Sunday 29 November 2009

Night Night


Can darkness ascend

It certainly can

It creeps up from the black earth

It seeps out of the pores of plants

As bushes and bracken thicken

It billows out of the bark

As trees inflate

And cars in the lot are more easily found

Defined and located by a Keyring fob bleep

whilst in the confines of an artificial stone wall

perimeter enclosure [kept tight]

night is banished by people armed with urban angst

faux dreads kept at bay in the light guilt-free glee

cavorting high on electric light

parades of confidence bubbles of fluorescence

night is history for now is the end

of history

away from a primitive home of nature reliance

and even beyond the freecrete wall out there over the ridge

there is a beauty bound in battery light

watching the motorway with my hands on hips proud

its upward curve an automated stream

an annotated flow of red tail lights contra flowed

white headlights in an organised synchronicity of organised lanes

everyone toes the line no room for rebels there

not down there

strict discipline to avoid all out chaos

even in the night

night

and it can still win we all know that

chances still stalk the light

the night sprites gather and sit astride two hills

my candle held high and space has done a volteface

it is here with me on the ground now

but the sky is lazified in a dull glow

and Cassiopia is there but low quite low

not much else to see through the light pollution

hee hee

a new venerable invention of the rocket age

we can now sully the stars themselves with our light

even the black night the

night

polluted

my candle blows out but I am prepared

I have a light

On my mobile phone it is a handy appliance to have

My own weapon of light

Clean and cold and to the ready I can call

Bombay if I wish

Or a distant war zone ring a Disney phone tune

Somewhere in Khandahar perhaps

And I head home

Wary of traps.

Take It To The Stars


Fighting the undertow then landing on the beach

scratching at the sand.


Fighting distant memories of that Captain on the bridge

of Le Jeune Fleur, laughing,


head thrown back, tacking an arrow flight straight line as

we rode the following sea.


‘Take it to the stars! Take it to the Stars! A crackled voice over the radio jibes,

cajoles with razor while noise, Jobe on the sister boat


holding the line just below the seething crest,

taming the tide for a time, but time, time,

time ends.

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Babyghosts [draft]

Babyghosts




My lover lies floating

The loch a smudge the castle a crag

A palace daub palette cracked

Dreaming of apache feathers

Muttering a desert road trip tale

Mescal and ale

[distant weak American stuff too light too fizzy and]

To think of the hunting lodge beyond straggling the mountain

back along the winding track

creaking jeep screeching brakes

Lost seagulls

this warm evening soporific shore

of pebbles and gutted trout and how she laughed

When I couldn’t kill it

and how she decisively spilt its brain

with a sharp little rock

And she tells stories

wondrous angled fables

time lost in a pewter urn

Ashes

deconstituted

her voice is firm as if reading the script

Live for the first time

scowling at the prompter

confident in her skill

[Get beneath the character do not so much be it but enhance it with a life of

otherworldliness steeped in ancient stagecraft and]

She says:

I dream of times when men fought each other with honour and respect

Eye to eye

Paying each other in blood, sweat, tears, sobs, cries of triumph, grunts of shared humour

Bereft of ambivalence

And I say:

Maybe I am Jason but lost, lost sailing the Pillars Of Hercules never to return

A wronged legend

That only I can put right

Aegean Sea correct

a long way from Greece here by the Loch

with fresh opened trout

Siphon some petrol off the Jeep to light a fire

laughing at the taste of gas acrid in my mouth

I fire off some rockets I find suddenly beneath dirty tarpaulin

They burst over the darkening water

we are drunk now

She says:

I dream of my lover returning from The War

His armour cracked and battered his chainmail split

His sword dragging in the fresh loam behind him

Leaving a trail, a rut of valour

As he tacks his way back to me-

I say:

I wish for salience. I wish to have a ship.

More than that row boat. I wish to be engulfed by Creature

A Crying Creature

The Creature of The Loch

And then some

Babyghosts they are here, she laughs

They kiss me and suck on my toes as I speak-

And I think:

There is sport to be had

In burning down the boat house

We have petrol and spark

Such is the terror of life.