I love you though now you’re just skin and bone to me

you’re flesh and blood too someone else I’m sure.

I picked through the debris of this and that and what I saw

was a shadow handcuffed too testimony and twenty years.

Or more and more.  A piece of grief tied to the floor, or hope, caught

in the breeze, desensitised and humanised and torn on the wind

and made into nothing more. Than a picture, lost in space,

pinned to the fridge, in an album, a journal, a draw,

of something that was, but now it is nothing more.

An old one

Sennen Cove

My home is real but in my head

it is golden hair, the beaches

stretch for miles and the waves

slip gently or stand up to be ridden.

The girls are part of the seascape

They are beautiful. And their laughter

Tickles, warm sun and light hearts

Make long summers fun

And golden thighs part.

Sea breeze, captures light, flows,

Responds coyly to gentle touch.

I smell the sea and see her,

The warm air brings a summer again,

First night. The smell of a warm day

The sweet gorse-covered cliffs, un-trodden

paths leading into a valley of golden sand,

and an inviting sea. The smell of the first morning’s

warm bed, a golden girl and me,

entrapped with summer, land, home and the sea.

Just for fun

Kernow

Y leveral e tavasow e an tyryow lef,

 gans gwyns Y clewes, ha gweles yn an newl a mor.

 Yn hyr keow awartha segh meyn fosow, yn glyp

 esedha aspya an devedhyans

 ha gasa a gulla hanas crya, cren nyja

 ha Y codha dre tybys.

War esedha alsyow ughel awartha mor,

 poblow dos ha mos, crenna yn carrygy

 pollow, orth ow treys may an grpwynek junnya howl tewas

esedha tyr gwyns an may, blas

del mor herdhya avonsya lamma an codha

Squattya an tyryow yn dhe wherthyn . [1]

Cornwall

I speak in tongues in the lands voice,

with winds ear I hear, and watch in the spray of sea.

In long grass above the dry stone walls, in dampness

haunched I observe the arrivals

and departures of seagulls whispered cries, circling flight

and I slip through thought.

On haunched cliffs high above sea,

people coming and going, ripple in rock

pools, at my feet where the granite meets sun sand.

Haunched land wind and sand, smells

as sea surges forward rolls then relaxes,

crashing the land into laughing.

---

This translation is a literal one, relying primarily on online resources, the nature of these resources mean that some words may have been changed and the grammatical arrangement of the lines is undoubtedly not that of the Cornish language. However I have attempted to arrange it to the best of my ability.

Last One out

Cancel that, the myths over run

the deities shake off their auras
sigh and slink sadly away.
This then, is it, the end of days
No explosion of light, No last judgement
No singing choirs, No brimstone, No fire,
just turn off the lights, last one out
Shut the door. We came to a garden
And in our childish greed all we saw
Was wasted space and weeds, all we left
was crumbling concrete, cancer, rusting steel
toxic waste, spent oil, sludge and despair.
It’s not a religious thing, its not a matter of faith
look what we had, see what we’ve done
It’s over finnito, fin, leave ‘em to it. Shut the door.

trace

All I was and all I wanted to be

was washed away by a darkening sea.

In the dust, where I once scratched

Lies crawl. Summers cracked.

I can’t tell where this once swelled

In the sea breeze, in the air, in deep wells

But once before there was a word

For the thoughts we guessed but never heard.

I’m not down, I’m just not free

I open my eyes but never see.

I love you.

A few weeks ago I got drunk and lost a years worth of poems.

Shit.

New

In the sap of life, that seeps in the air,
there's a taste of a lady by the name of despair.
The name of the moment caught in my throat
as I started to stare I started to choke.
The cost of my thoughts slipped through my hands,
In the clatter of change I thought Laughter rang.
The face of things changed they charged
through the door, they raced past the statues,
& pushed through the hall with a clatter
and rattle a thunder & crow,
forcing my fingers to crack through the snow
We beat our chests and fought life to slow
and crack and beat and beat and close.

last tango in the lot of abandond truth. part 3

The prince on the hill at mornings wars contest
sketched the change of the age with elder eyes;
the death of the garden, the fallen fortress.
In battle mid-res great warriors die
Apollo hails Ares “ You’ve just killed Love”,
“I slit her wrists. To watch crimson to sepia dry”
at the feet I might kiss, to change just enough to
alter to the past. Adrianus sang Alexander -
one line remains. World makers and word shapers
wish scream for time. As the sun seeks to rise
the daughters of Zeus flee from a modern chorus
till night and posey reside. I sit and rest my eyes,
left alone till dark from the suns first light rays
so many minutes, hours and days.

Tomorrow before we wake

 Imagine a forest of flesh, of twisted limb grottos,

green grey skin floored dells, rivers stagnate

drip with chaos rust, congealing in the crooks

of mothers arms. Torn people-roots matted

shattered copses in the vales, heads and hands

pulped in the scramble of tortured flesh vines.

Imagine a forest inside a lost child, that calls

for her earth mother. Stripling feet, cast

in blood clay waltz to the stamp of progress,

 to the teacher and the fool, to the whip

and the call. As the forester tears roots

 for alms, the un-innocent takes more fruit.

