E coli colonies
And clusters of blisters
Pink clusters of blisters
And scabs and lice
Do they taste good your cockles?
Do they feel satisfies your mussels?
Do you feel alive, alive, oh?
Candid she is ah
The women of the water
Of beds of sand burrowed deep
Shadows under rocks
On the corners of streets
A parasitic mass
Not the proverbial grain of sand
A fluid called nacre
Or mother of pearl is
Deposited
Layer upon layer
Until a pearl
Is formed
The product of an irritant
A cluster of blisters
Opalescent blisters
Sweet pink satisfaction in
The labial palp
The entrance way to the mouth

‘I’m so cold and I’m so scared
And I’m so alone’


I just
So, a pearl fisher needs to wear waders
There’s no dignified way to put on waders
And when it gets cold you have to **** yourself to keep warm
You also need a set of tangs
Mine are hazel
I got them from the wood
I cut it down but first I asked the tree if it was okay
The tree is part of the river too you see
It nourishes the peat
That filters the water that
Drips back into the river
That is filtered by the mussel
That the salmon and trout swim in
Then the mussel
The larvae attached to the salmon and the trout
And it forms a symbiotic relationship
Where the mussel filters the water and
The salmon and the trout
Spread their offspring
The way you can tell the difference
Between a male and a female mussel
Is that when you pick up a male it's
Literally dripping in *****
A constant *******
The females all spawn at the same time
A mussel is an indicator species,
Which in ecological terms means
That it is a species that will
Be
The perfect indicator of the health
Of the river
The other things you need are
A river speculum
I haven’t made mine yet
But we used plastic ones
With glass cut to shape
But it enables you to see the river
The secret part of the secret river
It’s red down there
And it’s cold
The women of the water
They hide in the shadows under rocks
And burrowed deep
They can move very slowly across the river
Bed
A colony of mussels
A family
When you find mussels
When you f
When you find a beautiful
When you find lots of them it’s
Called a
Good crook and this is where
You’ll find pearls
If you ask me the man who takes them is a good crook himself
Bad crook
And it’s I’m looking at it now and I can see
It with the moonlight on it
And it just it
Keeps going
But it’s tidal here it’s not fresh
I’d have to distil it myself
With copper pipes
Copper tubes
Copper coil
When copper ages it turns blue
And you don’t weld copper
You braze it
Soldering at a high temperature
A Heat
Mussels can live up to 150 years old
I held a 120-year-old one
And it was so wise and venerable
I didn’t know what to do
I couldn’t speak
This mussel
She was alone
Down there in the red
The angry red water
She lived through
WW1 and 2
And women’s suffrage
My grandmother was alive two
I wore silk because it’s pure
And women are supposed to be pure
Don’t know
Freshwater nymphs
I can see it right now
And it’s just like little tiny mirrors
Little tiny mirrors that are reflecting light back
Speculum is the Latin for mirror
Maybe the water’s a mirror
But it’s tidal here so I’d have to distil it
Saltwater mirrors
Saltwater speculums
Spectators of atrocity
And mussels they grow
With annual rings
Annually
They reach maturity around the
Age of 30
Like tree trunks
Like the hazel
That helps me to keep them
Catch them in its tangs
But I want to protect them
I am one

Little plaster shells
But I cracked one
And it wasn’t plaster
Split her in half
Not with tongs
With silicone
Pink flexible
Gooey silicone
Their linings bleed every month

It was a dark orange
Red colour
Because of the peat that was draining into the water

But I have to protect them
Cause I am one.

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
     And the mussel pooled and the heron
               Priested shore
          The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
          Myself to set foot
               That second
     In the still sleeping town and set forth.

     My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
     Above the farms and the white horses
               And I rose
          In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
          Over the border
               And the gates
     Of the town closed as the town awoke.

     A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
     Blackbirds and the sun of October
               Summery
          On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
          To the rain wringing
               Wind blow cold
     In the wood faraway under me.

     Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
     With its horns through mist and the castle
               Brown as owls
          But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
          There could I marvel
               My birthday
     Away but the weather turned around.

     It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
     Streamed again a wonder of summer
               With apples
          Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
          Through the parables
               Of sun light
     And the legends of the green chapels

     And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
     These were the woods the river and sea
               Where a boy
          In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
          And the mystery
               Sang alive
     Still in the water and singingbirds.

     And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
     Joy of the long dead child sang burning
               In the sun.
          It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
          O may my heart's truth
               Still be sung
     On this high hill in a year's turning.

