Molly In A Phone Box

On slabs of black tar wound like ribbons

Coddled Molly tups the receiver
And in the spiny shattered shards jewelling the concrete basin
she crunches glassy ground

Screwy face girl she wants to cry now,
she only grimaces, chin on collar
Chirping monotone back at her as she fingers the silver.
Daddy, she lost her key

Stark strip lamp light is blinding the booth,
inside mirrored on gunk spattered panes
But she imagines faces leering, prying. Beards, bottles
and needles wheedling through

Singles sauna, neighbourhood watching,
caustic artwork, rancid aroma
Finger warmed returned coins clatter and shiver in the cold box
The dusty webs look warm

Then lights on the ribbony road shine,
two deck buses hiss and sigh old air
Treacle night swallows the stars, she thinks she's the luminary
but she's not bright enough

and the top deck know it
and the ground do too

The coins laugh

Hard Treacle

Stony silence bounces
ceiling to floor
Never absorbed by the alabaster plains

But there’s warmth in the clunk of the heel and the toe

hard treacle
only horseshoes and cobbles can know

Synaesthetic Boy Blue

Synaesthetic boy blue

rolls in chords popping the air.


Sleeps in hay mightily thrashing,

is a symphony whilst he babbles.


Brings down the tower crashing.


Then dew; like sweat, he smells vanilla

...and it pools cradled in the horn.

Olive Dove

Olive Dove; fat ankles, carmine stained face and sweat speckled cheeks.

Walking on a dust dried track cut through tall wafting grass.

The smell

of

oilseed rape.

Always a child Olive

Elle

Well well well small ill fellow lull

lithe like lay lall listless dull

Hell hell hell Ella long leg loll

Lilly lip doll

Droll hollow belle

Apple-Butter-Charlie

Apple-butter Charlie

Stony faced and awkward


Duly evening falls

And he sighs away the sun


Go heavy into

this home of his; Charlie’s in the cradle


Just kiss lightly

this capped head, he gurns toward the breast


Milky nectar oils

the nipples, and Charlie suckles life


Prays quietly; reels,

and rocks, and sways, and coos


Snip the umbilical;

plant and reap the lotus


Vulva weeps. Xylocopa;

Blood, like bees, mining you a void

Young zygotic

Charlie. Never yours.

Birthday

This sapid love

Mellifluous kisses

Stars on the ground between us

The Lion's Watering Hole

(a poem for the kiddies)

Lion lived on the waterfall's ledge,
by Mendocino tree, after Hawthorn hedge.
Morning, noon, twilight, night
He swam his river with all his might

Guinea pig and elephant, the little and the large
Swam they not but captained a barge
Embarked at the bank after an hour of graft
Dirigible, sailboat, dingy, raft

Dwarf fished, but not with ease,
so dinner tonight; potatoes and peas
Hook, line, reel, bait
He dined on honeycomb to stifle the wait

Lion lapped by, guinea pig fell in
And drifted towards lion, for pig could not swim
Down the hatch, into his belly
Dwarf panicked, downed rods and rode away upon Nelly

Doom- day-dream

I closed my eyes and my head lulled
I thought of red brick, green grass and charcoal skies
Then I slept

I dreamt of riots and crowds who crawled with me
And over me
Through forced passages and along corridors with blacked out windows
Hearts filled with panic missed their beat
In the maze of a great dark house
Most were dragged outside on to a flat white rooftop
Where childhood friends
And first kisses

Lined them up and hushed the hysteria with a bullet

Those still inside cared not how they met their death
For they now realised it was truly the end of the world
When a sweetheart returned for unbloodied targets
The open doorways would blaze with sunlight
And all in its path wept as they burned to nothing
And became the floor beneath our clawing hands

The provider of life shone on its saplings
And by summer
Blew them to smithereens