Late Leaves

wooded hills with hooded eyes
glance furtively at livid skies
while east wind's cold and bony fingers
pluck at autumn's frail disguise

as lustre drains from emerald crowns
the stars seek out the darkened downs
they tiptoe through the brooding barrows
warm their hands on sleepy towns

Summer Well

the faltering air
warm syrup
oozing
over uncountable green fingers
poking through the moss
above the soft dark loam
busy with ants

below
slow-dancing worms
feasting in the labyrinths of the blind
amid the pale tubers
leafless
inching though the soil
unlit sunseekers
following their hearts
waylaid
below the stones
suspended
like bubbles in the cool still earth

three fathoms down
lies the water
clear turned starless black
unsilvered
mirroring the unseen
inscrutable
biding her time
eyeing the sky
above her breathing hole
a mouth of aging lime and clay
heard whispering in corridors
and abandoned places

cold-skinned and malignant
she lies quietly
patiently
eternally
like a nightmare under the bed
listening to me breathe
willing me
daring me
to put down a single naked foot


can no one save me?

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