While you are having lunch
Observe carefully as you munch
A test of mystery challenging your mind will take place
Who is the Murderer will be the trace
Suddenly the lights went out
Commotion expelling into shout
A man was murdered with a knife, and someone knows why
One by one the guest was analyzing clues
But was this just another sleuth?
Police were summoned immediately into the dining room
Is the Murderer still in the room?
It will be revealed soon
Unknowingly to the guest earlier there was an argument between Mr. George Smith the man murdered, and Mr. John Mussel
They were actually lovers
But was there an alibi?
Now it is for you to guess the reason why
You see Mr. Smith had just got an inheritance worth a fortune
He was not going to share with Mr. Mussel
So in a rage of jealousy, Mr. Mussel poked the knife into the heart of Mr. Smith
But there were bloodstains on the knife that wasn’t cleaned off
That was pure clear evidence
However, there were bloodstains on one of Mr. Mussel’s hands
When questioned, Mr. Mussels said he cut himself
But there weren’t any wounds found
It was established, Mr. Mussels was the murderer and he would be charged
Mystery solved
Thanks for being involved
Mystery becoming history
But watch your back, as you could be next in misery.

Many underestimate how the people are
Many do not know what is in them
They can be like a pearl mussel
From the outside they look worthless
But inside they are beautiful and precious.

My heathen greeting for I am old now

Wildfowl whispered on marshland like maidens around burning fires,
The Norse winds breathing in my soul ‘Odin doth call’
Blood is the sweat of this iron sword; proud are war smiths
I watch the coal biter musing in blood damp earth,
Before a fire and smoke of tallow he dreams of war

Fill these horns to brim, for I shall drink to Odin’s law
And eat I this meal of bread oyster and mussel shell
I see heavens stained blood red clouds as we cross the rainbow crystal bridge,  we shall enter Valhalla victorious once more,

Lo shall they bleed at shores blooded by iron the Saxons fall,
Raged fires shall consume their roof as thunder of north comes forth
You call us ****** that which pierces dark shadows,
We blow our horn in assembly before Odin warriors of the north

Settings suns shone red as quiet falls, serene I see Valhalla
the goat and mead hall, roasting beef and herring
I no longer fear drowning suns for the Valkyries sweet song I do hear
Freyja shall breathe my new reign at dawn  

The old wars are over but our fight shall ne’er end,

─ Lo I see my father


ASPAR (Arnay Rumens)  © 2013

As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep

the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel

like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.

His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.

The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat

that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.

Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?

And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face

in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,

but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,

hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed

on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.

There are certain parts of misery
That never made sense to me.
I never caught on to the self harm thing,
I figured I already felt bad enough.
I never drank it away,
Because a hangover was just a reminder
That putting a coat on
Doesn't stop the snow.
DABDA doesn't make sense either.
How can you be angry
About something you haven't accepted yet?

I do now understand masochism.
I certainly don't practice it,
But I get it.

The thing with masochism
Is that you really have to love it.
You really have to let go.
My nerves are just nerves.
My skin is just skin.
My eyes just make drawings out of ****.
******* purple from the fourth wall
Letting the people eat a different truth.

My brain on a steady loop
Of Whose Line Is It Anyway reruns
Just waiting to invent the next thing
We all take for scripture.

Walter was history's best fisherman -
history's best minnow fisherman.
He combed and cleaned his net
like a lint trap or a summer screen door
so delicate, seaweed fibers, mussel shells.
He fished more of a dance, a twirl
his arms up and down and around and always
spun in the shallows like a waterspout
he would glide his butterfly net through the lake
and capture little fish he placed
into a sand castle bucket filled halfway with water
he would always pour back into lake.
He was strictly a catch and release fisherman.

All the mothers on the beach would stare
at Walter and his water waltz and at his mother
who stood next to him so he wouldn't fall.
It was hard not to stare at Walter
always alone with his aged mother
and he had to be at least a teen by now.
Perhaps it was hard to tell, autism doesn't age well,
but we had been beach regulars for fifteen years
and Walter and his mother had for ten.

The last time I saw Walter he danced and fished.
I laid on the beach with my cousin and we observed
his patterns and his mother his rock who stood there
for ten years with the minnow fisherman.
The next day my own mother cried
more than when her own mother passed
and she told me, she died
Walter's mother died

Even now I stand in the shower skin deep in water
and think about where Walter is now.
I see him in my mind dancing in some bath tub
with a butterfly net in some foster home
without a mother to break his fall.

River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,

                              you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.

Shards of sail staple sky to sea as fingernail-thin boats lean in to the horizon.
The surge of surf converses constantly with the silent shore, urging its message upon the oblivious beach.
My children scramble on the man-made groyne, a facsimile of wild rock, in which they find caves 'with a proper rock on top' (Bea) and 'a hundred miles deep' (Willem).
We are here on bikes, salt wind in our hair, and my *** slowly absorbing moisture from the almost-dry sand as they unburden their youth upon the rocky playground.
And then come the treasures.
A flat shell the size of my palm and worn pearlescent smooth.
A fossil pebble of concentric ingrained ripples.
'Something amazing Mummy,' comes the cry. 'You have to see this stone; the colour of Coca Cola,' shouts my boy.
More treasures emerge and are grafted on to the sandy pile.
Quartz-like lumps and a mussel entangled with tiny seaweed strands and miniature white shells, like micro leaves and hints of feta in a fancy restaurant.
The boy wears welly boots, no socks, and a plastic medal around his neck. 'Batman, Batman, Batman,' comes the cry, while Bea determinedly scans heaven and Earth for jewels to stud her imagination.