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.'
