Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy *****
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

Voracity is the centipede,
hunting in a-downhill-bleed,
pull what you think is a string,
to pitch your tent,
feel the centi clench,
and incision of dopamine,
your esophagus that screams,
could have had the segments and seams,
harking back to when the earth was steam,
when night jungle shines upon it,
with a red lens,
as it devours a tarantula,
adding a segment to its length,
sense the kinship,
sense the progenitor strength,
turn your red light on,
see the red esophagus of black chiton,
run for the zenith,
before the apex makes you bleedeth,
let your bayonet it bite on,
drop in alchohol,
and as a dragon,
it will soar and fight on,

beware the apex,
only the mountain,
set your sights on,
beware the early esophagus,
of red-neon, black chiton.

Kausa, kaduha, maihap ra.
Ang mga laag sa mag barkada.
Ug kini napun-an na.
Sa Bohol, diin sila milarga.

Pageskwela ang gihinungdan
Sabay silang naglayag. apan:
Ang usa wala kakuyog kay nasakit.
Duna poy wala, sa trabaho nasangit.

Di man kompleto tuod, pero,
Nagpakalingaw ang mga giro
Kay panagsa ra tawn magsalo
Pawala sa mga labad sa ulo.

Busa unta kini masundan pa,
Ug sa umaabot kompleto na.

Nakit-an tika pagkagahapon,

Nakita nako imong mahigugmaong paghiyom,

Akong dughan sig ambak, 'di jud muhilom,

Sa imong mga simpleng pag talidhay,

Inday, akong dughan 'di jud tawn makalihay.

Akong iring nanglungkab ug bahaw,

nganong 'di naman tawn ni siya maminaw,

gilutuan na gani ug inihaw,

nangita pa ug bahaw,

'Di man sad ganahan ug sabaw,

ako na intawn mabuang ug mahimo'g amaw.

The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.

According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.

Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.

Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.

Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.

I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.

So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.

Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.

Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.

But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.

Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.

Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****––
retaliation – ******* in my dream.

Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,                                                                
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

( Sonnet )*

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,

Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,

The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,

A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

On a back street in Mexico City meal sellers tend their stalls,
dark faced men feed from ceramic bowls,
menus are simple in black-board and chalk
everything is flavoured with chilli and
huddled shoulders reveal little small-talk.
Street lamps throw more shadow than light
and gas leaking from somewhere
feeds the air with an acrid scent.

I stop for a bowl of chilli-beans,
beside me and one over at the bar
a young man with matted hair and
heavy eyes unwraps a stained cloth,
takes a shard from a broken bottle and
neatly incises a small vein in his wrist.

He lets the blood drip evenly into a saucer
beside him and in the other hand holds what seems
to be a quill made from an eagle feather or some large winged bird.
Dipping the quill in the gathering blood he begins to write
in a leather bound book
on tawn-coloured hand made paper.

I watch every move.   No-one seems
to care or notice that he does this.
He writes on and on, scratches a word,
dips again -  the blood flows more slowly;
what has gathered seems sufficient,
he spits in the saucer takes a shot of clear liquid (probably tequilla) and adds it to the mixture,
I assume this is to stop it coagulating.

My meal and appetite have gone cold watching this process.
When the blood-ink is all but used
he folds the book away, wraps his wrist in a stained cloth and
walks into the street of shadow and meal sellers steam.

The stall holder notices me and approaches:
“Si signor this is Miguel the poet of the people.
He is coming many times to write this way.”
He smiles at me. I pay for the unfinished meal and he says,
“The poetry for the people is in his veins amigo,
is this not so in your country, are you also having such a poet?”

I leave him.   Return to my hotel room.
Take out portable type writer and clean white paper

And begin to write
in blood blacker than ink.


MChallis © 2015