Merry Slitmywristamas

Bonjour noel
as the demons did sing,
'cept nothing sings tonight (only howls)
and I am stranded in the bowels of caligula,
molesting a dirty grin on my lips.
Joy for a hooded bullet that is winking like Mephistopholes
begging me to peel its merry shell
and prick a 2012 calibre hole...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Poet Caught in Zipper

That hurt the man flesh,
hurt so bad like mutes starved of words.
Diabolical waves suddenly crashing over euphoria
replacing all with agony,
fearsome jolt to the groin,
unhappy me!
Miserable creature caught in a cruel pinch
like teeth grating the very core of my rattling muse.
On fire, the brazen bull is lit
and I dance to fierce tunes
as foul judgement befalls my ever swollen prize...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Cow Skull Synagogue

Time ~
stripped away by tearaways
and falcons,
left bald and boneless
in the lap of eternity.
Grieving buckleheads
fold in cirrhosed shells
like fingers of a god
knuckle deep in bloodied salt.

Love is the guts
to this world,
and we pickled minnows
content in artery tins,
bloated by plastic
and hysteria,
we dive under psychotic herons
in search of loot and song.
Never to feel the lick of hades
on our dandy spines.

Tender years
cruel years,
drawing the unsuspecting
to their graves.
Pulling fangs inward
to the strange, endless gullet
of the bone citadel,
where air will leave our mossy lips
like sour milk,
every path leads to stone...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Me To Me and I

Two balls with a salamander's eye,
one pinched like a septic scab
the other mourned in a Trappist sty.

Prayers scraped from an honest stone,
sincere words on target
aimed at dry, decieving bones.

Lusty arias on a veiny shelf,
stabbing fishnet willows
milking the swollen self.

Casket cases in sober lines,
through iced temptations
over darkened miles.

Figure hang from trident pole,
scattering fish and ogres
into hollow holes...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Sometimes I Forget

The scars of the world
are often too much
that sometimes I forget to breathe.
Forget to watch
the kingfisher sunrises
forget my eyes to see.

Forget to breathe
the eyeless air
and pierce new age with thorn.
To tear my sight
from murderous hoardes
and live like the water born.

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Dim Haul Dros Gleision (No Sun Over Gleision)

There was no sun that day
when four miners lights went out for good;
the cave mouth stretched into an endless hymn
as hawks and kinder birds carved the sky
to guide spirits to their rest.
Heroes of an unforgiving underworld,
the earthly tomb,
kingdom of the black.
While I and all of Wales tipped hands to God
four blinded roots were pulled
and the red dragon's one lifted claw
was raised a little higher in honour of the men.
Gartref bois! Home!
From the eyeless santuary of the pit
to the Valleys call,
our father's land
where you will have the symphony of a nation's hearts
to sing you to your rest,

A bydd yr haul ddim farw nawr...
(and the sun won't die now)

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

In loving memory of Phillip Hill, Charles Breslin, David Powell and Garry Jenkins, rest in peace my Welsh brothers. Hedd Perfaith Hedd.

To Find Love In A Smal Town

Hatchet strikes spread the news
of ambulances and caravans,
to saturate the Malibu screen
and lubricate the laughter machine.
No rainbow'd fleet to dull phlemgy eyes
as petrol haired lolitas stroll in hotpants
and sip abonimable liquor.

For me, just me, the only me,
I brew in dented scuttles and absinthe bouts,
waiting for jester jawed serpents to ignite my illicit needle.
Infinite gore baptising comorant still heads
where concrete innards slop like suet
and I lay at the mercy of erect bone.

Unholy ideas of gangrene princes
set the world alight as bloody illuminations
are hoisted onto film in primal fits,
in codeine headlights,
to pluck nails from their rootsand
and drum until audiences are shellfish mad...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Thirty To Nine

My thirties years are almost at End,
less than twelve hours remain of them
and there will be no repreive;
no frame to hold the galleries of time,
the hours are at a loss.

Adieu three zero,
goodnight three nine
and all the tinplate terrors inbetween;
the gory days and dour weeks,
the months of much and less
that made for a nettle'd carnival.

