"How you loved me once",
he whispered, to those who
gathered around his bed...

"You gave me strength
through your convictions
upon my mystery you fed
and I in turn, would comfort those,
who -while in suffering- chose to
turn to me....

Conceived through need
of explanation, my kind
in many guises mastered
******* Lords of all creation
"Eternal Minds"-or so you thought

From grotto walls to burning growth
the ineffable, osmosing oaths
the cultured banners of excuse
the mansioned rulers
void of proof......

...........for "Us" you fought

As ages altered my kin expired
want mutated, as you flowered
knowledge spread as awe retreated
unseated were the ways of Old..

Now stricken by the minds
that made me,my immortality
has left me...
...and with few to fan the embers of
my reason- I grow cold.

So I ask of you to turn and leave
It was never I that penned your creeds
It is you who brought idolitary
to justify your every deed

Now all is empty on those
pages- nothing breathes
upon the air, as the lines
upon my fading face are
features of your disrepair


But as I pass, I leave you this:
That is, you know not more but less.
for all the gifts that you were given
so treasured under hope of Heaven-
mean nothing...

Drenched in oil, rising seas,
pollution, avarice, war, disease

Your present...

Not a vision.

I need to be inside.

To bend your bones around me,
To fill your throat with rabid flesh
to claw your shiny hide..

I hurt to break your prim veneer,
Your fingers pulled in knots of hair
Your lupine drool upon my hand
Your spike of stammered sigh..

I need to be inside

How low lies the line, the thin
Separation of Earth and Sky, far, far,
Beyond the bending ambles, the
Solitary gables, where descending pylons,
Unroll their cables, deep into the womb
Of distant cities.

Bellicose clouds in league with
The sea wind, wrest samphire fragments
From a sentinel peace, while folding
The hamlet in pitying glamours
Of harridan water on slate.

In Spartan gardens, Bu-gloss leans
Bruised petals hard, by rusted stanchions,
as bind-**** , knots the flaking perch
Of tumbled gantries, in a throttled
Slew of searching.

Melancholy anthems, quiver and hail
In the breeze-plucked tune of loose
Slung wire. Pleas of long gone mariners
Mutter and choir through salted gorse,..
..
Hurry inland to rattle at doors of
Norman churches, as if seeking
Some last sanctuary.

A singeing bleak...

Eye water, colors from thistle gripped nothings
Numb from a dissident space
Absence is minded by pale phased etchings
Embellishing braids of cinnamon briar, while
flushing the tumbles of Old Man’s Beard.

Mercury drops...

a Starling backed brush to the blackening fields
all riddled with meddling shoals
Turned ermine surrenders a rumour
Of solstice, remembers the Ploughmen
The tread of the horses that folded the beds
Of the cold, tired Earth,
While, over, the Plovers wheel.

The beryl high land smoulders….

Where skinny manes of cloven trailing, cuff
the rake of jumbled scree,
a porous crux of timbered carol
matins from the mossy shrine
to urchin on the bluff and draft
in nooks of birch and bilberry.

On that high dais, Corvid tribals
potter on the reeks of gale.
Fell boatman of the troubled storeys
quarter in some sleet cabal
to throw their onyx gauntlet down
a slating arc of fallow sky.

I waved you goodbye, as if
I would see you on Sunday..

Then my Father phoned
at four in the morning...

..and my Father never phones....

Too much thigh to go
unkissed
so wet-look fabric
has my tongue
in swollen lip bit
thirst..
A sunrise skirt
eased over arches,
modest drapes of stolen
passing showers...

Your pointed mouth
has come undone, to
curse the moon in
quiet hours, running
with the liquid thought
that through your thumping mind
becomes, the preaching
of the screaming sea...

Heels, held, high over head,
A bristled language empties
you of easy , urban drag....