Assent of Hope

Scraped skin:
Beneath, a layer of pale white.

Fear of the impinging shards
On clusters of vulnerable veins.

And then the loving nod...

Between the quiver and the sigh
Falls the assent of hope.

Streaming with red, my veins,
Orchards of tulips in bloom.

Below Normal

Here among streets of unseasonal rain

I’ve wondered and groped in misguiding mists,

Tempted by traces of street-corner smiles

Flickered from the hallways of dreams.

Clouds still are up in congested valves,

My heart now veined as drought-ridden fields.

Borne in the hibernal currents of breeze

How shall I shore my anchorless bark

That is tossed among dismembered leaves?

Crossed by the buses with shutters up raised

I stutter in coupes with lamps without light.

Peeping through gaps of doorways now closed

I yearn for the unlimited fragrance of sun

Where flickers might flower and colour my grey

And shower my sails with petals of spring.

Chorus of the Playthings

Ranged along shelves as puppets in plays
We've flattered and flopped or soared and stooped
In scripts that others have fashioned in whims.

Wired in screws that pierce to the bone
Ours are hours of fields unsown.

So fitted and decked in finery and glaze
We cackle and buckle in calculated haze
And wait for the titanium hammers of days
That paste our forms into infertile sand
Which trickle into bell-jars of time.

Severed and sawed into stultifying parts
Ours are figures on en-wrinkled cards.

Hymn of the Magi c.2012

Here at the drizzle-dripping drainpipe of time

Born was the babe that prophecies foretold.

Missiles had flown at the hour of his birth

And money along untraceable Swiss-banking chains.

Swaddled in the sewers of larvae and lice

His was the need of miracles of lore.

Rather he would starve in uncaring heat

Or riddled with malarial fevers would lie

On unattended beds with concert of flies.

Throned atop heaps of rubbish they’d still

Hurl at us sermons of sour-rotten phlegm

That’ll churn our livers in pain.

Thrown up in circles of such stinking shame

How shall our winds bear unforeseen spring?

Fixed into lightnings of en-clouded wombs

I gaze beyond curtains of unbecoming mists

And pray for the tumult of that crowning force

Whose refrain is Fire and the Rain.