A Tooth Extracted

 

A Tooth Extracted

 

Maybe O’Brien reached into my mouth;

to pull a tooth like plucking weeds

where flaccid gums had gone to seed

and thick the blood that comes to bleed

thistle purple gouts and crone’s disease.

Between forefinger and thumb in distaste,

dispassionate holds it to my swollen face,

and with toneless voice I heard him state,

‘imagine my boot grinding skull and pate

forever - this certainly has been your fate’.

Could well have been some other spook,

or maybe it  was you who left me shook

and reaching for my fluoxetine.

What teeth I have left shape silent screams,

while tinkling with wretched ivory keys,

toss off crushed velvet songs on satin seas

of truth flies somewhere on the breeze,

anxious remembrance I troubled leave,

and find lost hours to sometime grieve,

wind back through youth that you did thieve.

We’ll unlace the boot that stamps the face

and leather straplines with old fingers trace.

A Cloven Tree

 

A Cloven Tree

 

Time grows in ripening apples

falls far far away from a cleft tree,

rots in ruts, bedded in clotted ground

by perspiring muddy oxbow lake,

where slow those worms sleep 

burrowed not deep enough within,

beneath that spreading parent leaf.

Cloven in two by one pure blue

lightning bolt that swift struck like snake

venom brings forth gnarled twisted face,

carved leathery on a thick peeling bark,

drawn in screams upon a dreaming dark.

Time comes in ripening apples,

and a cloven tree will fruit and shed

a basketful before it’s dead.

Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Vikings at Eagles surging on a boy’s world,

see they’ll shear your curls, tell those growing girls

how my teacher smelt of cough drops, 

wrinkled prunes, cockleshell heroes, aniseed rocks,

what taught was nothing much learnt and not a lot,

she's wielding the shears your mother lent her,

puts you on her tight sweatered knee, tells stories,

of magic kingdoms, magic nails, magic rings,

there’s, after all, something magic in everything.

Hermes, we’re all balanced on top of the world

and, hey, 'look at me, Ma, look at me',

but that stuttering pistol’s shaking in his grip,

while Filipina are flooring warm wet water trips.

Kid in carriage, his glaciered face out the window

swelling in smug grin on the stopping train

between here and here, ahead cut clean off the cuff

she's pounding the other way and only stems remain,

bleeding sap upon her Côte Sauvage’s ball traps.

No longer in need of watering, sometime sane,

toting misfired pistols aimed at miswired brains,

screaming at white chalk black boards in boredom:

here’s to pretty shells planted in neat rows,

here’s to Mary and her garden green grows,

here’s to jagged pack ice in blood soft snow,

here’s to stoned hopscotch born still unborn,

here’s to boy interrupted and here's daggers drawn.

Footsteps in the Dust

 

Footsteps in the Dust

 

And so as we must inevitably fall to rust,

pacify and soothe all that once was lust,

minds turn on TV, turn off books,

turn to leaving footprints in the dust.

 

For everything there was a season,

what we once dropped becomes strong reason,

white wooly haired flocks are legion,

our shepherd guides mobs to far regions.

 

We scythe through ripe wheat in waves,

gather green shoots from horizons’ graves,

exit theatres after act three of five act plays,

to fall from the edge of all the world’s stage.

 

Whose footsteps trample in clumsy horde

those places to keep us from our Lord

saved and put by all these twilight times,

think nothing of motive and less of rhymes.

 

Yet a watching wraith who cannot find

peace save for in his lover’s dancing mind,

knows all we leave behind becomes us,

just shallow footprints in shadow dust.

Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

He’s back and you’re the clothes horsey horsey,

here’s his pole and a line running at angles of high hat

with a touch of traditional coolie in red

and hard-working legs akimbo on that old marital bed

or saddled with saddlebags at least,

rubbing floured bread in plenty of soured yeast,

a disappointment in risen dough and not much baguette,

but take a role, any role, sou sou west of drole,

cued off course and left of down stage centre,

spread butter Marmite and she does repent her

haste them to the airplane steps bestrewn with blooms,

a cool aloha and lei and she’s seen some better days

he might be thinking, looks her up and down and drinking,

licks complimentary matchstick open pink cocktail umbrella,

lacks guts or doesn’t have the heart to tell her

we’re widening our horizons by closing them off,

you’re sucking straws and I’m clutching cloth,

and glad with the diversion of that persistent moth

who hurls herself at candles, cannons off naked lights,

falls finally into your saddle bags, a crisp amongst the litter

of books hawking things living longer, living fitter,

tangerine liver, tubes of lubricant, anti-aging cream,

hot gossip, hot topics, and endless conversational streams

of absent friends and whence does it lie, this lost dream?

While she says to me, am I not beautiful,

you did not tell me so, not today, so puts foot on the gas,

and won’t wave in remembrance while driving past.