STEAMPUNK GOLIATHS
We’re not
adrenalin junkies
mad hatters
swallowing or breathing in
the general
poison we’re users
following the
snake-y path because it grips like a bastard.
Danger brings the
actual world within an inch
of an end and your
gut yells for bloody glory.
Hanging swinging from ropes between trucks
with monster
wheels in messy motion
air above us
guzzles sooty smoke.
Living in the
phase dealing one thing at a time
they slip into
past tense we survived.
Next matter opens
its maw.
Easy to fall in
when everyone lives on edges.
Only the fearful
lock themselves away why wouldn’t
we prefer to
perish on wild adventures
learning from
ancients re-forging methods of
mastering
what had never
sidled into our peripheral?
The previously
invisible knocks us off our roller blades.
Bed-bugs can’t be
a choice.
I want many
hats safety boots with steel toe-caps
and clever rubber
pumps to leap from tall buildings
in startling
bounds land stand projecting the art
of momentary bliss
& relief.
INSTALLATION
You may think it’s inspiring:
2hr shifts three times a day in a drafty
museum, art gallery, selected free spaces.
It’s Hell on feet in pale pink
ballet slippers; the girlhood dream
doesn’t fit this faction.
Standing still as a stuffed corpse isn’t
right for a living human body.
I don’t know how my brain
talked me into it… I thought
I was intelligent; it was probably
the long, fluffy, white peacock feathers.
Wings! Enormous angel-like wings.
I fell… so in love… wanted to sleep
curled into them on a giant
specially-built bed, swaddled, safe.
I don’t believe in angels, but
white feathers cast magic. The pull
of flight into, under and over clouds
up there in the expanse of sky spaces;
I never wanted to be a rainbow.
The cotton fluff of clouds and birds
buoyant on thermals capture me.
How elegant are swans? That gliding
beauty is what royalty covet, and it’s only
the singular ballerina who mirrors it
successfully. I wanted to be a tree.
Now I prepare myself to be a swan,
afterwards.
THE PATTERNED WOMAN
Blue skitters my length breadth
branches
to and from lochs
lakes coastlines.
I shower in waterfalls. Words follow trails
microdots of data barely readable to the untrained eye.
To know me you need a telescope. My rivers ripple
as I dance bend
backwards hiding age
with wrinkles. In slow motion I slice through
possessions. Clocks are dandelions in season
when fairies fly
off to become babies.
All the
what-ifs secret paths hidden chambers
wonderings
how why you were here instead of
there in
trees sprites in burns unstoppable
swathes quick slow a tango
a waltz.
Don’t look for
seeds. It’s too late. Naked in nests
we’d be happy to waver in wind
be sheltered
by canopy fed whatever came to
hand or mouth
learn to get on with living as soon as we crawled
climbed along branches down
the trunk and out
of our tree. Ignorant and wily would aid our escape
from dangers even from the sky. Birds of prey
would think we were fast food but what a childhood
of kissing cousins rebellion
and hellions chucking
whiners and pesky criers out of nests.
THE NECESSITY FOR SECRET IDENTITIES
Mizz Savage wore an animal around her neck.
Tiny paws tap Morse code when danger followed
her home from midnight rambles.
Blunt or sharp facts – she pointed dire warnings
at me, her nose spearing my tongue.
I was still young enough to not be heard;
she was so old she creaked, sailed down streets,
slow death walking the plain, a perfect invisible
hag, respectable but not caricature.
Some called
her Crow when in her black phase,
Parrot if feathers entertained wind. She consumed
continents, and her eyes
knew everything, held doctorates.
FRICA GOES FORTH
The cat on her head seemed elated by the height
the view and constant conversation.
Mother said, Avoid men wearing active
cod-pieces.
Daughter knew all about such men, had already
tipped one down a flight of stairs.
And look out for patterns – even in yourself.
Daughter’s friend had married a zero-printed
crocodile and disappeared into wallpaper.
What’s a mother of daughters to do when mothers
of sons allow penises free-reign.
Daughter agreed. Her world had reached a level
of surrealism to unearth all her usual notions.
I’m holding my head up with creatures, she said
hoping the wind would bless the marriages
offer wiliness and sneaky optimism on her hunt.
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