Queenish

The queen rests bored in a garden
spades and squires at her elbows
and yet she dreams of that delinquent
all rags and bones and slings and stones

Oozin

Lanterns remind me of ponies and ponies of puritans
(In a lake with suds of lye and lines of panned gold)
Puritans create images of hats that sound like
hannibal and hannibal of carthaginian flats
(before they were swallowed up and sold)

Lust

Misty eyed ladies
Hiding behind fronds
In bark thongs
Fitful and trembling
Cuticles split and eyes aglaze
Are the warm limbs and melodies
Of my hurried teenage fantasies

Was it me?

Sentences finished by willpower
Punctuated by quirks in my personality
Perhaps cause mommy was a quiet girl
Or my love was lacking or didn't hug me enough
Or perhaps daddy was lost and a little scared
And i did too much to cover it up with words

Alice

A lonely sheep speaks to a woman with large ears
Short from the war
An unbilicus uncut
Come she says I have a present

Grass as green as grasshoppers
Willows that smile
And a tasty treat too
Of women in heat
And rays of sun
Warm but salty

Our Image

We bathed together today
You dragged the tub into the heather
I arched and you pulled
Wellies to make the naked dash
To screen doors and closed shutters
Covered thickly with bluebird shellac.

It's Not For You

words, sharp like
mistakes, memories, and you
crawl in to make amends

oil slicks prevent
the life-bloom again

cuts thin and deep
barely cradling our
brittle frames

You.

Once back to back
we swivel to meet
cheek to cheek
in an unlit place

By effort of earth
and travelling light
we see the rotund
tracks of our trip

Long, precipitous,
sometimes endless
plains and green
slowly rusting to
a robust Fall

Dawn drags the soft lilt
of a temperate tune
like a flip of a coin
so enduring
and also mired
in furrows of concern

What neatly
nature lays
Also, mischief
displays itself
in winters ices
and wordy silence

With you, ivy
climbs its mottled
pace, serenly
and allows itself
to display
the kinks of time

Does It Have To?

you are
all but mythical

a blur sometimes
in and out
a vision

not really real
but real nonetheless

born of brain
fed by time

but a brush
of fingertips

welcomed more
today than yesterday

Escape

Fealty overrated
A self forgotten
I recapture moments
Between the gulf
And the gut.

Pairs

She had good bedside manner

Her figure was lithe and thin

A gust from the east of nowhere

Five ominous rain soaked brumes

Ship up ship down and whisky

Thick-fingered men with bronzed ears

N said to her there is beauty in a squall

S said to him let's lean over the wet rails