Mirrors

 

Mirrors

 

 

And they come to her with eyes weeping wide,

sob, ‘fear naught if within dreams you hide,

for Angels will wash over you in cleansing tides,

bearing secret gifts of sweetest slumber,

spell kissing words you will always remember’.

And, hearing them, she did reply:

‘Yes, come to me in love's disguises

on the glorious day that Angel rises’.

 

 

Am I yet quite awake or dreaming still?

Swept down four salt serpent rivers:

if awake, then why does this place

heap pellucid hail on unmelted shivers?

Buccaneer sails loom, form lifeless limp shacks

massing congealed into mountains, rich black

grim frowning, in their own shadows drowning

deep all those who dare think to look back

lost in ploughed wondering. Roaming mazes

hip deep in ruts, furrowed by tunnelling hope,

behind and forward hang dangling loops

circling - neck-tangled in strong noosing rope.

Friendly Angel, now blind-light my way:

my upraised shout summons you from shade

to guide my still born pen in letters round,

so we may together compost these ashen pages.

Monstrous, marbled by my blame on pedestal high,

she sports wings of knives to blood-let pink flesh sky,

beating her fans, pounding like thunderous war drums:

She comes, she comes, she comes.

 

I come, I come, see how fast I come,

streak in blazing bullets from gatling guns,

my red halo brighter than scarlet dying sun.

 

What is your will? To bend me again?

To learn me your language, loan me your pain?

Kiss my wanton hand, sour any sweet lost refrain?

 

Peace. Stand back. Approach not so near,

while your audience is muted, aghast in fear,

so answer. Where am I and where this place?

See, I’ll kiss blossom-blue tears from your face

there free-falling in jagged parkour, paper trace

those pedlar tracks back to spring’s source.

Arch-Angel, a false half-light tints your eyes,

that black daub streak does in two divide your look,

sad strokes, made by a lost boy’s charcoal fingers,

mixed within wetted cheap tin lids of market stall

water-coloured penny dreadful paint-boxes

bought with his old Grandmother’s love.

In him, her never shaken trust and devotion

swells so great, it does suck-out all time’s venom.

Her sweet rivers will quench with yearning.

walls of fire such as these here burning,   

                         

                                   

To know her heart, seek not to know, no further go,

if this home must be, so then here dwell below,

where I’ll give you seeds of time to plough and grow.

 

In these fallow fields of sand-blasted winter?

No. My mind three times in three now splinters

under your conjured pallid moon. It warms not.

I’ll never sow perished seeds to sprout and rot.

They’ll form ammonias: shroud what lies beyond,

woolly blanket us as in sweet partial Angel song

hummed saccharine soft. Yet how could it not be?

Well so, come,  let’s part this veil, now try to see 

with watering eyes, blinded by limelight stages,

utterances howled, cues stole from cursed pages

of foolish, thoughtless verse, half-drunk composed,

that bleats of wan lamb’s tears and thorned rose 

in beats already beaten. Quickly knocked out

by swift soused hacks, every stress a vulgar shout,

every plaintive wailing cry of ‘betrayed, betrayed’

to a yawning immured audience plays

worn out its weary meter. Listen, as a needle skip

backforms us into statues mossed, dust shouldered,

brushed mould that cascades, overtopping Angel Falls:

hearing only your torrential voice, it calls, it calls, it calls.

Frantic with crochet hooks; busy with knitting needles,

drop one, pearl one, stitching that sampler, depicts

aniseed rocks, kept in the bottom of wet silk knicker

camphor closet while our fires rage ever thicker.

Cloves, pressed onto howling toothache sicken,

stench of singeing man-flesh on wicker cooking,

now come nearer, Angel, boil me hot with looking.

 

My body transforms to silver glass for you to see

these ripped wings you stripped to set me free,

wind whispered reasons why we can never flee.

 

Then, Angel, in truth, you have slaughtered me.

 

Who gave birth to himself might see hell’s a fable,

has no need of parents; life or death sits by him well able

beside twelve, all one times nine by three at table.

 

Well, Angel, you will surely marry me at least?

So, where the place, where the priest,

where the wedding guest, delayed from feast

by hooked, gnarled, grim beckoning finger?

Seize my many coloured coat, pull me higher,

rinse me under crow-hooded crooked spire,

whose long-twisted finger does stab my heart

through and through. Stick pin us both to table,

as butterflies to static translucent gauze

for study enmeshed. Still born and anaesthetised,

with permissions black-signed in sin’s ink,

trisect, as our festering pustules begin to stink.

Now, pass to me rings with your sealed vow

crimson kissed with lips, blotted with raindrop tears.

For, when in past futures I need it now,

I will pray with frozen words somehow,

I will anoint your fevers on my brow,

I will raise oaths and curses from below

with salt crust lips to torment love’s bough.

You and I will be always together,

mirrored in imperfect symmetry

where planets will align: Jove, Mars, Pluto,

grown in saturnine rings of perfection slow,

our salt souls ground by pepper mills

then fly cast idly by The Fisherman,

scattered onto briny ocean surface still

like mirror where I now can shiny see,

Angel, we did overreach, and our souls,

glass-splintered into silver pieces three. 

Boy thrown to iron futures yet unwritten or played,

man stuck fast in stone past, inscribed in clay,

while we bide here awaiting our rising days.

 

 

More potent agency lies herein than you can reason:

chilled in spells of jagged ice among hot desert season,

bound by peril’s chains of murky muttered treason.

 

This stiffening albatross placed about my neck

to pendant hang, might appal the devil himself.

As I begin to die, so you begin to live.

Grinding engines can never bring back

what was taken away, they will not

wipe bloody witness from our hands.

Shrieks that echo across black winter-lands,

part of us in three takes blind issue kindly.

You dare to bring me here? Show me again

and again? Where salt-stiffened dry hands

spread flowered rose, wide then wider yet

sticky canker touched to lips, taste fingers,

quicksand cinnamon swamps, sweet, but lingers.

Dive in and drink with lotus eaters, it wipes

like Lethe’s aniseed magnets across tape,

but bass remains, plucked and plucking.

Deleted; yet devious hard drives return truths to light

to see virus overwrite megaliths of memory bites.

My rigid rash hand strict in trembling scabs

pulls at sore flesh, stroked by your oar hands.

Let us set out for shore, rowlocks chaffing

wood grinding metal, shredding all rose petals

churned before us in carpets of bloody flake

left washed in tossed recollection’s wake.

Put into port before oncoming storm,

where we both might see how we were born.

Rest us in dreams by this burning lake,

to sup hot coals and slug bitter heartache.

 

Like cuckoos will we disturb dove’s nest,

seek out those hearts who hate us best,

yield to strong drugged sleep yet never rest.

 

Unfriendly Angel, avast you, retreat,

stand back: shake shadows’ ages.

Your still born pen belayed in letters round,

it may yet compost these pages

found in ploughed slumber. Abandon maze,

abandon boat, wander through in fallow hope,

a door wide open, from within which plays

more than enough tangled noosing rope.

Sink sharp storm’s teeth into flutter-throat,

build crystal hail-hearts into mountains cruel,

rivers of blazing fire surround like moats

those grinning faces who beckon fools. 

Am I yet awake or dreaming still?

Eased towards secluded hearth and home,

if awake, then why does this place

hang with halyards shamed in groans?

 

Fear naught and dream alone in bed,

when Angels grind words into dread,

bear secret words in sweet regret,

leave kissing spells she must forget.

Yes, they come to her in love's disguises

on the glorious day that Angel rises.