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