards cover all the slopes
where the dead teams were used to pass.

O vine, grow close upon that bone
and hold it with your rooted hand.
The prophet Moses feeds the grape,
and fruitful is the Promised Land.

High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Islanded in Severn stream;
The bridges from the steepled crest
Cross the water east and west.

The flag of morn in conqueror's state
Enters at the English gate:
The vanquished eve, as night prevails,
Bleeds upon the road to Wales.

Ages since the vanquished bled
Round my mother's marriage-bed;
There the ravens feasted far
About the open house of war:

When Severn down to Buildwas ran
Coloured with the death of man,
Couched upon her brother's grave
That Saxon got me on the slave.

The sound of fight is silent long
That began the ancient wrong;
Long the voice of tears is still
That wept of old the endless ill.

In my heart it has not died,
The war that sleeps on Severn side;
They cease not fighting, east and west,
On the marches of my breat.

Here the truceless armies yet
Trample, rolled in blood and sweat;
They **** and **** and never die;
And I think that each is I.

None will part us, none undo
The knot that makes one flesh of two,
Sick with hatred, sick with pain,
Strangling--When shall we be slain?

When shall I be dead and rid
Of the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till ***** and hearse
Puts to sleep my mother's curse?

Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo's month,
Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan's hill,
As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time;
Time, in a folly's rider, like a county man
Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel,
Drives forth my men, my children, from the hanging south.

Country, your sport is summer, and December's pools
By crane and water-tower by the seedy trees
Lie this fifth month unskated, and the birds have flown;
Holy hard, my country children in the world if tales,
The greenwood dying as the deer fall in their tracks,
The first and steepled season, to the summer's game.

And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape,
Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill,
Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive;
Hurdles and guns and railings, as the boulders heave,
Crack like a spring in vice, bone breaking April,
Spill the lank folly's hunter and the hard-held hope.

Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children's faces with a tail of blood,
Time, in a rider rising, from the harnessed valley;
Hold hard, my country darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily.

[Addressed to Charles Lamb, of the India House, London]

In the June of 1797 some long-expected friends paid a visit
to the author’s cottage; and on the morning of their arrival,
he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking
during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they
had left him for a few hours, he composed the following
lines in the garden-bower.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
Had dimm’d mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o’erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only specked by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless ash,
Unsunn’d and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne’er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann’d by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.
                                   Now, my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger’d after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! Slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than ******; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.
                                             A delight
Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark’d
Much that has sooth’d me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch’d
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov’d to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
Was richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
Yet still the solitary humble-bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to love and Beauty! and sometimes
’Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,
While thou stood’st gazing or, when all was still,
Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

For I will consider a town called Riverside.
For its only river, the dry Santa Ana, it's shore peppered with the homeless, garbage, an old shoe, a cart stolen from the grocery.
For its downtown with dried gum spots all along the sidewalk, its dive bars with regulars pouring in at 3pm and pouring cheap beer into their gullets until morning.
For its overpriced theatre, a gentrified landmark, driving the sun-hot strays to the park.
For the park, and a lake, dotted with boats in the summer, driven by tired feet, hands hiding beer in gas station soda cups.
For the mountain, with the old ladies, counting every step, looking up to the cross and over the edge onto a thick brown smog.
For the steepled churches on every corner, waking us every Sunday to pray to a hotly scarce God.
For I will consider a town called Riverside.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

flip of the fingers house of your hands
steepled fingers like wooden roofbeams
diamond studded knuckles, rugby thumbs
palms over the dome and push doors

blueberry jars clink with raspberry under
the faded overhang of the balcony, leaves
me for sale and fortunate, slated skin,
mouthed promises against pixel skimmimg

Soot and ashes are the platter from which I dine,
the pool of my flagellation is the outpouring Merlot.
I forget to breathe through the lash,
rending the sackcloth until my nakedness is set before you.

The bells harken, the pendulum keeps time,
my requiem is set by your pulse.
DO NOT dismiss me, DO NOT neglect to
render my salvation in parcels.

Level after level of purgatory the holy grail
I imbibe and drink in ruin.
As the shredding of my skin with filaments of rope,
dislplay a journey of persecutions selfless ardor.

Crouching I beseech, I grovel,
forming steepled hands.
Oh, humble penance
slips my parched tongue and crippled lips.

Sweet King, Soveriegn Lord, Merciful Master,
I cower in my nothingness,
wrapped in the robes of bleak shame.

STILL I PRESS FORTH,
through decadent chambers,
in filth for a glimpse of your being.
For the simple gesture of uttering
your name.

Does your crown sweat with the bulk of my sobs?
To wipe your brow,
smear your worries on my bodice.
Enticing you from your throne to love...
a slave.

