Saturday 10 March 2018

The Dreams You Can Taste


The Dreams You Can Taste

Some say that, if you listen hard enough
you can hear when other people’s dreams cause cancer.
All they ask is a blank piece of paper
and a smart phone to steer her by
to look deep into the psyche for cupid’s answer.
Now awakened from a dream within my mother’s dream
like some nowhere man drifting aimless downstream
falling fully formed from Lennon’s scream.
Jumbled amongst his sheets, wringing wet with sweaty
tongue matted to the tangled taste of pillow.
Shaking, thrown awake by some vile Angel’s kiss
where Arthur’s still ensnared Merlin now insists
on singing songs half remembered from The Abyss.
She exists in our dreams now. Barely shocked awake.
Lionness. Poem in my heart. What of you?
You were there, of that I am certain,
the milk in your breasts giving life to my son
but only in a mirror, rear viewing you towards the left of my vision
the result of a young, brief union. Moving on.
I saw England, captured and fixed by stagelight,
limelight laughing, as her car overturns, takes turns and turns about
giving her barely time to shout and the blood will out.
Oh, lover, you think cartwheeling with you didn’t hurt,
my face with yours ground to nothing but dirt?
The librarian years spent dustily researching three times why
when all you did was crash and die,
even before you knew how to Google it.
The boys you kissed, the lives you risked, the angels wasted
our dreams of future bliss before they were tasted.
Pulling away from the wreckage, another face
lies smiling on a hospice bed, breathing shallow.
Skin sallow yellow, like bitter tallow.
He grasps my hand the candle flickers in haste.
He mouths love and I strain to hear, slowly paced.
The music once played, the lost games recalled,
the Angels have us here enthralled,
you settle back with blanket eyes,
to watch dark gathering clouds in the skies.
And Angel, why do you blush and rush to kiss
then disappear into memories’ mist?
Oh yes, we sat and talked. You took my hand.
Brushed off the debris and showed me dry land.
Released me like some rocket to orbit your star,
then told me I’d strayed off course too far.
The spell was broken, the dream was gone,
now set the joysticks for the heart of the sun,
where Lennon had already faced the starting gun.
Yes. Some say that, if you listen hard enough
you can hear when other people’s dreams cause cancer.
But others look deep and search for the answer.












Saturday 3 March 2018

Tear Her All to Pieces


Tear Her All to Pieces

Wind riffling waves across fields of wheat
Richard the Lionheart crosses, sheathes, meets and greets
 in her pale remembered sun.

A warmed-over stream where sticklebacks swim
boys scream, turn over lost doors for rafts and grin.
to voyage downstream before they can run.  

Innocents peer deep into rushes and reeds
where small mammals tremble amongst the grasses and seeds.
Past her echoing ghosts of days long gone.

Yellow matted banks of tangled snapdragon
shot through with rippling nightshades, ochres and laburnum
she recalls reverberation of cannon and gun.

She flirts at the borders in the forest of the mind
her throat and breasts bare by thoughts and design
shudders to the shake of the drum.

Hem-locked Lords, now the lady Bella Donna faint smiles.
She listens with understanding to distant shouts of the child
strapped tight, bound to, never undone.

Her looking glass rubbed smooth by time, she still recoils,
when Lionheart raises sword, signals to bring him her spoils,
ripping limbs apart from each other one.

She glimpses returning boys, she watches and listens
to joyful shrieks, where tears on their cheeks now glisten
in her pale remembered sun.