Now as the death of ages arrives
to bury a tri hearted chronolgy in a vatican crib,
I hoist my fat onto a new and grander epoch,
turning my cheek from the crush of drowning chapters.
Nine years almost at an end
and from the nine I take two starry glossed parades,
twin hearts gifted from crabby, sea heavy miles...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

A Night Hawk With Minotaur Eyes

Night has no hold over it,
there can be no peace in darkness
for a creature such as myself;
a wendigo, a shape shifting blood addict
flitting from mayhem to calm in one bold minute.
These pistons never rest,
can be no peacet for the perverted.
I am a supercharged vessel of words and knuckle,
no puny spark I...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Crepe Idols Beneath the Limpet Lights

I would wager a fistful of cockles and another of laverbread
that tuneless hornets play for you as you sleep in your seabird valley.
All stitchep up like nests of comatose dolls
as want-to-be vagrant children in pelican poses
wail into your stone ears about hawks and snakes
and uglier things in dens.
Braying with their cannisters and chalk
like their life's breath now matched yours in death...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

The Love Over All Love That Isn't Love At All

Give me your Love,
not the l inferior l type
but the L big L type,
the one which sends saints to their Eden pomp
and warlords to the pyre.

Grant me thy Love,
the grated ballad kind of little L's
which sweet talk flies into spider herds
and figure out secrets of harm.
A loveless Love perhaps?
The suffocating jamboree to end all Loves.

Shroud me within Love
the inbetween the toes love,
that cruel kind which sends men mad
and heaps ages onto pampered, cherry thighs.
Love.
All around the lovers walk in hearts and dice
while Love itself cowers under ice...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Kinky Bedlam

The sternum suckling motor head is almost full
and from its oesophogeal pod will rev
into the barbecue fit pits
leaving belched acid on beefy breasts.
Go forth, south of the byssus threaded chin
to syphon the bottled milky rage
before leaving the master in his limpet cloth.
Oh he writhes unburdened
as it slips toward delicious mayhem,
nature and vain scriptures shaking in their quilted roots...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Alien Bangs Its Head in Haywire

Man digs his nails
(its nails)
should be its-not-human-nails
into my concrete lip.
Those metal f**king ribs
on ships,
that I see yellow swirls and angels
through a glass bottom.
An ape backside which brews
a blue eyed jackdaw
into hebrew sunsets of the juvenile deliquents.

I dare not, can not speak
speak of you in hybrid consolations;
thou art my art
my Peking Cincinatti scrawls
that I drool from oil and puked scents.
Mata Hari dear,
slow volume heartbreaker of my tidal pulse,
Jesus Jesus
I am dying in bitter digital fruit...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Ape Lungs Getting Air from Lizard Lips

Nimble fingers quick to staple mouths
and pose as ballet frilled emphysema dolls.
Like sickly tumbleweeds
lost in a Mardi Gras fog
the battered smokers shuffle
in limpet queues to the marvellous,
cardboard sleeved, coffee bordered death house.

Spider framed and inching to the trap,
hunted to the quick, the sovereign root;
those Woodbine gallows will not lay mercy
upon corduroy throats.
Golden tickets await in mint shelled corridors...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Look How We Are (from Upside Down)

Afraid of the dawn and its sister sun
the blood juries swarm to mother's dust;
welcome to the day when the tarnished sleep,
pissing in hooked mouths
and choking on a beggars heels.
Oh wondrous claw as camp as lillies
as thy years gridlock in the great scheme,
prime those forks and tails
and prepare the murder scam over cancerous Life.
But revel not in sullen soups
for darkness has limits on light;
swing high dear grave dolls and dandies
for the rabid sting that furs your clammy tendons
has you dead as pie crust...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

The Furnace Fields

As I close my eyes at troubled times
I am welcomed back to the Furnace fields,
that holy land
where wood fell over itself to be wood
and wild was the beauty like fires over California.
Furnace fields!, live long inside my dreadlocked mind,
grow snakes and newts in crispy ferns
to guard against the wretched clock.
Offer me a pond so that I may sink into oblivion,
flushing tyres and telephones from a plastic bowel;
bury me oh mighty field
let my siren be quiet within those fishy roots...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

I Wish They Could Have Died Like That

No scabs or suffocation
no gunshots nor burning,
I wish they could have died like that.
Without fear and pain
just a jab to the vein,
and a line on a screen going flat.