I recall the delicate flickering under the steepled sky
Always with the slight taste of sorrowful smoke.

No more.
Now leaden flames flash in the semi-dark,

The glow of childhood or childishness
Replaced in favor of some mechanical impostor.

A penny for your thoughts sir,
A quarter for your prayers.

Say what you will
About waxen tears and the sting of smoke,
At least there was a record
And you knew how it stood.

The moon shone on the trees and found
The trees were paler than the moon.
The wind was a peroxide stain
That stabbed, wormlike, toward the veiled fastness of my brain
The wind that skinned me ‘til I stood, naked and raw;
The corner of my mouth cradled a pestilential sore.
My throat was lined and thin and wan
As though it held the cranium of an antique and parasitic swan.
I turned my mouth toward the origin of my demise
And said,
“ I vowed to die amongst the trees
While human hands removed my clothes, and closed my crusted eyes
And human voices stilled my vague unease
But this will do for now.”
A crow wheeled above as I keeled over in the dust and saw
The sacred steepled chapel of somebody’s fleshless body
Writhe beside me, and in hollow whispers fall;
I closed my eyes and ushered in the shadows as the night began to crawl.

Cloud and snow spume
drift about your summit
veiling your face
Ma Nanda Devi
fixing my gaze to eternity

Rising like a giant shard of
rock carved over a million years,
snowfields scoured by avalanches, your steepled
peak a vast cathedral

Impossibly tall and steep
you rise abruptly over a
guardian ring of summits
witness to your inner realms of being,
the outer gorge of Rishi Ganga's roar

Climbers say in higher climes
light contrasts with darkness, flower leas with worn ridges, fear with elation
O paradox of the sublime
your name means Joy, enduring Joy

The veil lifts, was it the smoke of fires lit
by sages on your summit?
Your natural symmetry of two identical peaks suddenly at ease
is visible from my cottage window.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

I
How will you remember me,
will you form my shape as is my way,
my veins swollen with a veiled rejoice
that hides my burial chamber beneath
a shrouded veil of contempt.
Who will remember me?
A fighting roaring man drunk as sand
an outside storm that weathered faces
in a rising sky full of snow horsemen,
that draw your eyes upwardly
then fall below their peculiar time.

II
How shall I be remembered?
A lover that blazed a trail every midnight,
he that stole and sold hearts in a single beat,
fashionable runt, cool in summers heady days
that ran from a friends sisters bed before her age.
Who would remember?
The love the labour the sweat
the boundless hours working for cruel light,
a family pace of a snails want
that sweet cruel need that never shy’s
and I am bound by my fragile word.

III
My brother, my sisters voices I hear with a clear ring
gutted on cold stone ground in frost
and I knew love before my maidens mouth
whispered through thickets of thorns and bramble.
Who will remember them?
It’s the breath from those that rant,
clergymen with fierce eyes that talk in fondness,
yet would perish when their birds fly unknown
before deaths curtain is closed and comital spoke.
Lost in my map, my life, my day in poise.

IV
Now I sigh long into the day.
My steepled church sky soars far above me
and days grow shorter with every passing mouth.
Saints and sinners ride together in fallen flames as I look for an open eye in this mudded rockpool water.
And I remember;
with long armed embrace
that I kissed maidens lips
when they were young with starry eyes
and was carefree with strong clasp of bone
and in this third season fall Autumn was taught that forever was my sea, but a few hours between.
All this long before my grave and dying light.

I saw him there under the
treeroots lurking

It was dark thereunder, but he
beckoned darker

                             Still your rotting mouth
                             Shut your eldritch eyes,
                             or everywhere you'll see him

I saw him by night in
my window screaming

He had his owlface on
with eyes like
nectar-filled lamps

                            Turn away your brittle body
                            Draw the covers to your chin
                            and bear the beak in mind

I saw him on Sunday
in the churchyard digging

He laid the bones of my Father
in the wet wormsoil
for marrow cracked and clean

                            Stand still your writhen legs
                            You cast a shadow over him,
                            and he reaches up towards it

I saw him on the strand
in my lover's face seething

He took my lips in his
and breathed into me
her still beating embers

I walked the path back alone,
full of ash

I went to my knees at the altar
and tried to *****

I saw him in the steepled tower
by me standing

He opened his mouth
and whispered the words
I craved to hear

I stood over their graves
and cast no shadow

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

Distracted by refracted light
reflected back in spite of all that stands between
the prism and the clear blue screen
that coats my eyes.

Underneath the forest skies where sight lines split
and bits of colour splash into the white of splintered bark
trees aspire to be much more than rooted to the woodland floor.

