Author Archives

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Post-Stoning

Audio version

Take the glamour off

Chipped nails,

Cracked coffin lid

I am done with grave-digging

It is finished

He told me there was no going back

If nothing else, I believe what I see

I’ll be your witness

If you make me a reliable one

Now the woman

The sinful one,

Caught in the act

I see the fault-lines slicing her

Into pieces of you, him, them

Hoard of voices bellowing

Warning

She’s a dangerous one

Marked by her desire. You keep away

Cats in heat have nothing on

Her inescapable hunger

Teeth within heart-finger-mesh

She is a net that will swallow you whole and spit out fragments

Owl-coughing wing-swoop death

And lonely

Like the lynx,

Solitary and content to pad the echoing snow-killed slopes

And never lonely

She is a heath-wren in spring

And the honey-bracelet myrtle-leaf

The dagger-tip Hakea pointing outward, and to the sky

She killed me and now I unearth from

My ashes and rain-soaked fields

Repentance

Fire baptism branding

Bark scorch-marks and blackened skin

Survival of the fittest,

The unchosen chance of the leeward

He said go

I am going.

by

Nothing’s amiss then

suddenly

Negative pressure

Mist feels fine

Blood simmering beneath

Go to fill the kettle

Waterless

Boiled down to bone

Still clear to the irises

Walk slowly to shade

Lava pillow glowing, growling

ruptured cap quake expulsion

I am criss-crossed hollow mined harrow

Can’t get burial out

No aerial stand-by

Not even an emergency yet

Drawn and quartered in the waiting room

Everything tastes of you and I am suffocating

So be it

There are worse ways to be awake.

by

Curiosity

Was an efficient assassin

That’s not the whole story, she says

Without giving her a timeline

I make my offerings to hope

Without needing a true name

I leave my cave and begin with slow, eager, thankful steps

Back towards your mystery

Going by old trails of birthright and mountain singing

Cool solitary air and visits from hands

Expecting nothing except

Correction

Peace

Pain

Sorrow

Goodness without limits.

by

Drumroll Fear

Thanks for the wake-up

Good games are short ones

Recapitulation

Postulation, proselytisation

Power bank sharp little left

Curve past the drafts

Sometime shakeless

Could be colder,

Take the temperature away

Far here where is the only space right

Caught now finally

Heavy metal trap

I lost less

We gain, growing

Pain only

Sickness for sale

Passed over pale

Perfectionist retail

Re-mail your post to overengineered host

Something will give.

Always gotta you.

by

This fucking game

I just don’t want to play,

Sometimes

So here is my hand

Blanks and jokers and an abundance of

Can’t be bothered

I used up all my best anger

On imaginary kings and countering

Small hands and suspected foul plays

Let’s not forget the hearts

Two aces, at least

Diamonds on the inside

Stop pretending to be a lone shark

My partners know my countenances

If nothing else,

I’ll donate a black queen as voodoo collateral

And dance,

Watching them all from the wings.

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Ghost Loss

Perhaps, as they say

Everything is tapestry,

I was simply

Seeing upside-down and making

Faces from lines of trees

Seeing churches in crumpled scenes

From this side, a fool

From another, an invalid

Either way, don’t deny me

Adjustment time

Sudden restoration to right orientation

But still seeing those shapes

Maybe always will

Maybe you can too,

If you want

But who has time to court weakness

It is strength to know

One’s own speed and wisdom

To know how far one can travel

No folly to admit loss

Even of something you were always

Convincing yourself

Was only your imagination.

by

There is no one solution

To our dissolution

We desire an endless peace

Communion

A settling, a smoothing out

A relief from the dints of every slight sound and thought

That keep us wakeful

The small, subconscious bumps

These peas hidden, prodding

Bruising even through piles of featherdown

Keeping us turning,

Over and over

Most placed unwittingly

Through no fault of others, or our own

Of sabotage we will not speak.

We cannot blame You

When sunset and sunrise follow one another

Only by Your bidding, and Your love

Is the rhythm by which we rise and fall

In spite of agony I know

Your sweetness

Soft, steady

I cannot help but worship, discounting pain

At this, I am still more in awe

And praising You, cannot help

But rest

Even here, in my displaced state

I love You more.

by

uncalmed

Here and everywhere she has been, nowhere fits except that she makes it. Bliss only exists in manufacture, for all its singing and scheming to get her attention. That she knows this should be a boon, but it feels more like a burden she’s refusing to lift.

After times of flow, these shallow doldrums are always more testing. There’s a current of petty discontent swirling. She should look at the sky more. Clouds make her own evaporate. She watches inkspots instead. She’s misusing matter, shallow-breathing and keeping the Spirit at arm’s length. This time will be less underground perhaps, or perhaps not because no-one needs to see these slips; it can’t serve any purpose to be talking about your lamp’s flicker.

Repeat and fear and repeat. Far too practised in this skill. Maybe the mould is in her heartwood, and she’ll have to wait with its fruit standing out from her weak points. There’s no-one who would pay a surgeon to deal with this. Besides, even she knows the hierarchy of needs and signs off daily on her own contentment.

Stay, seeker. That’s all you need to do.

That’s all she doesn’t want, and all she can’t help.

by

Cannibal Kingdom

Audio version

Always Eve’s idea

To give ear to the long one

In the interests of equity

Ecological democracy

Give pleasure a chance

Reconnaissance, not romance

Man retains enjoyment

Yet perfect, pleasing, God-sent

Husband, home, employment

Become vaguely insufficient

It’s because she gathers

Novelty, her search-image

It’s supposed to serve her

The urge to collect

Into her arms the lovely, fallen

Entire orchard of paradise

And lose herself in the giving and receiving

But again she’s coming to

With its hard tongue inside her

Eyes open under thick scales

Slip-squeezing muscular

Air only a prayer away but

Dusky, half-forgotten…

Squirm out of cold coils

Back to the warm, honest soil

Of birth and rebirth

The cinnamon-scent of earth

Listening for holy footsteps

Hearing murmuring of wasps

Chasing nectar-dripping skin

And so it begins

Anew

Beside her in the furnace

Gold calf forming, reliquefying

She drinks in each burning breath

Long, deep, uniform

Sweating out the venom

Thinking of eternal love

And on the third day she rises

Sloughs the grey, blistered skin

One long, untidy tangle

Walks upright again.

by

In defence of silence

Audio version

Go to the water. Sit

At the feet of the Casuarinas

Cushion of Dahlwah’s shed silver hairs

Where lost children flee

Listen for the stories the women told

Wait

Here on the mossy toes

Of the sandstone tower

For the rock warbler to whistle

In between insects

From its sideways perch

Walk with me

Stalk the blue marron before

It shoots into the sandy gloom

Tea- coloured mirrors of yesterday’s rain

Stay

In this breathing, declaring forest

Unfurling itself from forgotten dust

This does not need to be solitary

But how else can I hear them speak?

Listen with me

Let words coalesce in the spaces we leave for them

Let love do the rest.

Go to the water. Sit.

Wait. Listen.

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