Category: writing

  • limbs and stones

    limbs and stones and
    sticks and bones and
    snicker snack those
    limbs will crack and
    bones will grind
    between twin stones
    while pricked with sticks
    while you are
    hagstone peering and
    hagstone fearing
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold iron
    cold iron cold

  • Only Just

    There was a dreaming of that narrow living room, and my place directing from the far corner: move stage right, turn down bass, less delay, crouch as if in pain, sing it again…

    You thought some suggestions were madness, but weren’t we all actors in the theatre of the absurd? That’s okay, I would find myself saying again, I pushed too hard and I understand that you cannot see what the madman sees.

    Ignore them when they said that bass can’t sing, can’t chord, just play that thing. And so he did, like he was wont to anyway. I was both superfluous and absolutely necessarily all the same.

    What use was my lingering? Affection, I suppose. Maybe a little spite as well.

    Just like that faded dream.

    Along came a summons. Paired with a wonder: Was it only just a dream?

  • Wandered wood

    I think you wandered wood with me, back before we were young — your laughter trailing out behind you in scarlet ribbons as I follow, stepping over the old deadfall log, under the lichened overhanging stone. We wore horns, you and I, mine forked fingers and yours living bone, and we tore through the overgrowth, and under ossified bone.

    Hallo, hallo, you said to me, I have become oak. And you stood tall and elder on the hill over the bog. The bone white birch laughed as they swayed under your canopy and the frogs’ voices rose to a terrible storm.

    For my part, I longed to be fox and I curled my burning tail around we for added warmth in the den you offered up for to be my home. I barked as the moon hid her face behind a mask of clouds, content to be held within you.

    And we held things that way until the autumn came and then winterfall, the burning of my tail meant to keep us warm.

    Through cruel months we held.

    It was the waking that broke the spell.

    How I hated that dismal sound. That breaking, shattering our song.

  • drawn

    i stone of bone flint smoke
    i acorn of mandrake
    mistletoe and thorn 
    i mantic the needle pine --
    can you ache of sickle moon?
    then draw me down
    into your loam
    down into your song

  • tired long

    perhaps it is only
    because i am tired,
    if so
    i have been tired
    for a very long time
    but i have not
    been able to dream
    those kinds of dreams
    in a very long while, or
    i realize those dreams
    were never meant
    for me

    so i carve them away
    with rust-pitted blades
    at the end of a tired
    long day
    watching dreams
    slip down the drain

  • knowing, of sorts

    i hold to storm sky and
    give to barrow flint
    recalling all these
    dreams i am, knapped
    to a razors' edge
    at the scrape of bone

    chill, cast shattered
    each wonton drop
    for the fell heather,
    scree to quench the day

    i ache to not
    ache to know

  • bramble gate

    down along that night river
    just a wee drink to forget
    boots wet at the bank
    with these soles worn thin

    maybe, baby, i'm never
    gonna find my way back
    from this bramble gate
    cos two coins, i have, and
    some lives like mine are
    bought on the cheap

    cats laughing in lead*
    as they swap laps, boiling
    from red vinyl seats
    in a wrinkled mirror—
    searing way down

    already, i am ready
    to burn october, and
    maybe, baby, i don't
    want to find my way
    back to the place
    where i come from

    * the Pb type; ask Robert Plant about it if confused

  • dollhouse

    Picture this, I said by way of gestures, and less of word:

    dreamscapes & lemondrops
    discomfitures & dollhouse memory
         (i dress pretty one day)
              over tea, biscuits, the telly
                   and her rye
                   (always, there is rye)

    keepsake those now,
         those nicotine bones,
         those tar stained ivories
              all in tow with the
    mustperfumed gingham of a 
         silent generation
              slipping to broken stone

  • night train

    scratches stand testament
    to an erosion of caring

    transients in many lives
    only too happy to cast scars
    before they hop aboard
    the next night train
    heading out towards the stars

  • spirit alone

    echo drops the cave
    shall we deeper delve?
    here, roots still tangle
    writhing their way down
    giving away from doors
    to raw in stone
    to blind all light
    give to silence of bone,
    listen to ticks and
    echo drop, and to
    spirit alone