Angel

Angel

Oh lover, it wounds me deep to mention how  
I've found myself an Angel now. 
The spell is broken.
Go fuck yourself, for we have spoken.
I have blocked your every stony path,
wrecked on rocks your brittle craft,
leave you with regretful laugh. 
Rebox your compass, re-stow steel rule,
fold up your charts, you fucking fool,
for these will never bring you home,
wracked in torments, off course and blown,
cast from paradise to ceaseless roam.


Casual? No, no, it’s more than just:

smacking you up with daggered trust.

It’s backhanded offhand down the line buggery,

some kind of sugar coated, so what, shruggery,

leaving you with another you bereft by fuckery.

Wefting, the heart 
needles, pinches, 
barely pumping
inches.

The thinning blood through gorse gored gnawed flesh,

Lungs seizing, flighting life, choke-piping breath

and trembling the wrists to the very brink,

stroking, but please, no further.
Stoking remembrances 
while throwing back drinks,

diving deep into spasms, 
floundering plunged chasms, 
abyssing the black tunnel-visions

sweating cold fire, water boarding 
drip dripping mindless schisms

until the body swims, the muscles waste;

fevered wraiths warp us to some other place.

And the Angel smiled and said to him,

‘How now, my love, my love, my love?

Why did you sit and stare, amongst the foxgloves?’

So, the little boy looked up, alone and hurt,

and his bare toes pushed at the dirt.

And I think he said:

‘You promised. You promised. It would last,

that faraway spell that we cast,

your future is my past,

our two lives

linked

together

our love

forever.

Unbreakable.’

‘Ah, my love, my love, my love.

Those were but foolish sounds you must never speak of.

Scatter those words amongst your foxgloves.’

So, the little boy, still sad, threw down his pen.

I think it shattered as it hit the ground, then

he frowned and cried:

‘But if I’m writing the words in the book you gave me,

well how can they then ever save me?’

But she was gone in a thrice.

leaving him to spell her name with ice.

Jump cut the shark snip;
parallax the guilt trip. 
Dissolve and fade,

switchback-swim 
through juttering channels,
twist the horizontal hold and blade
out of phases, 
flutterback the pages.
Can you see it now?

The years when we were sick-tired with grief,

robbed of our self-beliefs, 
no energy to turn the leaves,

honour lost amongst the honest thieves.

Judge me not, your honours,

when I confess before you all,

there was a cupboard set into the wall,

a recess, where none could guess
that seconds there could kiss and bless.
Soundproofed sanctum set askance
and barely worth a second glance,
a flaw in their world’s design,

scarcely really there at all,

just a door into fabrics of the facade.

More a wardrobe into another time.

Ask yourselves: was this a crime?

To enter with her there.

No witch seemed she, 
and myself scarcely a lion.

Or if so, certainly a cowardly one at that.

Even a lost knight 
might step across its threshold

with the hand of an Angel there to hold.

Oh, kind old Lucifer, I was once her truest love

but, my Angel there crucified me on her cross,
black words her nails to pierce my palms
 rose thorns to shred my brow and arms
without warning or alarm

left me to cast my lot in with the infidel

approximate paradise here in rebellious hell.

For once I stood on ripped green, scarred Cornish cliffs,

where the rain beats ten thousand tattoos upon the gorse.

The trees are bent blasted, twisted shells.

The weighty sea crashes in swollen remorse,

lightning scores and slashes a terrified heaven above,

tearing the sky in half without a care in thought

to wreck us where we our passion sought.

We stood there together, released the dove.

And, my Angel, soon after took me, in hunger and love.

Come, Angel, I summon you.

I can do that, you know. Never think I cannot.

Because you threw your soul in with my lot.

We entered that place, there is no return,

never think that you and I won’t yearn,

for what, in there, could have there been learned.

I know I can arouse you hot and screaming

as you flit on the border of yesterday’s dreaming.

Beyond buried hedgerows, the mudlark scrapes

in riverdirt, scavenging deep down into our mistakes.

And the Angel caressed his hair and said:

‘How now, my love, my love, my love?

Why amongst this sterile sand so far from heaven above?

So, the little boy looked up, alone and hurt,

and his bare toes pushed at the eternal vast desert,

And sand hour-glassed through his fingers.

And I think he said:

‘If spells were only made to break,

then what becomes of goodness sake?

Does the future lie in the sand,

never an outstretched hand,

and nothing

left here

but the

waste

land?’

‘Ah, my love, my love, my love.

These foolish thoughts will bring the rain.

Scatter these thoughts amongst the grains.’

So, the little boy, still sad, tore up the pages.

and the fragments swirled against the ages

he clenched his fist and cried:

‘But if I’m writing the words with the pen you gave me,

well how can they then ever save me?’

