Medusa In Her Salon

I put a cigarette in my hair, forget
Light another 
Until I’m pouring smoke
Like Typhon
Or some other creature
With an overture’s burning eyes
And a mouth like Hades

That young Perseus, you know
Wing-heeled and with
A penchant for mirrors
I would not so boldly
Demand he look himself in the face
With all that ire and confrontation 
Of time’s bronzed blemish

Burnished sunsets come what may
That Zeus, half bull, half swan
Made of minotaurs a laughing stock
For all his hubris and charm
Cattle calling from the Parthenon
Milk bar across the road

He always complains
About the poison smell
It is just ammonia, foolish man
To colour snakes like hair
Ruby, gold, auburn, blonde
A fired sunset
Your face, when the winds change
Almost turned to stone

Bike Crash Under An Ancient Constellation

The night is  mostly walls and fences
we are small pieces of the sky
falling  through her corrugations 


Roaring the roar  of bicycle spokes
blurred towards the traffic’s restless cliff
lip split in defiance
streaking blood  skittish as reflectors


Thin-skinned soles, breaking, skate
grasp, let go, the road’s  grit crumbling affliction


A star around  the machine’s taut throat
hidden by  deceit’s accretions
of flaked lead paint, an oscillation
with that metronomic blur
as if  beset by wind-torn shrieks
wept meteor
a blinded giant flailed about


A guttered bite
halt  and leap
that Newtonian triangulation 
of arrows and arcs
argon blurred
a Pythagorean shout


A new sun rising  while the wheel
lazed in  radiations
devolves to froed spite
slowed as slowing  windswept pulses
a twice bitten lip


Your smile lost
pebble-skinned scowl
a constellation’s strange fixed warning
flagging pennants  and
careening misdemeanours 
a snake slewed track
the minotaur bars
bent in acquiescence
despite repose
bull’s broken neck
nevertheless defiant