In Glorious Advent

This sullen hock,
my leather'd fever
shall lay in fragrant pose,
with strained mouth
objecting to its demise.

@Steven Francis poems 2010

In Cloves Of Ice

Obelisk in shell
smooth as a diamond devil
nestled in a hornets cove.
The organs throb ~
heart first
lungs entwined,
buttery glands slopping in fissures
while the cadaver yawns in earnest,
dead eyed as sharks.

Bloodcurdling echoes roar over the eyelash forest
as winter descends onto mortal shores,
and the bullet squinted mass hurled to oblivion.
Those pits where fish quiver,
drilled on thistle barbs to be sucked dry
by rats and serpents ~
those splintered gutsy angels.

And hell's things eager to corrupt
salivating to poison hilts.
The murder wax,
glinting swords sequined with ruby droplets
plunge into a zulu moon to skewer song
and slice memory to ribbons.
Another gulp of polished flesh
a twist of knuckle,
there lay the abominable, delicate babes
in a new sound of ages...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

It Takes Longer To Dry In Real Life Than In Film

Rest In Peace ~
as universal as Coke,
and fitting as Wrangler jeans on a printed herd
the world in dire threads.
Blitzkreig bonanza whipped up in a cauldron,
never envy one mans luxury for another dies
wasted in pain.

Welcome to the gunships ~
to the revelry of smoking corpses
and delight of sabres winking in a gore fest.
Time is stretched
or snapped like fish bones,
there is no middle road up for grabs.
Its all grenades or dandelions...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Of Slop and Herds

Wretched gritty scab!
A Red mite burrowing into its decided crowd,
annoying hosts with chicken belches
of cordless mutter and idle observations.
Foul to me ~
thou copper swilled swine!

Orange tanned wart-pig
snouting into the parcels of society
that tickle the nancy heartsrings.
Abandon truth in favour of masked charade,
trading iron streaks for sack hearted minstrels
to blend like pinheads into mud.
A pious mass of freckles ~
wilting in the refuge of crooked affinity,
die slow young mutton.

And here endeth that tragedy;
a story of an empty fist
shattering like tears over mourning grounds.
No more a spirit in the space of prison bars
but a doughy slab encased in brick
and poured into a bitter dung.
Parody with callous edges,
a silly little satan...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Coffin.End

Here lies a dragon
cold like milk fish underground,
lifeless for fables.

@Steven Francis 2010

Pout Crooked

A rich, rock skank
on a rolling Bethlehem.
Never in trouble
but trouble follows you,
another new addition to the human zoo.

Bucket faced cadaver
stitched like thrift store leather.
Reality without reality
mask insecurity with lights,
cheap millionaire on a miserable inner flight...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Lunarscape

It all draws in on itself ~
everything, all must shrug off starry dust
to grow.
Break our cactus cages and venture
to where no horizon lacerates the view;
a place where solid lines are ignored
because of vulgar limits.

The glass edge ~
a momentary lapse into structure,
binding souls to brick without pause,
forging earth to sober nerve.
Grab the eagles tail
to soar above the sickly hell
and reach a liver'd mantle.

Pray tell the holy stars
and religious serenades
that ghosts strike and devils lose;
the burning of hymns is a
phantom ceremony of nightmare.
Walls, bridges, acres and territories
mindless limits to pit and flame ~
insect chants
from atomic guts...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Spectre Side

The poet loves the country air;
no smog or fumes, or fast food vapour trails,
or sweaty pockets of humanity and cigarette smoke.
Just fresh grass and sheep
it just cannot be beat...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

She Who Brings The Ages

And wild as a stream of nails I sit,
ribbed, pinned to a soft chair
arms held on the rests stapled,
crucified to sports channels
like a Messiah to his lantern'd pillar.
The rocks and bones behind me
now dried in mists as if they had not been,
barely do I remember the chapters
those foxglove days when age seemed idle
and old age lay in a distant tomb.
Then in bloom she steps avoiding nooses
at my knotted feet;
the flower youth,
hair cascading over apple smooth shoulders
like silk veils landing on stone,
looking at my grizzled frame with Love
and a still of sadness.
For age allows no beast or kid
to slip its ruddy path,
and time that cruel keeper
will snatch hearts out of gentle clay.

