Down

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

@ Steven Francis poems 2010

Paper .dot

Achieve naught but stalks of withering columns
grating on an eye less bed as they sway in harmony
to music of the empty tribes.
The Great S.... ! Alive on parchment but doomed
to meet his End like flies and rats,
to writhe in earnest in his earthly pit.
Or the Clever E..... the wire man,
his icy wit now charred from eternal nights,
a tongue as dry as a leather belt and mute as sand.
All fall down,
all fall down,
both pretty and the wise
all fall down...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

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