'F'

Fff: my favourite word stopped short,
in the nick of time. Voiceless air
dissolves from teeth and gums
like sand through fingers,
or an hour glass.

'F for Failure': the red-ink smear of Tabloid red.
In the font of blood they baptise Gods:
a dizzying cycle of winch and drop,
winch and drop... ascension,
uplift, sag and fall... fall.

Brains bloat like sponges, swelled;
wires clog with soot, ash
and silicon - the seam of moist grime;
eyes grope a pair of double Fs...
a bit cheap?

The Long Drive to Ithaca

(Tiger Woods)


Eagle-eyed scrutiny
in a talon's clasp -
the taunting grasp
of knowing fingers.

Rapid uplift,
coil
and uncoil explosion -
thrust
with a rocket's trajectory.

Out of kilter -
his affirmative tick
droops under the grind
of spent, slackening cogs.

On the fairway's trim,
in the tree-top dapple,
with the fallen leaves
he stands.

Hiatus...
Pendulum swing...
Silhouette.

She arcs -
the curvature
of a hooked-beak,
primed,
breath tantalised
on the verge of imminence.

In the rushed embrace of gravity
she falls from height -
strikes the apex,
bites, rips,
rolls and writhes
in the ecstasies of wild precision -
a little death...

And a smile
penetrates his lips
in a succession of waves -
like the spread of electric tide.

"Lilies for Lily"

Sat in the pews
we pick up our cues religiously -
respectfully.

Gravity's noose -
so strange and numb.

You were country air,
garden gloves and secateurs,
the salt breezes of Sligo.

Not the type for slow-diffusal:
no shadow drift from life
but swiftness of light.

"Lilies for Lily" -
they crackle an outbreath
of plastic.

Beneath this crust
the sealed caves echo:
loss of warmth,
memory - a cold,
clogged sponge.

Under her weight
his tears drip
dense necklace pearls.

Sir Patrick Moore's Monocles

I watched 'The Sky at Night' on BBC:
lunar oceans, year-long storms on Saturn...
Into the blinking rectangle I typed
'patrick moore monocle'. He owns three or
four. 'I never wanted to wear glasses.
I can just pop this in when I need it.'
How on earth do they stay fixed to his face,

wedged in the socket ridges of his eye?
But then, what holds this planet in the sky?
What if it's his monocles holding us
steady - some primal co-dependency
between these unearthly halos of glass
and our primitive sphere? I think we should
listen to what they are saying to us.

~

I am Sir Patrick's oldest monacle,
and have witnessed your insatiable thirst:
your thirst for knowledge to conquer your fears.

You wield the red biro of right and wrong
over children who recite Gospels of
modernity: you shake them, sift for dreams,

cleanse them of instinct, all but rigid fact -
they are blood diamonds and you bleed them white.
Your oak galleons scour the distant globes:

you are the Conquistadors of Science.
Holy Wars sets creed-scrolls ablaze upon
stakes, strikes nails through the spines of holy books.

I see lost youth, I see slaves, genocides.
I see fear of the beautiful unknown.

Can you keep a secret?

My business is forgery:
I forge a thick-proteined
armoury of steel.

I salivate for metal:
molars grind the bullet.

At night I play the scented
masseuse, oiled up, alone
with my lavender candles.

My business is forgery:

I forge a thick-proteined

armoury of steel.

fragments

youth: like sketching out
life in pencil, a fear of
ink indelible
~
down the stones I claw,
lurching on hind legs: morning
freeze on arched bare feet
~
eyeing-up queue jumps,
latching onto prosperous
currents, bleary-red
~
no harvested heat,
the duvet pulled from us in
the cold steel of night
~
the morning caress
of your kiss on my lips: a
double caffeine shot
~
my shoulders sag like
contented hammocks: she is
dispelled to my dreams
~
they trade their limbs for
poppies: the glorious men
in wasted Glory.

Provence

When thunder hollows lungs
the moment's past -
a fastened chain;
when lightning strikes the
cedar tree to puss
she's rust in my gut:
dead among the sheaves
in the wet meadow turf,
tears raining down the glass
of my reflection.

Lightning lights the leaves, Autumn fire
burns to dust;
a murdered breeze
dead upon the stump -
wings flailed, slumped
on ash.