But there was hurt plenty
along with terror and blood,
when evil took my sunshine away.
No priest at the side
as they suffered and died,
no pillow to soften where they lay.

No horror or slashing
no drowning and beating,
I wish they could have died like that.
With a final feast
without monstrous beast,
and thy loved ones hearts not flat.

Alas the worlds without reason
this earth has gone mad,
and the devil looks after his kin.
For the innocents lost
we forget like the frost,
yet sinners die easy for their sins.

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

I will never forget you.

Postcard from a Route Home

To visit the alehouse on Sabbath Day
and be among wenches who swirl and play;
but on the road home, have a care
somebody follows, something is there.

Look to the left, an apparition appears
most foul and dreadful to molest thy fears;
at first a man with a sickly smile
who turns into mastiff for half a mile.

Onward go with the dog beside,
a diabolic companion from sulphuric tides.
Then just as quick it does retire
the hound transforms into a raging fire.

Homeward path now edged with flame
know the devil, know his game;
strike your key into a shivering lock,
beware the saints which outside knock...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

No Gates for Angels

And all beneath the marble throat,
under knees of blackened fists
are rats and lint cadavers.
Begin and end in burial
in slick earth;
a shelf of grit and worm,
to fester and turn mad in breaths
as days fold into months then years,
skinning organs in nasty hives.
The dead in kicks of hurried heels,
forgotten in their boneless sleep...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Swordfish Template

I break everything I touch,
everything I touch breaks;
I rip legs from spiders because I am cruel
I break hearts of girls by loving them all.

Steel and smoke
or razors and rain.
Everything I touch breaks,
I break everything I touch.

I whistle bull sonatas at thin glass to hear it shatter,
and deliver honesty in wicked deliverance.
Curdling cherished memories into goose pimpled skin
to slice them like ham, to shred.

Grant skills to dig the soil in earnest
from fevers and convulsion;
the hybrids blow ghosts into velvet devils
kid corpses meet zombie farms.

I break everything I touch,
everything I touch breaks.
I eat hearts because I love life so much,
I crush snails because I love death...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Tail Whipped

Was that monsieur Death I felt around my collar?
Attempting to sneak up behind the grease and spit
of the wineless glass?
Was that thief Death I saw?
Herr Black, skulking in the wings
waiting to toss me into raven pits.
A dark fist swirling like a bee
in hope for honey marrow in my mucas brain,
as I stumble to doors of tranquility on my wet lips.
Lead on skull man,
to bats and lunar doors lead on...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Vasa Deferentia

All giddy tags
those skinny bubbles of lycra air,
clinking together like lobster jaws
toasting another thin regime.
The popes and charmers love it!
Milk skinned head butts into plastic cupped lanterns,
lights to herald the silk fronted skin slaps...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Knock On Nine

There it stops,
hanging over the waiting stroke
but never falling,
never striking.
Locked between eight and nine
like a cobra undecided.
Undecided!
That lord between if or that,
the law of spite
a varicose lay by.

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Carnivore Carnival

Ignore the grim parade
as the rough edged patibulum
is dragged through ripping, virulent forests
onto shores of gore.
Scabby mobs crowding every corner of sight
while dizzy beats rain upon gaping skin;
look down thy nose at weeping, ransacked feet
you prince, thief, handsome man,
swivel from the gator eyes
and prepare to look down in earnest.

