Strikes

Pripyat

Oberon

The Blues

Wreaking

I hope my deadening soul
Wreaks havoc on them all,
I wrote then to my shogun.

He replied, may I surmise
That life is for the living?
I disputed his wisdom,
And held my breath in my hands,
And spoke alone without reply
That I am unforgiving.

My forehead is a wintry beach;
Slower than a ghost proposed,
Boat-bells sombre in the fleet.

When battalions disembark nearby,
Enfranchised and embittered,
They won’t disturb the dreaming folk
While scarring Hope with scissors.

A single cuttlefish appeared in blue,
I stared into her inky liver,
Then just as sharply darted by,
Bloodied and barely delivered.

Valedictions

Valedictions for you,
We do not accede;
Valedictions for you,
Nor do we recede;

None superseded,
None to subscribe,
No more spun your wool
For pulling our eyes;

No souls contorting
For far-faulted causes,
No more conforming
Under horse-trammeled forces.

Valedictions for you,
No longer we thrive,
Only lessons unlearned
For liars survived.

Causeway

Am I the cause
Of all bad things

I couldn’t help
But wondering;

Am I the way
Beneath the sea

Busload crowds
Come walk on me;

Pilgrims reaching
Chapel’s shore,

See me drown
To bed once more.

Along A Weir-side Way

How slow the snake uncoiling
On weird cerebral lawns,
Grips those moles now grieving
And how the wagtail mourns;
Feet of gruesome coots are blue,
Uprooted and reborn.

His weir-side way gave us today –
Barbed our briar impressions;
His river’s course, unnatural,
Fallacies abounding wherever
Escapes briefly water or weather.
Too late the discourse and the dawn;
Too late misplaced starlings imitate
A feather’s fate forlorn.

A garden in his stomach then,
His bowels behold the bones:
Where self-conceited owls will plot
Their death, I walk the weir alone.

Stateless

First, a state did crack me,
And then the devil
Indivisibly did hack me;
In a dream, I hanged on a heath,
Poured my endless heart out
To thunderous friends
Suspended underneath
Where secrets will not keep,
For you cannot hold a pen
When peaty fens grip
With a potash-painted
Serrated beak.

In the ever-aching distance,
A final burning spire;
Nothing I can do.
Sky-ribs pierced,
Limbic cadences and seditions,
Marshland feet bound
With mallow and rue.

I soaked my face in the lake of the deaths –
I cannot say what I witnessed; instead,
A frozen rotten seagull wing,
A bald and bloodless silver moon.

I heard there is a market
Every weekday afternoon,
Where nature abundantly flows
In shapes of latent marrow
And ample, gravid legumes.

Occupancy

There was a time enforced
I licked therein the back of your head,
Before their gums replaced my tongue
So turned my teeth to lead.

I cannot move for seeing you,
In currency, the emptying sea;
In pastoral ways, bloodhound veins,
Freedom formed from occupancy.

The decision maker’s dossiers
Have your headware stamped;
The prisons, schools and hospitals,
The tanks upon the ramps.

Even time, no less,
With your ages marked;
Should I rescind enriching binds,
Cerebral riots sparked.