Unsung Shales

Slick obsidian panes incite the impish gurgling water

(hurled a thunder-laden mile or more by heaven's fit of pique)

to mirror some last dazzling drops of blood from Hera's dying daughter

spilled at skypool's rim through butchered clouds where shards of fire still leak

Corvid-skinned, the shadowed gables find vertiginous retreat

(or is the gloss-winged ravens' short-lived fluttering a trick of light?)

before they sleep with one eye open stretch their tails and find their feet

ready to defend against the blindly stumbling night

Below, the dripping gutter's brow on spindling trunks so far from earth

clings fast with tooth and nail to sleeping walls whose dusky bricks re-dream

those heady days when long-dead kilns had spawned their calm and ordered birth

unprepared for greatness in Victoria's mighty age of steam

faren wel

your eyes now old, still clear and bright
the body, toils of war made slight
this hand I hold, tho' frail, yet warm and light

...

exchange no words of consequence
against your gaze I've no defence
our common loss becomes uncommon sense

...

the years between hold us in thrall
we miss the night's last footsteps fall
my friend, oh were you ever really here... at all?

...

alone I watch the dawn ignite

Redemption

I sought my god above the clouds
I shouted out
and bent my knee
I pushed my way through milling crowds
But he didn't look at me

I sought my god below the waves
I cast my net
expectantly
I bought his stickers: "Jesus Saves"
But he didn't rescue me

I sought my god beside my bed
A holy book,
some fragrant tea
I found his words and bowed my head
But he didn't read to me

Just beyond this trackless hill
Lush meadow, stream,
and willow tree
in sunlit calm are waiting 'til
I give up seeking me

Fashion

New St Martin's grad
Sequins for the brash and bold
Diamante-clad

The Mollusc and the Pebble

Past mermaid's purse and bladderwrack
she sails in on the Easter tide
The oyster moon's night sky a-strew
with cloud and wind-flung bric-a-brac

Above her ghastly spectres glide,
bloodthirsty eyes and raucous hue
The shingles save her from attack
below the pier's dark underside

Safe anchorage just out of view
amongst the gravelled grey and black
With cobble'd consort by her side
she stays and makes her home anew

...

They lived their life clasped back to back
And when the fragile molusc died
her pebble's flint heart split in two
As sand they joined the living brack

Rain Drop

The shivering of lustrous skin
to grace the softness swelled

A globe of luminosity
from teeming heights compelled

Now limpid pool suspended
Now mother earth's intended

against her soporific glow
the rushing wind
brings tarmac's
sickening
blow!

...

Oh tiny perfect circle
see your glassy wall revolve

Hear your winded volley echo
then into black dissolve

Fair Sport

the dead-eyed stars with stones for guts
hunt refugees, and dispossessed

they silent march
through fields of flies...

who leave the road to lick their cuts
while children trudge on, ten abreast

ground down beneath
carnassial skies...

a lucky few escape the ruts
to find the earth, oblivion-blessed.