Sag on thy suppedaneum like a tooth petal'd flower,
let air escape from battered lungs never to return;
a pierced sack doll straining on the spear
while the olive limbed timber wolves look on,
listening for that last knock on wood.
Praise the soul! For the mangled sound of posed cadavers!
Rejoice! In slow destruction and intestinal choking!
In razor lights the monstrous sinners are dissolved
until only the cross remains with open arms,
three headed in its lust for terror...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

The Others

We do not die
those who are alive today.
Its them,
the others who do that,
who die and be in drama,
be dead and talked about.

We can't get sick
we strong as horses in orange fields.
Its them,
the others who fall ill,
lose legs, breakdown
and get conned by mortality.

We don't get robbed
we money strokers with anaconda wallets.
Its them,
the others who become prey to thieves,
get ripped and choked and snivelling,
those poor spit broke others...

@ Steven francis poems 2011

Le Bold

Ah the photo!
Yes thats the one,
of Joyce in company with publishers,
his face says "I Am God!"
While they can only nod
and want to lick the soles of His Irish feet.

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Mirage To A Swell

Headstrong priests emerge from print ~
new voices in a crazy land
new voices for a crazy land,
herr Torquemada
dressed in a feathered tunic to decieve
and trouble baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus ~
sweet imp and flower child
new voices in a crazy land
new voices forn a crazy land.
The epitaphs of anarchy
like salt in mankinds blood,
tumultuous kings shall always rule the roost...

@ Steven Francis poems 2011

Dog, That Is Sufficient

Monsters loose on streets and parks
how I love the barking shambles!
Love to bite into your mildew throats
and finish you forever more.
But no!
I need you
need for you to stay,
to animate the hate when life becomes idle...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Faithless

Death
on my wrists,
on my arms,
in my beard,
alive in storey ligaments.

I walk in wax
defending the blackest black.
The oil of corpses
and chapel lost.

Death
on my belt,
on my stereo,
ruffling my macabre ribs
into coffin fits.

No more fire,
no vulgar creases in breath
as instinct forces my gill'd tongue and calloused liver
to the pinprick island...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

The Water's Burn

Into frothy, rabid clutches sink
flocks of steaming young and old in horror.
Too dark to see in those coal waters,
too cold to let you have a breath
before the midas light pulls you to your pincered bed.
A smash on murderous diamonds forever ringing in the depths
of caliginous hemlock swells,
lanced prayers leaving a trail for the riders of the years.
That lone light slowly devoured by the ghastly waters burn;
heavy fathoms sucking souls into its endless dance
and swallowing every bolt and garter,
taking them to its terrible dead end breast...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

A Brief History of Verse

There will be what will be,
what shall be a cluster of being.
But will there be what shall be?
Or are there more for dying?
We shall see what will be,
what will be shall see.
Verses clammed, cryptic seance
things being what will be....

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Love's Shilling for Elwen

This is a story of love ~
it leaks from my eyes
like dew settling on buttercups,
and is silent as the heart of space
where graveyards go to mourn.
Strength in adoration ~ Cariad!
Any shrill of banshee
or septic tide of ill blood
would shudder in my ruin
and be slain before they reached the crib.
For I am God,
her earthly sheild on a thistle'd road;
a father colossus able to pierce lungs of crocodiles
and shatter Evil's warring blade...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Quid, Innit

And down the bookshelves go!
Letters and sonnets
paragraphs and novellas,
ready for rag and bones
as the masses drop their courtesies
for scabby plastic treasures
and processed tinderbox broth.
Blackpool for the Aegean
comics for the squalid,
let go the scythe
plunge it into demi~jons of jolly fudge;
film versions of everything
to woo acoustic warriors in pits.
Tales are dying without martyr
and the headless kooks run rampant
in dog dead wastelands...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

The Vegetarian BJ Queen

Seductive and carnivorous
poisonous and chivalrous,
Medusa Jones, the vegetarian BJ queen.
Blessed are the outlaws who hold her hissing bonnet
as she sparks a pose from flint like hips
and bends so elegantly at the knee.
A humming rampant glow of the dark cenotaphs
hard as El Capitan,
making clever angels from fancy strokes
hooray for champions,
knights of the milk ribbons...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

The Core Parade

Aye thai chi, its common seekness
I seek thy brothers weakness,
I smell a mothers sickness,
fall on down, cherry headless.
Fall on
down
down,
down
onto oxygen lovers
and
buttery knickers.

