cafe latte, st andrews style
I see only
one eye
and half of her mouth
and the occasional
sensuous bulge
of her mediterranean nose
half-masked
by the peppered head
and angled slump
and washed-out suede
of her father
or professor
or eccentric uncle
in the cappuccino heat
of her twirling shades
and fingered hair
where the minutes
in steamy slurps
and continental clatter
hiss like tongues
of cool snake
down the desert skin
of the air
and where I
marooned
amidst italian
macaroons
stoically
scottishly
drink tea
The Lady of Shalott
by John William Waterhouse
The noble pause, the soft release of chain
that weaves its ripple to the river-rush;
the lingering of eyes in willow-hush;
the silence of the meadows after rain.
The blow of hair unbraided, free and red
as heather-fields before the setting sun;
the guttering of candles one by one;
the taste of bitten lips once they have bled.
All traces of a song: the cry of love,
that catches in her throat as it is sung,
until the drone of birdsong high above
returns alone to mourn her stricken tongue;
the voice that wove a dream of Lancelot,
and died before the banks of Camelot.
danish blue
not a cheese when I was thirteen
but a man-pawed scroll
weathered at every crease
till each fold of adult skin
fluttered and drifted to white
with the adept fingering
of a dead sea scholar
I pieced together an anatomical age
a civilization that once
was pink and pearly and hairy
slowly a picture emerged
of a time spent and yet to come
as, bleary with puberty
I spilt my own precious ink
writing myself into history
The Bull Stone
The bull stone,
worn in the middle
like a mother's aproned waist,
strains against
the tugging, pulling
rope of my arms.
A deaf conspiracy
of grass has grown thick
over the dancing ground,
over the few torn feet
of swollen scarlet earth
the bulls were baited on.
My tiny taurean hooves
slip through the wet green,
untethered, pink and yielding.
I climb up the bull stone,
crowned in daisies,
robed in bed-linen.
I am the white calf
my black brothers invoked.
Their blood is my ink.
My words are their horns.
I will gouge the land with my poetry.
I am ivory-skinned and unsacrificeable.
A spidery rain falls.
The granite mouth of my great-aunt's house
calls me in for my tea.
I dismount myself, my bull stone,
and snort at the lesser gods hiding in the sky.
