February (From “My Word Hoard” chapbook)
Ghostplant
algid air
hiemal
hoarfrost interlocked ice spines
needle beside
unbroken panelake
Feast Of
Torches, Snowdrops, Waxing Light.
Start a blaze, fire up candles.
Goat Whipped
As I’m preggers I can’t wait for the sting
of the dead goat’s thong
on my palms so’s I get a good birth.
As if my bairn’s to sup on a wolf’s tit.
And Romulus and Remus it
O’er folk round abaht.
Tha can hope.
Two goats and a dog sacrificed
this morning blade wiped
wi milk soaked wool,
lads heads daubed
wi warm blood of dead dog and goats,
get thongs out the goatskin, wrap their hands
in the goatbands, shrug on another skin.
All on us lasses line up street
wait on these fit lads,
who all else dangle and flaunt
their goods down the street.
Goat whipped I’m purified
wait for rain to sile it down,
wash away all I’m guilty on.
as I had panic sex three months gone.
Turn Sea's Sod
- HEART-SHIP
About me, I swear down.
I’ll tell thee of treks — how I in radged-days
put up with fretted-time,
sought abode and still do, get bitter tit-care,
in us heart-ship, scary waves’ rolling,
where narrow neet-ogle
often kept us at heart-ship’s stem
when it scurries by cliffs.
Us feet clammed by cold,
bound by frost’s frozen cold steel,
where those frets sighed
marfin about heart;
clemmed within ripped
mind of sea-knackered.
2. CARE-BEGGARED
Town lads have it soft, dunt know nowt
as how us, care-beggared, ice-scratched
sea dwellers wintered in exile,
swayed from mates and kin,
rigged with rime-crystals.
Hail stones bounced off our decks.
I heard nowt there but sea’s groan,
ice-flecked seas furrow. Heard at times
summat like swan’s. And made glad by gannet’s
and curlew’s clamour,
for homely laughter,
gull-shriek for bitter ale.
Hail beat up stone-cliffs, where feathered
spray nattered to them;
often eagles dew-feathered screamed.
No mates sheltered us,
or made us feel minded.
Town folk dunt credit it,
complacent with blessings
and few baleful journeys —
proud and wine-sozzled, how I, knackered,
often on sea-snickets had to abide.
Night-shadow snuffed us out;
snow fell from the north;
rime bound soil; hail felled earth
coldest of corns. So, now, thoughts
mither my heart, that I the deep sea,
salt-waves, should fetch myself on.
3. Nor
Salt yearn moves us gently.
Desire is a gust catcher.
Heart-ship bobs in its harbour,
as it pitches and yaws
to stranger islands.
Refugees homeland seek.
Though embarking, the reckless, skilful, youthful, brave,
do not know what life has in store.
Nor my hands on harp or on coin,
on lasses limbs delight,
nor on owt save wayward water.
4. UNWINTER
These woodlands unwinter too much with blossom,
give too much gold to villages, overbrighten meadows.
World pushes on, all this urges us,
doom minded spirits to leave on flood-ways.
Heart-ship tugs at moorings.
Summer cuckoo’s mournful call urges,
bodes sorrow, bitter in breast-hoard.
If tha blessed with comfort, how does tha know
what some endure on tracks of exile?
5. WHALE-WEND
Heart-ship tugs at its harbour.
My imagination in mere-flood,
in whale plunge, wide in its turns
eager for seas vastness. Gannet yells
as whale-wends, spirit quickens over holm’s deep,
irresistible delights of life are more
than this life that flits on land.
Illness, old age and aggression
wrests life away, bests breath.
(Previously published in The Creative Café)
MR. & MRS. Lumbricid
I feed on the wrinkled dead
I take beneath earth
dark, restful and warm.
Cold, hard soil towards
the surface. I wait.
If water seeps down
I cannot breathe
so must burrow
through moist earth.
My late wife heard
what she thought
was rain up top
emerged for a Blackbird’s beak.
Soon our moon
will shine
treebark get wet
soon I will
leave this old self
above to decay
and show a new self
earthworm moon will rise.
Vividcloud
vividcloud, lookingglassice, mirroredicetautenedbranches,
distantgeesecall
Winter Is A Silhouette
A definition by outline,
colour bled into starkness
a flat surface.
The world is ragged paper.
Shy the inexhaustible shy
of Winter, worry away the rest.
Wear worn decay the rest
hunkers into itself
as if afeard, afeard for itself
barespindlyarms
coldreachgrasp
wintervestige
darkgreyfingerends
springheatsout
Biddy To The Young
You’ve planted fresh
delight in these eyes
who sprout visions again
as when I was a young lass.
You’ve breathed
through my cold embers
stroked warmth
into this thin skin.
My face plumps
and reddens
as your hands find flesh
for my angled skull.
My limbs begin to dress
with buds and colour
for your lustful eyes.
Perhaps these changes
are only in your eyes,
and this puddle reflection
may be false, a false Spring.
My Spear Tree
witches ride this polished barkskin
stag beetles skitter across it
babies passed through this mother hole
rooted in water, air and fire
limbs wear helicopters or keys full of samsara
that spin down to unlock moist earth
dog’s mercury wild garlic dog violets
coronet, brick, centre-bowed sallow
and privet hawk moth haunt these leaves
barkskin for spear shaft, axe handle tough
hardwood that does not splinter
but burns to ward off to charcoal heat.
To Biddy
Scatter radiances of milk
on her icy sod.
Let each brightness warm her earth.
Broadcast flames of oats
on her waters, stoke embers of fish.
Let her waves be ablaze with shoals.
Brush and scrub your home for her visit.
Put her bread and butter on windowsills.
Make her a bed of twigs for her rest.
Waxing light polishes
her crone wrinkles
into maiden’s roundness.
Make her a doll
out of primroses
and snowdrops.
R Ash Wednesday
Thas gonna mucky me forehead
wi old codgers ashes what we burned
yonks since as if it could remove
our guilt and sinfulness for doing so.
As Tha finger paints a cross on me bonce
al see our ancestor crinkle and pop
Like it were fireworks and watch all
harshness and fret go up in smoke.
Al have to go mi sen a wesh afore
a sees our lass else it’ll get her
all wonderin’ an we don’t want that.
Don’t want folk pryin’. No need.
