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