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
Slip the noose of dying and madness for a time and share some observations with Welsh poet Steven Francis in this, his 5th collection of poetry.
Friday, 24 September 2010
Thursday, 16 September 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.
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.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
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 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
Friday, 3 September 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
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
Monday, 23 August 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
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
Thursday, 19 August 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
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
Monday, 9 August 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
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
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