All Hail! Summer

hard summer rain
leaves a stark image –
your snowy nipples
peas frozen on the vine –
nature beats industry

Soggy Crunch

middle mangement –
can’t even control their
own middles
their crunch starts at home
one thousand, two thousand, three

Dog Soup

Today I’m eating my dog.  His bones give a literal feeling to the credit crunch as I crack them in my month for marrow.  The old man dispatched him quickly; all over the country.  His soft white fur lines the slippers of several lawyers wife’s, his meat is resting in the window of a well known middle class butcher and his skull will soon be high London art.  I’m left with a bag of bones and bits for soup.  I threaded a dewclaw onto a tendon and fastened it around my neck and boiled the rest in tined peach juice.  He’ll warm cleaner feet tonight, but I won’t have to share my breakfast cabbage.  When the world turns my way again, I’ll use the DNA from the claw to clone him anew and after church we’ll once more dance in the local park before a heaped Sunday lunch. A Candle Maker is never out of work for long, so I’ll sleep deep for the morrow.

Sticky

mote to self
waste not want not
recycled post-it
notes world domination
our world is covered

Happy Happy Sad. Repeat.

Looking out through my reflection
I hear the pride of the Robin,
chest puffed into the early sun.

Below fevered Sparrows strip-mine
last years leaves into untidy slag.

A weary Gull struts centre stage and
the heavy footed dance begins;
hobnails softened on the heads of worms.

Dark under Rhododendron cover Boris
watches all with a commando crawl,
a black cloud oozing forward as
whiskers whip back the crowds.

A disgusted banging razes all hope;
only still and silent remain whilst
the warm imprint of the hand of God
fades slowly inwards from the sky.

In the bathroom I shave the frown
from my face; lighter now that
I don’t see myself staring back.

Outside, courage tickles away
tightness from bellies as
they lurk outside my world.

Tweet Tweet

birds rise early
to micro blog the morning –
new dawn for old

Hugging the Devil

It’s funny how you can become that which you hate the most.

Sit with a murderer all day long and you’ll want to kill them.

This can happen only if you are the object of their hate.

Then, of course, it is not murder but only  self-defence.

Love works in the same way; powerfully yet  slow.

This is why a good priest will at first sit outside the cage,

watching carefully, waiting for the bars to bend in his favour.

For only then may he enter and safely hug the devil.

Hedging

flailed white sticks
of the winter beech hedge –
my shattered nerves

The Silence of a Dry Twig

A dry twig off the old branch
of the long dead oak tree,
that stands alone against
the slow outside curve of the
more than man deep stream.

A dry twig held in two clean
fingers and an everyday thumb
chambers the silence inside,
the prize of the noisy mind
that now pushes skin on wood.

A dry twig cracks its silence out
freezing rustling feet and closing
cheeping beaks; soothing wind,
water and thought into a single
image that stops the clacking clock.

A dry twig severed and emptied
discarded on the muddy bank,
is tidied away to the magpies
nest high in the dead oak tree
where silence rarely falls.

Channelled

i
Freedom is a White Dot.
In a state where even thought is vicarious, broadcast
wholesale, there is no struggle. No freedom fighters.

The free are seen every day, hidden only by last years drab.
Backgrounders; talking, playing, sitting almost off camera.
An underground of conscientious objectors; questioning.

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