Dead-headed queen
crownless in a devastation of hay
inflorescence grounded
thick timber uprooted
your fibrous globes
from fresh leaves
cut loose from glaucous leaves
Wisdom’s rattling weight
Weight of bract and choke
cast down
overthrown by cultivation
sacrificed as life-blood
for budding usurpers
Your fallen head
Coarse crown disguarded
tragically close
mulching in nettles
watched by the spinney greenery
of the next generation
of your thistley children
Dead-headed
crownless in a devastation of hay
endeavour decapitated
thick timber uprooted
from fresh leaves
Wisdom’s rattling weight
cast down for budding usurpers
Your fallen head
tragically close
mulching in nettles
watched by the spinney greenery
of the next generation
They both knew it was wrong
but in the warm kiss
of a coming summer
it had to happen
The garden was empty
their clans briefly absent
only magpies kept sentinel
and pride dazzled them heedless
Two notes of
incongruent tongues
and it was decided
Now is the moment
The rook and the pigeon
left the garden
flew over basking roof-tiles
and went out into the world
Never seen the waves so high
eating at the pebbled shore
sinking salty teeth down
and pulling, heaving
the haplessly loose out and away
Gulls mass, those little anarchists
stringless kites in the roar
unflapping in their pursuit
of risky but effortless air
and I’m standing here
I am standing here
planting my feet in sea-licked stones
to become a place
where the wind and the water
and the rattling land meet
Into the heck
of my day-dream driven march
breaks this pigeon leg,
lying in the middle of the alleyway.
This livid-pink scaled foot,
camply poised, missing a counter-part
but counter-pointed by a gristly fan
of tendons, shredded body-meat, exposed bone.
Blood and feathers give me pause,
a moment with this residue of a bird,
a smear of a fantasy of flight
and the lost blue of possibility.
Amputated, grounded, wingless,
It’s just another addition
to the shit and wrappers
flapping in the alley.
I think this is where I will lay us down
so I can carry on into my day
unburdened.
stuttering culture[s]
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the literary asylum
My Basket of Eggs 