Who but Frankenstein could build his dream
above the scream of spires and steepled people?
Swept clean and brushed away
the horror of a yesterday.

Within the spiral trapped inside the twist
where love was kissed and walked away
the folly of a yesterday.

I lay me down to weep
in nightmare sleep
I keep my yesterday.

Head notes

Of loam fringed apple trees,
of near-but- nether fuchsia roots
A timeless travel of ridge top tiles.
Steepled spins of weathervanes,
A sobriquet of pre- dawn rainfall.

Heart notes

Of hornbeam,
of coriander deer path.
Memories of bonfire- hope
in ragwort sprays of yearning.
A hint of feelings half remembered.
Of longbows hewn from churchyard yews.
Of rope swings and of scaffold

Base notes

Of river mist.
Poseidon wreaths of furnace ash,
allied to a merlot tint of afterglow release.
Endings are, valerian,
patchouli heads of linen musk.
A lasting peace of closing lawns
that wait approaching snow.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

Soupy darkness enfolds
the wilted thornbush of your hands,
steepled plaintively in your ruined lap.

Your moist chin sags in defeat;
the mask of your tired smile
peels crookedly off your face
into the abyss of your leathery cleavage.

Ah, the void of thoughtless grief...
The burning house of your mind
lists limply to the side –
- a stranger’s hands smolder darkly
in the airless cave of your dreams.

The scar remembers the wound;
the wound remembers the pain –
- my flesh forgets your touch too soon,

Is is a sin to yearn for a nail?
Is is a crime to remember
the fleeting caress of your ice pick
on my hairless *****?
Is it a shame to laugh
when you’re hurting me beyond screams?

I remember your tender fists,
as my dog laps the essence of you
off the floor.
The dusk descends
through the flutter of curtains in the breeze.
The bath bath beckons steamily:
My wrist opens invitingly
under the gleaming caress
of my razor.

When her maman died
Marie flew ten hours to
the ancient French village
where the houses
steepled the church,
their mansard roofs
brown from neglect.  
The Weeping Willow
in front of maman’s
weathered hovel
did not match
Marie’s feelings.  
It never did.

Inside the furniture
had aged into antiques.
The handmade chaises
with ladder backs and
unadorned ticking,
French oak dinning table,
the vaisellier darker from
decades of hearth ash.

The rose print wallpaper had
faded to shadow bands,
the town print on the mantle
now almost sepia,
her first crib picture a fading
black and  white dream.

Maman’s single bed existed
pushed into the corner
of a windowless chambre,
almost a frenzied fever
blue room delusion of
Van Gogh’s last dying days.

Hanging alone in the closet was
maman’s noir widow’s dress,
the one Marie imagined maman
would be buried in.  That was
until Claire, the old neighbor next
door, gave Marie maman’s ashes
in a simple wooden box
with a gold filigreed clasp.
Pinned to the dress was Maman’s
will written in her eloquent hand
on unlined French folio.

These cinders, this shuddering land,
this dress with all its memories,
and grief would be her inheritance.  

Marie held the dress to her as
she returned to the archway
of the still open door.
The lace sleeves were  shorter
than she remembered,
but it would fit her very well.
Just beyond her, the country road
with its oaks grasping for union
stubbornly remained a horse trail.

Mrs. Ringenroth taught
us a sorta furrowed brow
squinty eye kinda readin'

Makes ya look intelligent
scannin' the horizon of a line
for them steepled ascenders
and dots like dead crows
stuck on a cloud.

The educated boy
don't move his lips.
The educated boy
gets hung up in the crease
closest to the spine
until the book slams shut.

It's that mouth-breathin'
lip-readin' boy
that looks to the sky
before turning the page.

not upon the concrete structure
nor in the roar of man
the etiquette of modern culture
or governmental plan

nor in the sound of raw cascade
of rocks or shining water
in mountain hills, 'pon forest glade
nor in the lightening slaughter

of lions 'gainst their weaker prey
of men against each other
in steepled church of moral decay
'midst hugs of strangled brother

but in the breath of sweetest child
that whispers to his God
in humility of person mild
that lets himself be trod

in the vapour of the nothing
in your heart upcurled
there the word of God Who's loving
there the base of world

The falsetto
"no no no"
shot down
the steepled
maple *****
into the walking line
by the metro.

How someone
got up there
we never knew, or
what made them yell.

I remember only
that the sky
was littered
with the wrecks
of clouds, and
it was a Friday
in winter.

We all stopped,
though we
saw nothing,
& then
it was over.

The grass
waved away
the watery
minutes,
& the sun
rolled loose
among the wrecks
in the blue ditch.

So we towered
over red tile
on the metro
platform,
hands heavy
with phones,
until the train
obliterated us
with its urgency.