On Moles On The Fence At Nebo

We saw your soldiers’ ranks, your
desecrated corpses. We saw you
hung, sleek, one by one,
a dirge on a your own stave.
You were such small trophies,
so small, each one. Each one
a glove of dark, smooth silk.
Each one a sorrow of its own,
head height to our child’s eyes.
There was no triumph in this conquest.
No triumph in your sad spade hands,
your aborted tails or quiet eyes.

Now I imagine Goldsworthy meeting Hirst.
Then only sadness in a wind-struck place.

The Smoker

We will take it from the exhale.
A single drift, a caress of your lips
and the soft pass of silk that billows.
The bloom of orgasm widening in the air.
Your lips part in the afterthought of a kiss.
The afterthought of all that is in you
widening in the air.

There is a dilation inside you.
Your pupils become pools,
your lungs expand. And
your shoulders fall, the strength
at bay. Your chair is an oyster,
your chair a resting place. Your head
tilts back and smoke rises. It is
no signal of distress, no call to arms,
but an incense for your peace.

Milky Way

It is on days like this that I drink too much tea

and create a whirlpool of my stomach as the lactose settles,

and all you can say is uhuh, guhuh, your nakedness an entirety

and a subtle threat of chaos to be unleashed.

Half the world is out of your reach, your up-stretched hands

starfish, seekers, your palms maps that have not yet been written.

You describe the world as guhuh, and I drink tea and find

a galaxy threaded inside, an opening of my thoughts,

a settling of my tired eyes and star after star to string for you.

It will be years before you can understand. Astronomy. Navigation.

Myth. Hydrogen blazing in spheres and atoms out of reach.

Now you are a mountain climber, a daredevil. You can say, a-gone.

You would toss away your yolk-yellow duck and reach for

handles, books, and dip your bread in daddy’s tea and suck the liquor.

You would toss aside anything that does not suit, a king kong in the city

and your starfish hands would settle only on the inappropriate.

your havoc is mellowed with honey. The curtains are a forest,

a hideout and a shield, and I sit with my tea, and no place to hide.

Depths

I lie more still than a corpse, deep down,

swaddled in peat, its face a tannin mask

shrunken to expose teeth. Eyes lost and staring.

A nose that flares for an anaerobic balm.

If my neck were noosed I could not be more still,

if my sacrifice had been made, my hands curled.

If I lay for two thousand years in this soft bed

pressed upon by peat above, pressed by peat below,

with all torment dead and passed away,

I could not be more still and calm.

I could not matter less. The bog bottoms

are a place of calm. A place of sleep.

Remembrance

Lest we forget, they said.
And not just forget the men in the mud,
but the men who found air and sea as treacherous,
and those who guided them down safe paths,
and those who shot, and those shot at.
And not just the men,
but the women who worked, and the women who waited,
and the men and the women who died at home,
sheltering in places that were not shelter enough.
Two sleeping children at Glebe Farm.
Those tiny, single losses, blossoming into a field.
No race, nor homeland, nor gender matters in death.
Lest we forget, they said.
And not just those who died, but those who are living still,
and those who are fighting still,
and those who are still waiting at home, with hope clenched in their hands,
and those who were left behind.

Of Hades and Other Gods

It is a beautiful, clear day, and -
sometimes this Hydra has no head,
has no Achilles' heel.
The street lamps steal light from the sun
but cannot compare in brightness.
They are a whimper in daylight.
A whimper is my mind.
Helios rules us all.

Conch

I would curl tight in my conch shell
and ignore their feelers and blind, feeling eyes.
I would curl so tight that my atoms would condense.
I would be an ammonite, tight on the ocean floor,
unfound until split by a geologist’s hammer.
I would be a fossil, shelved, doubtful as Darwin,
silent as the grave, and tight, so tight,
and trust would be a nonsense word,
and faith no more than letters arranged in a press,
and for all their instruments they would say no more,
than, this is a fossil. We will let it rest.