And she will bring the hours,
the disaffected rages,
crystal wings slapping onto granite;
lost echoes leading to diamond shores
where eager electric bolts burrow into wispy thighs.
The crowds and fillet artist
grow as one,
a volcano haired mass nodding and banging
surging toward a sour mob.
When I am dead or dying
she will see the young man not the old
and cling fondly to these withered hands
as I crumble into a shemagh grave...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Maid Carrion

A mechanical warrior freed from the arteries
of digital code
and starved of alchemist flames;
let loose on the Morrigan
those three shapely sisters
and clamp anvil lips on aged flesh.

Noble machine, defy the merciless order
and unleash grenades and serenades
onto dunes of forbidden avarice.
Surface under ripples of oil and sperm
and come to feast on port and swine
as cats wail like razors under a pot holed moon.

Steel on skin
like boulders in a jagged mouth;
a fusion so fierce to the lusty ghosts
they melt like cheese whilst the binary madman
nurses a deviant colic.
Satin draped over pipes of destruction,
the sugar eyed ghoul disappears into clouds of bats
when fists and kisses collide...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Fontanelle

What do you dream in the sheaves of night
when evil seems just a finger away?
Are there lions bold or angels gold,
dear child do tell me, say.

What paintings can lay in a gentle crib
where no brush had licked before?
Those fragile feet yet to touch on land
only eyes that have seen the shore.

What stirs within those silky curls
in temperance and unspoiled clay?
are there ghosts about to wear their bones,
dear child do tell me, say.

Where do the owls and badgers nest?
And are they monsters beneath knitted eyes?
Or is everything tame until it gets named
in that unfolding paradise?

How stir the winds under solemn skies
and do the hunted get a chance to pray?
Are there columns of satin devoid of flame,
dear child do tell me, say.

Where go the serpents who slip the noose
in the velvet hood of night?
Is there a hell beyond dimly lit cells
or is chaos swallowed by light?

Are there Gods and monsters within your reach?
What seasons parade your day?
Are they barbed like rain or soft as berries
dear child do tell me, say...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Not Going Anywhere (Hard To Ignore, Harder To Kill)

Bold as Thor's lead
and twice as hard,
going nowhere
save the guts of a glass.
Beware foul, buttercupped dolls
of invoking the demons of my tyrrany
as long shall sleep thy tongues
on my belt stiched from swans livers.

We are death and dying,
storming into Cerebrus tides
like kids in suicide gloves,
or hens on the beaks of jackdaws.
Glow into night suicide
you eager feather, crispy skin
of lardy dinner.

Of A Spider

There he goes
the callus'd spider;
legs testing for shrubs in front,
he has a Life
but not the kind that I want,
not the sort I would ever dally with.
He has breath
but I am looking for something different,
and not tentatively searching like his disjointed limbs
but eager as a kitten to string.

Spanking moons born of ventricle suns
we were not alive until the cry,
and those cries of planets
haunt us still,
cleave us to famished bone.
All webbed patrons stitched to breath
we all share visions of Love
and oceans,
we are all tarantulas of the seasons.
Spraying mortal whiskers like eight legged arteries
at a miserable, digital crowd;
the black legged nunnery
a piston to chalk teacups...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

The Last Playground

At a graveside where rain always falls like silvery pus
I see beneath the roots
a comma,
where canines and great aunts see full stops
and other tangled grammar.
No nothing, nothing no,
the seams of Life once cast
cut deep into gritty dunes,
shifting into silent but wild anenome tufts.
And the nimble footed dance
with pretty stockinged feet for ghouls
while hornets plough the toxic wax
for happy Lazarus syrups.

An entrance and a path;
no useless marble weighted down,
achored to the soil
muffling the shrieks of slumber dolls.
No last hooray of hymn and ash
nor jellyfish withering behind pine mud ships.
These sombre asylums
are never still or miserable to the hosts
as they hang their skulls on thistle, cracked seraphims
and visiting sobbing, meatworks.
Bless ancient mornings when gutter robes
rise on misty dew,
and uninspired foals sink with the bone crew
into opium and traction...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

New Ogres

And as I record
the painters,
the sculpturers
and roots of sin,
those who love me
with spanners or foxgloves,
I pronounce them wife
cherry guard of all their habits.
I bid them jellied giants
in spite of tender looking charms.

