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