Imagine a forest without. Without trees

without people, without sap, without

 leaves, love, laughter, wind, sun, signs,

paths, broken oaths, memory, without

significant, concern. Condemned.

Now. You. Imagine a forest. 

like

like waste on water, words,
smog cloud day,
like vomit on pavement
washing sleep, away

like land that dug in,
or birds that blown out,
in night time slipping,
oil stained sand

like rocks in ships, beating,
like beaches drinking rusting
cans of rotting boats
like grass sea scum foam caught

like forgotteness piecing together
another puzzle,
like together treading,
like liking lying, like forgotten
stained cotton wind washed beach blown.

last tango in the lot of abandoned truth. Part 2

In the ruins, let ghost rhetorically glide

and daub word warnings with child’s artistry,

vivid faces look back to present and guild

the thoughts, the feelings of their ancestry.

In the scent of the shadow of the south eastern wall,

Boy form traces tomorrows words that tyrants scream,

chuckling at the unifying sorrow of great meanings fall.

The death of arts dawn faces the silent unseen

as the suns sky crests the wave of the midnight stars,

the morning-tide tugs on the throws of the night.

Raping some meaning from the dead lips of babes.

Else who from the void of east’s shade, cry for sight?

Un-reckoned, un-heard, half remembered un-rest

the prince on hill at mornings wars contest.

Fables garden ghazal

When Sumer stood by fables beacon,

infectious wisdom seeped from Babylon.

Beside the gardens in stifled solitude

lovers took grass for beds of consummation.

before Plato and Thebes, before Virgil sang

when the sun first looked on the face of Solomon

lay a land and hung a garden our cradle of civilisation

In Hesbon by Bath-Rabbim I watched a worlds ruin

Towards Damaskus, mandrakes eyes cry redemption

But on deaths ears and politicians lies fall words silently.

Whilst idols false are pinned on the cedars of lebbanon.

Upon every high tower and every fenced wall

the profits of conflict scrawl their justification.

As Neptunes Troy scarred the land, Basaras burning

In the cradle still, barbarity suckles the teat of destruction.

last tango in the lot of abandoned truth. Crown: 1

On these Shores the bones of thought rest,

grinding meanings under canons heal to sand.

Catches in the breeze, fragments the Greeks forgot

or burnt with heretics for insights to grand.

I wander these shores to find somewhere to pray

a space apart, inspired but un-shadowed by fate

a way to the words that dry on my lips like salt spray

and dance away, white chalk foam, across sea grey slate.

It’s only here that the bones become revived.

In my howl to the ocean, the night and the wind.

New flesh wraps old remains, remembering lives lived,

to stalk from the sand to search out dead kin.

Away from the water its whispered poesy has died

In the ruins, let ghosts rhetorically glide.

Andy


Rubber duck deserts and tubs of blue sky
Discarded clay soldiers lie side by side.
As the electric Cadillac’s appear at last
she laughs at their injuries as they howl to the past.

Why does it snow father?




Far from the warmth of the sun, in a frigid realm of the solar system
a billion kilometres beyond earth, lies a ball of ice called Enceladus.
A snowball’s Antarctica is pumping plumes of water reaching hundreds
of kilometres into space. Ice particles fall like fine snow, Cold
Faithful, painting Enceladus pure white. Long cracks, geologians
Tiger stripes, potential oceans, meters bellow, hidden life.
Where is the engine hidden? “there are no goblins or demons”
says McKinnon, but what does he know? No one knows why
for millions of years on Enceladus it has snowed.

Lascaux

Great Hall of the Bulls,

rehear our land speak

eminent spirits of night sky cave.

Awake, waken, awaken now

to cast through the Chambers Engraved.

Hear, horn lord of a hundred warriors arms

and pause and flavour the Painted Gallery

live, steaming under natural star maps

last great pride of the old ways.

O’ god flesh tribe tribute I humbly summoned

For the wakening of old ones heart strings

Banish the dark and walk among

Us, O’ rise now under world sleepers,

Leave that dry rest to set scales aright .

Last pride of the old ways

Sleep no more, hear my cry.

Old as Bone

On a corner rests an old warrior
calloused paws hang to the ground
cropped hair not hiding many scars
In the night he sits as old as bone.

In convenient store light guarding time
he had a name, time old, another.
land unknown, time stole that
and bone and flesh and youth.

let's call him Adam or Abraham or.
couched in steel and crucifixion
his cape, the night knows him,
in these silent streets another echo.

A strength time and rip torn flesh
could not dampen or temper with
shrapnel. Speaking as the grave
with a voice that once knew joy. 

But forgot in the statistics of 
a ravaged land. in beacon breaks
and broken bones scream laughs
that echo in the night, his badge
his body and his cape,
whisper of another land.

1.

I crack my thoughts and whip words
to peaks of stiff, white syllables
of sex and syllabubbly foam, creams
on lips to red for thoughts, to soft
to touch with hands or fingers.