Eclipse
without sun
I am etiolated,
enfeebled, bereft
my backbone heavy
and limp,
muscles stale and indurate
from disuse
I try to lift my face,
feel the light,
even the dawn or dusk,
even when fog would cloud my vision
but I cannot move, for
my neck is fixed,
vertebrae seized, locked,
eyes that can do no more
than stare ahead
at this monolith, this
menhir, present since
I can remember
that ages me, leaves me
threadbare and faded,
as a moth-eaten blanket
fails to sustain a warm embrace
so I shiver in the shadow,
ensnared in this eclipse,
this dark moon
that will not detach me
from its bleak orbit
They reach away from our reality
as if we are a momentary blur.
Here by the ice-gnawed stones,
my mind is a broken-jaw,
bones rattle in fissures of time.
Menhir, dolmens and megaliths,
under the blunt teeth of ageless winds
the stones raise their wilderness questions
while the ancient moors and heaths
crack open new earth from old dust.
Sheep graze around these planted rocks,
but none enter its grassless circle.
If I were a sheepdog
I would bark at all these
stone wraiths also.
a tall blonde, white plaited with salt
all elbows and knees,a new menhir
on a guilded stage of
tidewash and wind,crouched under
a sky of ovens and red brick,
serious and wide-eyed
before a sandring that loses
its smile as the sun drowns;
the sea turns to black.
To hell harbinger, niggling winsome words,
has grasped the devil's share, for menhir size
Has pencilled in his own and crossing swords-
It errant's change which seeks the high rewards.
As such they'd yammer the athiest priest
Prepare to skewer faith that's what we've done
With raffish grin, the template from the East,
Has built ferocious men to form this Beast.
Defy, that would no penitence be claimed,
To bask in carmine etchings, someone's blood
Somewhere, where an idle worth is blamed,
Adapts these xeric rituals therefore tamed.
To vilify each state, the wordsmiths curse,
Has first to reach the west, a destination
Jitter free from consort, ends his verse
While kohl can camouflage as matters worse.
Before the tinsel shrinks the bask shall glow,
A zephyr hailed along, with fan to blaze
Contained as one explorer, which we know-
Oblivion, auras mentor steals the show.
The umbra can indeed produce some shade
While gullet quenches low, as food shall be,
Where evil grows the size that man has made
He brings the lions share for masquerade.