Free Verse

Freddie Freeloader

i smoke and listen to jazz

           under starry nights aching

for loneliness like a flower

       lying in my palm

where all the pretty blondes wait

            for me to drag my eyes

from heroin infested ditches

            filled with beetles crawling

and fucking through the empty ears

       of lost recovering soldiers

hearing Miles Davis: da-dum da-dum

     in cool air conditioned rooms. 

Free Verse

People Draw Out

a man with lanky fingers

looking at the wall

his moist blue eyes

turning in circles

and spinning out into space

to burst into an oak –

flames licking the rim

of his white t-shirt.

a girl staring at the tiles

and a white blank page

sitting on her desk

her hair falling slowly

across her silhouette

and her thoughts dripping

into puddles on the floor.

two kids running

with bubble gum and beer

bottles floating in the sea

waiting for the sun

to get his toys in one bowl

so he can run in the rain

and bring them gifts

forged from medieval stone.

Free Verse

stone child

one long night lying

                  completely motionless

under the covers

watching the fan turn

round and round and round

until it stops still –

the air growing bitter

and a shadow crawling up

through the open window

Free Verse

A Man Who Lived too Long

For each word he speaks

a leaf falls from his tongue

catching syllables

and speckles of powder

left from a morning

hidden by the moon

and dropped

                         shrieking

from his broken tree

until it collapses

like rockpo(e)ms against

a blank white page

filled by autumns milky

swaying evening light. 

Pantoum

A Poet Stumbling in Circles

In a field full of daisies (I lie

to ask a question full of thorns,

blood dripping slowly (all the way

down my thumb) until it rests

to ask a question full of thorns

(a bit like death) falling half drunk

down my thumb until I rest

inside warmth (starting to look

a bit like death falling half drunk

in a field full of daisies. I lie

inside warmth (starting to look)

blood dripping (slowly) all the way. 

Free Verse

At A Party at a House Round the Corner

I write my poems in white verse

and let them slowly fall

into this jumble of small uneven

love letters and incoherent words

masked only by my attempt

to get stoned in a silently painted

room with the walls playing

me jazz and stilted Chopin

until my ears have turned red

with the blood of a handkerchief

left in a woman’s bathroom to dry

and forgotten for three drunken weeks

until I returned with some punctuation

and let it slip slowly into the darkness

of a curled junky sleeping sunrise. 

Sonnet

Beneath the Surface

There is a face, the water lapping gracefully

across her brow, wintry and bitter with frost,

her hair blowing gently around her eyes

now milky with death, the sand in her pockets

feeding the fish on the ocean floor.

I stand above her, turning slowly to the moon

my hands shaking as time walks on, oysters

waiting for too long, the cold in my shoulders

spreading gradually to the blank white sky.

I walk from her, allowing the sun

to die in my hands, the memory imprinting

itself on my wrists. I should be rigid,

trapped beneath the surface; frigid and watching

the spiral of the stars as they fall through her lungs.