A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long-truncated railroad stop
humming still with a faded reality.
As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.
Caps, coats, and carts
Sweat, rustle and creak,
an invisible locomotion of leaving and arrival.
employed upon an iron labor.
The tall dry weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle
as they wait here or idle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its innards now
are a nest for ticking birds.
Dandelions anticipate twirling flight
under a corn fed sun.
A mid-day heat thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive
as if its bygone world
had not forever disembarked.
It must have been made
and rejected
in times grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
soot seared across burnt eyeglasses,
blackened bones,
for after the gas came the flames.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, smithereens
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable,
always some spicule of irregularity,
detritus to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
Flood of anonymous agony
inundates the debris of hope,
weed-webbed wasteland
of receding reverie
erodes in delirium
within turbulent essence,
wreckage of life piles up,
unlived,
transforms rapture garden
into winter badland
of foreboding discontent,
perceived.
Future meadow waits
to be sauntered
sanguine,
invents fantasy alchemy,
making magical gold
from ferrous aspirations,
gilding rusted crust
of weathering present,
metamorphosed,
marigold ecstasy blooms
in the Midas-touched mind,
mesmerized.
Wrapped by golden rays
of garnet sun,
setting sublime
beyond the content ocean,
entranced mind rolls
in twilight zone
on sapphire life waves,
broken,
yearning psyche is drawn
within the anguish trough,
crashes on existential shore,
shaped by the shadow
of pearlescent past,
petrified
in the collapsed sandcastle
on the beleaguered beach
of the stilled time,
enfolding the blanched grains
of aureate dreams,
d i s i n t e g r a t e d…..
I saw a woman emerge from a shadow
With a sly demeanor and look about.
Her sequined dress was aglow.
She didn't know I was also out.
I watched her remove a silver shoe
And stick her foot into the mire -
One of the darkest ferrous blue -
As if testing the temperature.
Her dress was even more brilliant -
After a countenance of approval -
When she crossed the bleak horizon -
Careful not to soak her lunar veil.
London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.
A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.
Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.
A window in Baker Street,
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left-handed genie.
Meat mongers return to their,
gore-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.
The city is a fable,
there is fuel oil seeping,
through tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipes
lie low and wait.
Denizens' crabwalk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis.
Stately towers are pressure washed,
until they shed a dark sunlight
that fractures ferrous raindrops.
Tenements sink under the weight,
of red carpets
until the blood flows
out of them.
London by night,
is a veneer,
a crust
of low expectations.
The many boats around sit in the harbour
One tailing the other now and then
Serried lined and flanked with one another
They pause for thought gathering day before them
The ferrous water sits so still in motion
As plankton line the sterns and afts like moluscs
Peeping over ropes and bobbing under
Waiting out the storming rain and thunder
They never see a passer by or vendor
Instead their vision remains steady on the water
Where promises of undulating sea throngs
Bring mystery to ocean faring wonder
The sky turned from drab to gunmetal grey;
pewter raindrops slipped through pools of mercury.
I went out onto the covered deck to smoke a cigar.
Steely hued geese flew through metallic showers,
ferrous sheets of sleet crashed into a leaden haze.
It was easy to imagine platinum dioramas turning
within each particle of soaking spindrift.
I thought of space junk, not ours, but an alien detritus
drifting in from a thousand galaxies,
hundreds of space craft abandoned and defunct
all slipping, unmoored into fragments
falling and smelted small
within times rendering forge.
A plunging litter of far explorations -
one last landfall upon our far flung world
as the dissolved ore of a once iron will.
It must have been made
and rejected,
in night’s grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
motes in a burnt eyeglass,
the thin singed bones
of fledgling flights into darkness.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, a detritus
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable
is thought upon,
always some spicule of irregularity
to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
Who can view me behind the fence ferrous!
Those infiltrating eyes bear me desirous!
Unveiling what was previously hidden.
Keeping this same watcher has striven.
I figure you should say, "What's in plain view!"
