METAMORPHOSES

Mophead so called so is
Wanders from bar to bar
Prattling from person to person
With always that axeblade grin

Old coins in his wig for you
And only you for sale
His pasty skin glimmers
Green on the pub strip
A sea of green bottles
Swing in his overcoat
His eyes in every one

He touches a lady's face
She done up something holy
She disappears up her jumper
A hissing noise from within

Hubby rises from his stool
Skin lacquering toy red
Jawline squaring teeth folding
Mophead has made his street
A brand new postbox
Brimming with angry letters
Feel him answer every one

THE GAME OF EAT

You serrate each incisor

Chisel every molar

Mouth; a society of trees

Seeded aching 

Through red earth

The sheen the sheen

A pretty ash trap

Sanded smooth by tongue

By work by word

You open your lips 

Opening a wound

The Bone showing glory

Dance of the bright

Gnashers aglinting

One takes a battering

And is lost in the flood

Flotsam on the stream

Years of smoke of tannin

Coloured brown papyrus

You want to know someone true

How bad are their teeth

The worse the better 

SMALL CEREMONIES

The dirt track winds down
To a great green nothing
Mounded clump and deer dropping
Something of small rot beneath
Sycamore trunk - the knots wet
And loosen under here; listen
Here, where the light has not touched
The soft floor for many years
Where the slack hand of rain
Has slapped and patted the soil
The picked ribcage of a rabbit
Rests on a flat grey stone
Strung and jewelled in moss
You, in your small human form
Place it upon your head
I felt, here at last
Something worth looking at
A queen enthroned
In the great green nothing

BY HER BED

Her skull flakes in front of you
As if to kiss her would leave
A layer of dust on the lips
Her wizened eye, the one
Alive, winces at your image
You wonder if you exist there
Or like a figure behind
A fogged screen even
Your voice, a suffocated
Noise in her downy ear
What happens when there is
But touch, how to touch
To get through, does one
Tap and stroke in morse
A language of emergency
Does the holding of the hand
Mean anything, there is no return
Everything slipping, no grip
You kiss her and there is no skin
The eye turns and you see here
More than you bargained for
Still, a hand reaches out
Is taken, is pressed
Is there not always
An answer in the end

BEHIND A DOOR

She fits the key in the teeth

Feeling them scrape and click

Sliding over the tongue

Testing its form and shape

Rolling it over the gaps 

Yes. Now they are perfect 

Nothing cracked or worn 

All in its rightful place

Finally to ensure it is so

That they are the only ones

She turns the bright head

And pushes the bolt 

Through the cheek

Pica Pica

Pica Pica, little

Loki clutching 

A red roof's

Cobbled vertebrae

It might collapse

Without your grip

Casanova

With a cleft lip

White stained wings

Like brothers shit

On you from above

Your tiny head dissolves

As night spreads its shade

The street now lit

With flung silver

Darting in jewels

You cannot own

KOI

In pillared light
Shrugging their prized metals
An armory of gold plate
Beneath the lily table
Uprooting grubs

I dip my finger
Not shy - surfacing
Through the ripples
They tickle
With their moustaches

One completes a circle
The continuous line
Spirals and traces
Smaller mandala
Blink and it is gone

As long and wide
As the strongman's arm
They bellow at stones
Unclosing eye
Swallowing all