Wait, hanging around in clusters
in my punk,
I bleed the wretched
and simmer them in fetid
pools of bacon rind
the cheap lardy kind.
Stagger over
mucas
boils,
grease
rancid dances
for oily kiss catchers.

The parade weakens
hook eyed by disease.
This is the stop,
this is
the
full
stop.
Sitahtlla forever...

@Steven Francis poem 2011

When I Was Tame

Some knew me before the hell ignited
in times before oceans seethed,
the dragon slept in its molten nest
while a gentler boyo breathed.

T'was there I walked in cushioned cysts
no whisky flamed these cheeks,
before glass and bolt descended
like crews of bandaged freaks.

My fists as calm as jellyfish
slapped on buttered thighs,
my skull fried storms a millpond
asleep behind virgin eyes.

Neither hurricane or gallows tune
creased this sober frame,
both fang and c**k stayed holstered
remembering I was tame.

Long nights were safe from phantom
and feral deathly hounds,
and mornings brought no iron grave,
no oubliette in the ground.

But mad frost fell upon sanctuary
and horns grew from the child,
both lambs and chicks lay scalded
from the halo of the wild...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Kurzschluß

So short the accidents and beds,
blood of ills and cruel stabs
from hellish crazies;
so short the brittle walks and dances
of wolf and man in need.

In life already short of breath
the bandits are the force which shuttle lungs
further into spectre clutches.
Our dragon dawn hoisted
onto the mortal sails of birth.

Sick are the coils of spirits
and even more the root that lives;
but a kinder machine with immortal percussions
would not be kind at all.

Pinch the fat from bony desert trinkets!
Settle the jam on greying sands
while beggars at the rotten feast
kneel before tumour jars,
as hearts are loved and burned.

Eager fizzy broths of cancer
bringing messy scars to boil
while rabid horses stamp out time.
Short, too short
these velvet twists of fog
corroding the defiant springs of youth...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Tricia Poe

Aimless we walk the clown candy neon bars
drenched by rain and bourbon,
through deathly pastures
where gulls form choirs of ragged poets
in the throat of night.

A raven audience
of spit and blades!
Strike my apparent iron ballad,
step gently into a valentine dance...

@ Steven francis poems 2011

Buzzes and Spikes (To Yonder Dales)

Love is all you need.

On scabbed paws,
love makes everything go away.

You are never alone with Love,
the master skin.

I Love beer.
And fish & chips.
Ginger headed damsels
in furies for the eagles.

Love is the batter
the rolling meadows,
song of oak
and woolen ministries.

The world beyond the clotted tendrils
is Love...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Phantom Carousel

Circling above the crib in plumes of calm;
a hawk, but not of beak nor talon soars
crying sonnets from a nettle raspy throat.
The king phantom,
a ghostly touch and ode to the ivisible;
corpse shavings
rammed into sweet shells and smothered
into wafer horses.
Hold back those lily crisp creases
and kneel before a song of ages,
the death pages toll their eternal winds...

@Steven Francis poems 2011

Where Do You Wait?

Where do you wait, Mr Postlethwaite?
As you shake the dust from this world away.
Are you striding the gallant boards
and enthralling the saintly hoardes?
Are you drinking with Burton?
Have you still got your shirt on?
And do wings stick out from your clothes?

@Steven Francis poems 2011

In Memory of Pete Postlethwaite OBE

Ton Dernier Acte

When I am gone, distant from this green and woody earth
remember to leave tears from any eulogies ~
they are kind but never needed
for I am in a kingdom no mouth shaped love can touch.
I am not laden with ageing flesh and cataracts,
nor feel tender pain through gums and fingertips.
The hand-me-downs have left my heel
like eels in lather;
cigar smoke breaking free from rats on a leash
and there the tides meet coral raptures.
The hands strike for armageddon,
slapping for the breaking of human chains.

@Steven Francis poems 2011