Penny for your ideas as they decay in a dark row.
Truth is a precursor to the hotly slated freedom.
The spilling from torn gum is giving a storm!
Am I a true enchanter worthy of notice?
I feel you crying, so please, let me focus.
I never set up in front of an audience.
I starve to escape the irritating sequence.
But does it work to retain me from leaving?
This clutter adds to the overall styling.
Do they have any considerable difference?
Do I cave in, or do I dazzle with my openness?
What has me scared! How am I striving to hide?
None, however, can bear reality inside.
After the Inquest, I cast the net vast and bleak.
Induce them all to cave up the skill to peek!
Written: October 3, 2021
Sunday did not pan out,
an iron faith faltered.
It was a wane wobble.
it was cellular rust,
it was not enough iron.
Iron pills rattle in me like BB pellets,
my stools are obsidian artifacts.
More red wine, less whine.
The day got no better,
anemic confusions swirled.
I sucked upon nuts and bolts,
listened to Metallica,
had to iron-out yet more
non-ferrous unpleasantness.
she stumbled over her own shadow
on course for one more restless night
a candle on the window sill flickered
bade farewell to the day’s struggle
scented with the fragrance of sweat
it was not so much a nightmare but
a vivid recollection of what had been
as the drenched duvet made her shiver
cotton wool draped over her eyes
made her remember the lashes
from the whip of another encounter
with the truth of her serrated narrative
too weak to talk with the demons
fearful and anxious of an uncertain future
she looked at the corroded hinges
of the closed casement that barred her view
ferrous rust played a ferocious serenade
in tune with the wind unable to soothe
somehow however the dust finally settled
and closed the narrow aperture of sorrow
her gaze fell upon the slender doorway
behind which had to be an outline of hope
when she squeezed through the dubious opening
she dared to question the sun and the moon
settled for the unknown as an act of resistance
and walked out of her life
03rd August 2021
A crocodile-hide sunset,
a ferrous squall;
somethings boiling up there.
Storm gulls
beat mosquito clouds away
as they flee.
Ten wild horses corralled in a dumpster
hammer my fearless heart.
An anemic sky gulps for breath
near or far
a brawling trample scuffs the earth.
The dimming light drips strings
of gelid spittle.
Vaporous stalactites shred an acrid air.
Now a ferrous rain cuffs and pelts.
I hide my face from its eyes,
follow a screaming ghost
into the house.
Equus ferrous
There is a storm blowing when blue waves crash ashore
white horses with flying mane gallop up, blocking the road.
The stallions become a river, pushing useless cars aside
to drown in their futility.
The town below is a lake, rats escaping the sewers runs
up to the third-floor frightening people with their anger
eat babies’ eyes.
A new generation of the unseeing kind, the previous one
could see but didn´t understand busy
as they were playing with the cell phones taking selfies.
Everything ends, calm sea the wild white horse went back
to the bay, and the rats moved back to the sewers
The sky turned from dewy drab to gunmetal.
Pewter raindrops slipped down the window like mercury.
I went out onto the covered deck to smoke a cigar and sky gaze.
Iron winged grey geese had shed their metallic plumage,
ferrous sheets of sleet crashed into a low leaden haze.
Easy to imagine infinitesimal steel dioramas turning
within each particle of soaking spindrift.
I thought of space junk, not ours, but an alien detritus
drifting in from a thousand galaxies,
hundreds of space craft abandoned and defunct
all slipping, unmoored into fragments
falling and smelted small within times rendering forge.
Evidence of dead-end hopes and far explorations.
I watch this riven wreckage rolling in
apprehend through clouds of cigar smoke
its last landfall on our far flung world
as a dissolved ore in a backwash of rain.
A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long truncated railroad stop
humming still within a surrogate reality.
As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.
Caps, coats, and carts
employed again by the magnetic
echos of an iron labor.
The brown weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its guts a nest for ticking birds.
Dandelions anticipate
a faraway flight,
A mid-day heat
thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive
as if its world
had not disembarked forever.
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