But she was gone in a thrice.

leaving desert sun to shape the ice.

Once

we had driven for hours, seeking a wheat ripened field,

there from the world our passion to conceal,

and every opening in every hedge had refused to yield.

Until I saw the Angel by the church.

The sun beat down upon the hay.

And so, we lay.

We tasted each other.

You were sweet. Like chocolate.

You ripped into me as though I was the last supper.

branding my flesh, scoring my thoughts,

swallowing my smile, everything I am.

Angel, in your sole, you promised rolled up protection,

you calmed, you soothed and sought nothing but affection,

and, indeed, you were perfection:

Your breasts, your thighs,

your glittering eyes

your moans and sighs.

Oh, you swore it would last,

the spell was cast.

Now do I lie sick and pale.

Fevered and shivered,

threshed and wasted,

arrows quivered.

Angel,

just some ailing knight:

punishment metred

out and delivered.

Once.

Long before all of you, there was just one.

With the power to sooth the cuts and bruises,

she showed me books and that pens have uses,

and taught me that kissing should be fun,

as she watched my back in the Maltese sun.

She warned me, though, as she ran her hands through my curls,

that you will break the hearts of many girls,

Grandson,

those eyes are too deep, that frown will scar your brow,

and the weight of the cradle will break the bough.

If you gaze into caverns, you might never return

and rue what in there should never be learned.

Face me, Angel, because I can make you, if I wish.

Before you dismiss me with a kiss.

Oh, we hide our destructive deceiving shapes,

from each of us, but we can never truly escape,

the rocks and cliffs of careless fate.

I loved you all. The heart bleeds, my scars weep,

from words never true and the spells slashed deep,

so many loves, so many faces, Angel, and time, she ever creeps.

Look me now in the eye and never assume that I will cry:

Shred me with your venomed scorn,

as your wings are crushed and torn,

your halo extinguished; your hair stripped shorn.

And the Angel stroked his frown and said:

‘How now, my love, my love, my love?

Why in this cavern? What thoughts and visions do you talk of?

So, the little boy furrowed, creased and scowling,

stood at the edge of the eternal howling,

And observed the brink.

And I think he said:

‘If spells can save you from the fall,

then why does this hold me in its thrall?

Downwards into black murky pit,

a tumble into nought but shit,

to lie bleeding

and crushed

with a head

that’s

split.’

‘Ah, my love, my love, my love.

These idle fantasies but need an Angel’s kiss.

Fear nought; throw yourself into the abyss.’

So, the little boy, took up the book.

He turned and faced her with some look,

he seized the pen and his voice now shook:

‘So perhaps you should give me a helpful shove?

my love, my love, my love.’

But she was gone in a thrice.

because she saw he’d spelt her name with ice.

Come my hearties:

Like Lucifer from the gates of hell,

march we back to heaven, against the swell,

we will man the galleon and fight the flood,

where Cornish shanties stir the blood.

Trelawney shall we this vessel name,

never more hang our hearts in shame,

We’ll breast the seas, we’ll battle for life,

unsheathe the sword, cut free the knife,

fearlessly contest the thrashing Kraken

with lust and blood the Gods awaken,

clash we all against the conflagration,

until we attain the sacred nation.

Never more to gaze into the abyss.

Never more betrayed by an Angel’s kiss.

Perhaps many years passed.

Who can say?

But Angel touched her scar and said:

'My love, my love, my love,

Angel cast me down from above.

She says I sin,

she ripped these wings.'

And the man looked up and barely said:

'My love. Well, that is the way of things.'

Daddy

Daddy

In the morning, I found his letter.

He’d wanted to show me his writing,

bursting with tousle haired five-year-old pride

his foolish, rumpled Grandad by his side

because together we’d spent his young hours

drawing words into hearts and spring showers.

And I’d taught him how to guide his pen,

convinced him that now and then

we’d write down thoughts like all wise men.

In the smudged ink

of one of my old, dusty biros, the letter read:

‘Dear Daddy.

I am sorry I haven’t seen you for a long time.

Your special boy.’

And he’d crafted carefully with thought and love

with hardly a mistake to speak of.

Well, you know, I could have told him.

But all I could manage was a watery grin,

my words held choked as I ruffled his hair,

how in all innocence that this world is never fair.

I wanted to put my arms around him and take it all away,

and tell him how your smile warms my day,

that I have more than enough love for us two,

how I could never bear any harm coming to you.

That you are my special boy, I’d loved from the first

time I’d held you, and how my heart just burst.

I should have convinced him a Grandad is better,

but the truth was already written in the letter.

And these words I had taught him scarred his heart,

a foolish old man, who’d been there from his start.

In the morning, I found his words on my desk.

So I did the only thing I could,

I kissed his brow and I misunderstood.