Brust,
the Witwerd
Upon a long night
after short acquaint,
twining and thrusting,
bring a re-birth of taint.
What thing this raw suchling,
unchancely it arrive.
On chariots carry falsayers,
Moloch, Baal and Beelzebub,
their breaths ignited,
their mouths dripping mire,
bane and blight to come,
these fiends and cohorts desire
to corrupt unwaried men.
2.
The gude knicht of steadfast hute,
blud-rute run right in his race.
His full-swelt head intent,
for spirit to be spend,
to afront and fight,
wrout and o'welm all Beasts.
Gude knicht and his ludemen,
risen up from folkenholm,
carry forward the Witwerd,
to front the evil’d frae,
to thwart the maneful foe.
But though we withsaw'd battery, ahold,
witherwards, our battlements, wasted, fold.
3.
Upon a time, their growl’d suchlings
did push us to a gulded, winter’d age.
Our suchkins and gude burgesses,
[blede with their red rude blud,]
swear many a brust Witwerd,
then begone,
before our days are all sung.
4.
Now the ludemen they lodder,
sons of a soft murning,
and though once douth slayers,
new day'd bruke betake their hearts,
their mainstay lode burdening,
as ledden of much men.
The eyries bruw ill-wind thru all.
Dry-dearth is falling fast,
taken toll from under our feet.
Hear the dying gasp of Witwerd,
drast, d’ye ken?
Wherein now in dark-hood strides the gird,
too late the churl, now the bode of rune.
boggart
hole clough: silent eyes speak
there
are more things
stirring
in hedge and copse
than
eyes can see,
yet
nothing escapes me.
mischief
fomented,
derision
crowed,
the
muffling of sorrows,
gasping
for help.
For
me there is no recourse,
no
choice, but to be a quieted host to these.
Ancient
Boggart Hole Clough is now a large nature reserve in suburban Greater
Manchester. A Boggart is a supernatural creature, maybe goblin-like, in old
Lancashire folklore.
the sum of my bounds is three sixty
degrees.
I’m draped in folds, wrapped in trees,
underfoot clay and debris and sodden peat,
hurrying streams flanked by high embankments,
steep-sided wooded risings and depressed
hollows,
into which chill sinks at night.
Beneath this, there is a welling
that may choke me upon further telling.
An undermining, grinding within,
from where others' eyes closed,
presences unseen in day-lit skies,
await the darkening,
the cover of disguise.
2.
darkfall,
when evening glows electric,
when, under filament, shadows flit,
silence sits unspoke
and will until broken
by the sounds of scuffling,
of someone's struggles.
I am already perturbed.
i have no voice
with which to challenge
roused night fiends
who emerge from my underground
with trouble clenched in their fists
and devilment set in their eyes.
All their ancient mischief,
boiling again on the hob,
brewed with renewed vigor,
while they invoke spirits of the dead
to join the living of their kind
in their former abode.
limbless,
i cannot be other
than witness to their offense,
their breaking of bush and picket fences
to fuel their fires’ flames,
with which to banish
their seasonal antagonist,
descended upon this winter’s night.
Nothing, as such, escapes me.
3.
wearied,
for want of relief,
i must keep myself awake,
thru damp, mist
and freezing fog,
thru to the first blink
of the transparent eye of day,
at which they retreat,
leaving me to want to be
as i was before,
but can no more.
Aye, there's the rub.
Humpty
doo
Humpty
dumpty climbed a great wall,
Humpty
dumpty stood, stretching himself tall,
Humpty
dumpty would never, ever fall.
“I am
the Eggman, goo, goo, gachoo!”
Legs astride, hands on hips,
I’m the big E-G-G-, being
pumped full of ego,
ovoid, in shape.
From here I see
that the time has come,
as the Walrus says.
My time has come, I nod.
So, sat on the wall,
I can see all,
I see the Walrus, with his broom,
sweeping up the beach.
The Walrus,
though tusked and blubbered up,
whiskered, not smooth-embodied like me,
yet a charismatic creature,
entertains young oysters,
while a carpenter sizes them up for his
tea.
2.
‘Jabberwock behind!’
[the
jaws that smite,
the
claws that snatch.]
Taken aback, I slipped,
ooooops,
off the wall,
a brief moment in free-fall,
then splat!
And that’s all there is of me.
All this on a stupid bloody Tuesday, absent
my shell.
I’m an egg man no more, no, not
recognisable at all
as the lustrous white sphere that I was
before my fall.
I’m crying, I’m crying, upon my spill,
the king’s men weep hoarsely seeing my
plight.
I weep for me too, I deeply sympathise.
[Pass
another condolence, please.]
3.
Yellow matter,
like sticky custard, sprayed all about,
yolk and albumen splattered,
my remains sticky-drip,
no eggs-benediction for me.
Oh, unjust fate!
[To
be served up on a plate.]
I felt hard boiled
before my shell shattered.
Clumsy me? – no, I blame others.
But for my present want of limbs
I would kick Edgar Allan Poe
right at his tell tale heart.
Yes, I was too much an egg,
not sure footed like the Walrus,
not seeing what is really slippery.
Now every joker laughs at me,
scrambled as I am.
Childbane
[darkly,
darkly]
eyes
pressed
closed,
in
bed i lie;
darkly,
darkly,
you
pass by.
i
hear a sound,
i
thought I heard
you
sigh,
footsteps
scuffling
-
nearby.
darkly,
darkly,
you
creep
into
the night;
deathly,
deathly,
i lie affright.
that stranger eye
Now i am alive to invisible
threads
that drift within me, wormlike,
and attach;
micro-fauna that gorge at night
upon my inner succulent flesh.
They grow to want
to worm a new course,
to be free of my darkness,
to see light for themselves.
In
my latest dreaming,
while
laid out between my sheets,
i
am moved, restless within my sleep,
awakened
to a searing eruption,
burst,
like an electric prod touching
for
an instant, dispatching
a
booming, convulsive throb,
hard,
forceful and pained.
I am struck blind
by a thrust from behind,
thru my eye, emerging beyond.
2.
Now
i look, one-eyed,
and
in other ways wounded,
with
a host's belated insight
as
to the presence of parasitic bite
unknowingly
nurtured within.
A
blood-gorging sucker slinks,
negotiating
my warm ducts
in
cold serpentine fashion.
Approaching
my vulnerable eye
from
behind, foxing
my
fixed forward-watch,
to
burst, emergent,
for
it to be at its liberty at my expense,
to realise its dream, not mine.
