Queen of Co(r)pse

She is Queen of Copse,
A quiescent land of leapers
Lying in limbo of light, subdued,
With coarse cracklings of life
That linger to slack, and slender
Of side-branches swaying, on shoulder –
The head-weight of canopies; crowns
Communicate by leads of lianes;
A trellis of tresses
Trapping in arbour the song, of cicadas
With hums of tree-houses, hollowed
By hammer, the woodpecker’s home
That holds, more honour by craft
Than aphid, whose silent steal of sap
Had stifled soil and soul of lumber
That left lordosis, locked in lumbago –
The season of sawdust and severed thrones.

Bipolar

In my deciduous youth, I recall
From childhood bliss, pondering
The art of being paid, as loser
Of tooth and what irony I faced
In paying, painfully to lose, at dentist...

Am I a loner?
Or has beloved tooth fairy
Gone bipolar?

Back-trackers

I had a thing for talipes,
A way of living, that torsion of heel
At 3, most tender of age,
In learning to walk, upright, away
Not the walking, that faced
Rear end to what’s all being left
Behind, for the memory lane,
Rather
A mystery in the martial
The art of recoil, in footwork, I learned
That movement of misery that makes
Evaded, near lethal a blunder -
A flight at sound, sight, smell
Of temptation, repelled, rebel,
Rewind of back-stride
A way to save soul, and life
And I wonder, which, of the weary
Ancestors of mine, took flight
From the surly, snatch of the underworld?
Which of forefathers met Mama Dlo’?

Earborne

Parable flew like cockatoo,
Passed overhead, swept softly on ears,
It knocked, unanswered, left
For new soil-
Sweet and evergreen, fields
Of blossoms, of wisdom
With heart of listener
Like shepherd on call.

Rear-flection

In rear-view lens, I witnessed, one morn
What seemed, a string, of surreal
In sequence of living, in likeness
Of backwardly dance, perhaps
With odd slant, of glass, peered back,
Saw liars, then lying when passed
At 50, looking back
Now standing right-
Angled to earth, erect, up-right,
Then zig-zaggers, now, on white
Solid line, while vendor and vagabond,
Veered and vanished, in silence of street-light
Shadows that touched, at tips, almost
As arrows, and buildings
Made bridges of length, in Lego,
Then men, once metal, side-walkers
Of vehicles, sat sidelong, swingers
Of songbird that perched, on threading
In unison of wires, that waved, in whisper
Of winds, and I peered, from within
My world, of glasses, of prism
And played, with planes, of angles
Of light waves, and saw
How sidewalk had tapered, like tunnel
And saw how pathways, aimless, gaping
Are trained, with focus, to narrow
With vision of change
As I witnessed, a world, what is
Then carved, and sliced, and sutured,
To visualize, what ought to.

Paradoxus

1.
Martyr spends agony’s
Coin in return
For lost cause
While protest-
Action on feet and plaque-
Cards do not play
To public belief.

2.
Can’t steal
What never was
Can’t give
What’s not yours
But greed gives
Gold with a pound
Of sorrow, with tear-
Drop and drivel
Though never once
Had self-gold with
Pinch of sorrow

3.
Light of world
Through which all form
Made visible to eye-
Sight may well blind-
Sight of man who
Gazed its naked-
Bright staring awe-
Fully.

4.
Easy for camel-
Walking thin past
Threatening eyes made
To condemn rich-
Man-made unable to
Fit frame, fatted
With money-baggage
Blocking fixed door-
Way to exit
Though smaller.

5.
Learn by mother-
Nature’s art-
Work of wonder-
Fully absurd
Mammal of fur
With fowl-feature
Fish, and flesh
With ways of duck
Wading with nest
Of eggs, among reed-
Beds that folly sleeps
With irony

_other

First letter of life
Preceeding that which gives it
E_pty in absence

Bait

Fifty silver stars
Swamp scarlet sea of terror
Trapping a king-fish

Douenic

Tales of talipes
Dancer's back-leaping in shade
Of silk-cotton trees

Opportune

Half-full and gaping,
Empty-full of promises,
Thirsty and drinking.

Lupine

Canine cravings creep
Through pine-trails, leaping vines
Climbing flyward yapping
At the moon-lit night sky
Letting the by-gone of twilight
Be silenced
In worship to Norse
God’s twin-dogged dialect, driving
Dusk and dawn behind barking, and paws’
Bounding at midnight
To Seneca songs
Impounded
Lungs and bone-cage where dogs
Were held, where hounds are fed breath,
And moonlight was sung, to become

To hunt, for Hecate
Survive and stain-
Scarlet the skies, and rain-storm
Born-to-stalk, watchdog, made-secure
High place of Greek gods,
Olympus,
Where ground was cloud for
Heaven
With effeminate-crown of silver-
Crested spear cross-bowing to an altar,
Mourning
Prayer like incense had longed
For Heirs to Artemis, to huntress’
Tumbling of age and mustard
Seeds sprouting that took mountain below
Us Sun-Daughters of Eve and soil-skinned
Mothers toiling at mills and milk tins
In land infested by white face and windmills
Of English, twang and tea leaves
And son-shepherds afield, tending their sheep

These, nights are lazy-rundowns
Of cots and little ones
Tucked-in
Blanket of fable flung
From maiden’s tongue-
Hinge on bedtime, where tale came alive
In legacy, legend of chasing
Little boy who cried
Wolf
And aftermath of countryside crook;

This paedophile,
Pounced on little girls
Turned, red coats of child-
Hooded dreams in disguise of
Grannies, embroidery, sly
And wide-eyed trickery
And I, turn pages in wonder
How wandering ladies made
Tupperware laughter leap bounds
Inside bellies of toddlers
In pre-schooled, moral and textbook
Definitions
Of hounds’ black-beard and feared
Menace of fur-coat and
Staunch breath-howl as he
Bellowed
Then broke before brick-house of swine
Letting in,
Letting laughter resound
From sulphur-bind sheets, as brown
As teak-table tops, and what
Tupperware feel would make
Napping in nurseries so pleasant
That dreams are dragged-over
Historical delusions;

It takes
Back tumbling of age and mustard
Seed back to Greek and brush-mountain melodies
Of growing back to Seneca songs
Into humming, and humbling of kayote key
Notes of learning to read between
Yapping at the moonlight
To know, this canine.