Thread a way through every scrunched-up story  Through skeletons piled by an unblest horde    Wince and wonder at the turns of the sword What unfrenzied heart can learn to savour  The glory of first poems that unchecked    By a deadline, flutter onto paper  After the rigours of a nuit blanche deckedWith the laurels of the last victory?     Wince and wonder at the turns of the sword  Through skeletons piled by an unblest hordeThread a way through every scrunched-up story

Crawl past the barbed wire onto concreteFox, grab the plumpest chicken and flyPast the ruins of our feasting hearses,Ghosts of your kinfolk driven to cry:All nature’s burnt off, they now serve wheat   Spirit-Animal, Silver-Tongue,Running through mank dens as we sleep  Spirit-Animal, Silver-Tongue,    Leap Leap Leap Lurk on the shed where you last saw treesHawk, grab the plumpest rabbit and fly,

“We must dim the sun,” The mother squinted up as she adjusted her torn shawl to make a few more inches of shade. They had spent the nights shivering and stumbling aimlessly, the days squirming as they crouched under her pitiful makeshift tent. She had scoured the vast brown expanse for a shoot or shrub, for a trace of water, for a rat or lizard to catch and kill.

Green eyes wide with wonder, she has no fears:Root of gold, swelling gold bulbs, a gold shootBlossom and shrink in the bewildermentOf doomed innocence. She knows not the loot,The trophy in triumphant merriment Borne away from her treacherous home-landIs to be herself, when the feast is done.She touches turnips turned by the handOf Midas, those lies unfit to feed one…

To its new-born river. But flow down allThe way to the sea. When drought comes to stakeIts claim, when plateau, plain and desert stretchTheir thirsting, sun-cracked feelers out to takeYour soul, do not die gasping in the sandOr compound with other rivers to makeAlliances that will consume and erase     Your name.

Stick your head out of the windowAnd sing, crow feather, crow featherWill you take a message from meTo the flowering apple tree? Blooming in the spring so fair,Tree, in your whisperings,Do you remember those whoPreferred you to their kin?Do you swish-creak nice thingsAbout them when you are blue,Or mock the fools locked in…

I do not know a fishing rodFrom a sugar-cane, but I knowThe fishermen are ready nowTo dredge the seas for me, the oddMorsel you trifle with and throwOut at last, off the plate’s cold rim In beds full of sand black and grim,I rot. In a week you could growRoses from my bones. But this shell…

How long is forever in the winter? How long is forever in thin shoes and thread-bare coats, in pouring rain and whistling winds, when pepper-garnished fragments of memory are blurred by the sky’s smarting, dissolving salt? In summer it stretches all the way into the gloaming, perhaps even into the moonlit night, this forever that is to be waited for, but in the winter, when the earth crunches underfoot like a potato crisp?

A single blade of grass   Drifting upon the seaDreams of foam-leaf shadowsDancing, and draws the best   Trees the thieved sand reports. Ossa nostra plurima sunt, and my   Skin cannot hold them all;So I dream its foam-forests sail to me.    A single blade of grassDoomed to stand outside and besideLove, a ghost that must hold inside…

True winter does not make you dream of spring Only of more snow. Snow on the leaves, snowOn branches becoming sliced coconuts; On gate, on grass, on every single thing -Snow: piercing, blinding, glorious. You grow Roots. The snow promises to live on, shutsYou off from the gold threads spilling over The rims of clouds, from the returning sun -

You dredged me out of my timeless slumber To dissect my longevity,Foolish creatures who crave your murderer Oxygen, the Sun its allyAnd the fleeting fruits of the fickle earth Until you are reaped by its dust But I cannot hate you, even in deathYour folly seals your doom. Like dewBlind to the sun’s rage unto its last breath…

Yield not to the néant when the whispers comeSlithering into the pit of l’abime:“One jump into the blue will axe you freeOf pain, of toil, of the work that will drumOn your heart in time to your voiceless scream” Yield not yield not O yield not to the néantYield not to the néant your furtive delights…

When self-ingesting like caterpillars in cocoons we lieIs the person concealed ever found unhidden revealed?Do uncrushed selves squirreled away from anger learn to spyThinnings in the canopy upon which their breaths congealed? Each dawn splintering the flawless porcelain of the nightShoves them again beneath the hell-jar that first crushed their flight

Fallen-forest memories churning in their sapPark-tree branches quiver in wrathful unisonAs the heedless sapiens enter through the gapIn fenced cages for their gratification spun “They laugh, they sigh, they most ardently cryTheir love of the gentle peace they espyIn our soft mutterings upon the wind” The pathways paved and unpaved barrening the soil,Ground nature herself gave to crib and nurse saplings,

The head eats first, through the eyes, through the nose, even through the mouth, but no one blames the head. The head savours the food, the stomach only stores it, and that for a while. It does not even spill most of the fat-making molecules into the blood, but it’s the stomach you all glare at, the stomach you mock and deride and lament.

Walk me through sorrow.Lead me by the handLike a sleep-walking child;Lead me across the sandTo the sea. You are the answer:To the question IDid not know I must ask;To the last mission IMust fulfill - Walk me through sorrow.Lead me by the handLike a sleep-walking child;Lead me across the sand…

The pleasant hours spent in slumberIn the story-dreams where we walkedWith dragons, blazing glory, thunder At us still; we cannot answer.Jolted awake from the sweet embraceOf tomorrow, our dreams must learnThe concrete taste of failure; face The many flavours of bitterness Come, new fear. Aa jao shabash. In Daydreams and cauchemares, ven. First you shall have…

Spider, spider, come and die,Come and perish by my boot.The foul viciousness I tryTo hide from my fellow menI shall now unleash uponYou. Malignant, malicious,I shall for this deed be borneAloft and cheered, because youAre an enemy declaredTo me and those I call mine.Yes, so declared by us; snaredBy us, yes.

SEEEnthralled, she lets the fatal gossamerSwathe her sagging wings, having read the doomDescending in the contortions of herHunter’s foul smirk, in each jointed leg-loomThat edges near. See it and learn dread too:She’s you. HEARSmothered, she lets every stale, lying pleaDistort in her brain the ink of bruisesTo “my fault,” “my failure,” “my destiny,”

We watched and felt it, touched it and tastedIts inked spices: and heard nothing at all.We shone a dozen lights on it, pastedIt in red scrips on the brain's crazy wall:Still nothing. We crumpled up the wastedPages, and took the poem out for a stroll.It murmured secrets to the earth and skyAnd told us nothing.

Silk feels blood-soft, like the winds in the fallThe grain of wood is rough neath the finger;But when the long summer twilights lingerOn the porch, and you feel ‘nothing at all’, Is it unfelt by brain, finger or soul,This nothing? Or is this nothing just hungLike the velvet of ice-cream on the tongue,Stuttering for sense-ways to be told whole?