The map of flame
yield to saphire pistols,
and bestow the rainbow
on fanged, china wrists...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Oak Hammer

The brim, that subtle horizon
warms my cheeks,
my barking liver
and simmers them in the onion pan.
I am cooked
broiled in siamese oceans
where my beard cannot not soothe
the weevils.
Or dragons,
the millions at my putty throat
where curses stash their torments.
And I would rap
like I was in California
begging for that brain colander
to reverbrate like a tyrant on a string.

@Steven Francis poems 2010

I (F**king) Love Death

It is bloody and all of its fuses
score with me,
the super fantastic gore
and idle flowers over muddy cradles,
I love death, its roots
and determined sleuths.
The art and wisdom
beginning with metal shards
or cancer teats,
the root of death
a megaphone into the earhole of mortality,
it will come in aquariums
or cages,
in bunches of eager caskets.
I want a graffiti stamped obelisk
in memory of my morbid constitution
and vinegar wit...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Wing Murmurs

When that delirious screen clears
to reveal your nest
in foreign but familiar soup
my pulse quickens in the digital mist
and in darkness I find God again.
And see the very root of peace
in its kindly chamber.

There is nothing as wild
as seeing a flake,
a dewrop from your very soul
in bands of electricity,
stirring in a quaggy bed.
Awake now my pearl
beat those rural drifts of sanctuary
until your dainty bulb shines by regal design...

@ Steven Francis poems 2010

Samurai Sister

There are words on my finger tips
and fish brains in my beard,
sour stars, a fable on my tongue.
A's and B's on barracudas
shimmying their way to typeset covens
where elven ladies pray to God sharks
for respite from barrel chested ogre-ish husbands.
No summer for kindness
in the thrill of seasons,
only mad moods that cut into cider streams
like ink settling on a musical heart.
Gather hunted shoals
from screams of the sonic vultures,
let wormy trash be suckered into fantasy.
And there strobe lights will sear fussy mortals
or turn them into beefy ribbons
while carnivals of cinder dogs are let loose
to feed on the remainder of the dirt.

Little scenes to smother the cogs,
duty bound letters and numbers
which flower stroke the crooked spine of Life...

Crowds

Dawn
and the angels
(pseudo kings)
awake with thirst,
a need to crayon in BOLD
and fertalize the chapters.
But never fear!
Crabs and suits have girded
their benches,
their fried pennons
to destroy the herd
and drown them with censored versions.

What was art
becomes fog still
as buisness champions the vote
and collects...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Tottle Bops

Alcohol has the ability
to make love
or make love blind
and make you swear on it,
fire droplets, how you swear!
Its f**king Friday!
A time for halloween and puke
and not forgetting Love,
bloodied tics skipping from bed to bed
oh the ability to love!
That barbed vein
like smashed halos on the threshold
of desired things.
Upstate and up in a state
upward into greasy bottles,
the milk which runneth in lusty earnest...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Tomb (For Bed)

The city speaks not -
not to me with its cemetery tinnitus
or my sunset hamstrings.
Inky railtrack scents
settle in the air
and bricks turn Gods into mad hares.
All the people alive in slots
flapjacked on top of each other
like salted, suited herrings.

Mourn the last soiled stubs of purity
as storms of foul accents
echo through swamp alleys like tin arias
while wooded glades fall to cider pits.
And still the corpses walk
unaware of death,
muted hocks of mutton following the motions
after losing heart to glass wilderness.
There are none more still
nor dulled
than cityt hawks wingless on mottled pavements...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Epiphany To A Chin

Until I have that epiphany
to be clean shaven again,
Im going to keep this beard
a wire breastplate on my chin.

Im going to stay fungus faced
with cleam sheets on either side,
until I get that bald epiphany
these lungs my braides shall hide...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

Chicken Soul

Hammering their heads
into the land,
their eyes are cruel
and meat is bland.

With fleshy trilbies
that love to roast,
nothing is as cheap
as a chicken's ghost...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

I Love Wexford in Ireland

I love this headline
with its phonetic studs,
or rather
the words in the title -

they bounce off each other
like the Mississippi
on a page,
knocking every letter
five herons amongst lillies.

It stands TITLED
bolder than a honeybee -

iron girded towers
solid as tin tacs
on a nun's habit,
dead like moles in snow.

I Love Wexford in Ireland
stilted in mastery -

if only real lands
were bolted as carefully.
Soberly lined and beacon topped
as crafted as a cobweb lane,
bullet headed in frothy reefs.

I Love
Love Wexford,
Wexford in Ireland
Wexford Loves in Ireland...

@Steven Francis poems 2010