Category: Poems

Angel’s food

A pencil weighs
As much as the sky
On a rainy afternoon
Without much left to say


Sullen old moon
Refuses to rise
The half-lit, oven glow
Of a fog-windowed kitchen


Maybe bread, maybe pale
Glaucous cake, full of holes
When satisfactorily baked
The skewer clean, the jam
Glossy in its violence


Incise a few stray lines
In the mystery of powdered sugar
Illegible, with only
That writhing semblance 
Of half-baked meanings


Nevertheless, with a cup
Of sweet mild tea
Charred baking paper
Unfolding like a leaf
A worm from the chrysalis 
In triangles and tall
Unstable squares
Kind as a smudged and balmy evening
To the taste

Sunday’s astronaut

An echo in
The fishbowl glass
I think I mean, a reflection
Of the bluely, monstrous rising earth
Cars passing, Sunday slow
The dry cereal sound
Of the world rigidly consumed
Locked jaw, gravel stoic
Mouse hunger, too lazy yet
To go for milk, cat food
Croissants stale
As a morning waning moon
The marks of trammelled sleep
Still in your face
The coffee tastes
Almost like pollution

Sawdust horses

Pull at the reins of sleep
you curve away
caparisoned horses
jangling with 
a head thrown preen
motes and stars pinwheeling


I thought I had you
the circus brightness
of your smile
the acrobats of laughter


But, a rain dull echoing
of shod iron feet


On the roof
a mocking skeleton dancing


It is hard to know
if redoubts
are weak as second thoughts


The shapes you left in sawdust 
now uncertain

Waking up, falling down

In
the tin-can morning
jagged-sunned
safe, but for a raw edge
behind the death-knell curtains
I put on my floor trousers
laying like a dog
dust the colour of the moon 
sieves down
I step raggedly through
motes follow, worshipping 


There’s a myth 
that strength and vulnerability 
aren’t mutually exclusive 


From here you can almost see
the willow by the bridge


But (too bright) today
I will just hallow the memory


The shadow of the bed’s
barred iron brow
stretches narrowly and wide 
to keep me


As if such creatures had enclosing wings


Crumpling by the escarpment
to the floor
I do not dispute

Cotard

I thought I saw 
In the dulled cement
Of your sink
The reflected ire
Of death’s autumn moon
The fading red
Of haloed leaves, and last summer’s fires
As if the light
Had slowed to a dirge
But, your windows were opaque
Rippled glass, an upraised sea
The spilled chalk of erosion’s residues
Just me, and a hand-sized moth
Tenaciously still, against a drunken tide
Knowing, I am almost dead
While you disdain
Our silent worshipping 

This poem has no name

This is the kind of note
You should destroy after reading


Scrabble pieces in a cup
Spilled out across
The worn parquetry of meaning




Tear it from the book
The ragged seam almost invisible, but
Now the pages
Never sit quite flat
The teardrop bowing of lacuna 


A whistle elongated between 
Fingers placed uncouthly in the mouth
Saliva wet
Shrilling in that forest way
Of sunlight and warning
Decanting through the myrrh and honey branches


A cat grows in sunshine
Poached eggs, an insistent wind
Left over from the barbarity of desert summer
Small clouds dragged across the sky
The eclipse almost fatal
On thick toast for late breakfast
Flour dusting
The distance almost serene
Between then and now
Crumple, discard, forget
Almost, once upon a time
Someone died today

Driving to Golgotha

Hang the washing sideways
she says with the crucifixion drawl
of dust eclipsing a copper beaten sun
centurions at hem and sleeve
makes a livelier kind of execution 
the snared bird scrape
wrist bone against
an enfilading chin
decaying like the silver halides
of old photographs


to a spit-edged, palsied shake




an ochre layer to prevent halation 
(the blistered, liminal glow
of blurred mirrors and sun dogged tv screens)
laved with the first soft breath of rain
in the liquorice blasphemy of her mouth
a grit like succour 

heaving dust-devil exhalations 

flows across the raw edged bitumen
a vine that bears
dead crows In efflorescence 

swerving wrist-break hard

the tread marks plain
as a slap

Old Wednesday

The grey man
Slowly shook his head
My imperfect soul
Will vouch for me
– Me and Shakespeare 
Lost my ticket, somewhere 
Pockets turned out
Like elephant ears
Quite rude
Banging on the cold glass door
Only two allowed
In the waiting room
We are 
             old
On Wednesday afternoons
The sky criss-crossed by snails
The phlebotomist says
The blood coming out
Makes a hissing sound
A minuscule amount, but
Enough for tinnitus 
Feeling quite deflated
Morning birds make lopsided croupier calls
The breaking cloud throws gold coins beneath their beaks
Confused at the taste
There is a spiral
In cat’s fur
Constellations warm
Beneath your hand
With the musk scent
Of rising static  
A brief, intoxicated calm

Autumn leaf girl

That rockmelon moon

Leant to a smile

A girl, leaf brown

Fell from a tree

From limbs with mouths

That age old gnarl

Turned yellow eve, russet, sun lost

Spiralled down to holes and with 

The endless shape

Of clasped hands  

In her soughing, see-saw breath

From the morning, scattered

Waste ground sacrament

The mouth
of childhood
is laughter, liquorice dark


Teeth stained long after
you spit it out


The aniseed taste of droning dragonflies 
over the scry and gravel heat
of waste ground


Iron where you bit your cheek


A sting


The twisty shape
soft 
        and thick
             as mudded rope


Barbed wire and glowing jimson weed
in caduceus tangling


Step heavily

Python-backed
you
      can’t 
lift your feet