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What Lies Beneath
What lies beneath the nuptial necropolis?
Sun-glints of memory,
warm rays of kinder days,
tranquil as the soil-sleepers
before they broke the coffin confines
and howled free.
What lies beneath the crying cairns?
The pearling bones, bone-pearls
of scattered skulls and souls.
Draughts of the dead
sculling frothing tides of Queen Anne's lace -
tomb festoons of bridal lace,
undulating umbels
purling the marriage mausoleum.
Beneath the wedding whiteout
I thought was daylight,
into the nightlight
where we stumbled like sleepwalkers.
And here rattled the homing bones,
the family ivory; we could hear
their unrest, scraping at loam.
What lies beneath the soil clots
that coffin-clattered like stones?
Your father - black-rotten in his coffin.
Borstal bastard
knife slicing his sister's fingers;
her blood a rushing ruby stream,
her pain a scarlet scream.
What lies beneath the old corpse copse,
the sentient sentinel trees?
Roots driving deep,
roots of you; yew roots
sprawling to clacking skeletal maws,
to tangle and twine
strangling the choke-ivy shrine.
Taproots creeping through terra,
groping for the black growth of father terror;
the bone-burrow death that puppeted him
puppeting you; now you lie with his voice,
your eyes a green glaze he gazes through.
Root-threads that wove and wed us,
their tumorous tubers
riddling the rancid soil
where souls lie soiled
and ache blue-bloat bruises -
contusions of the broken child
who lies in confusion beneath
the facade of indifference,
the dark father fist.
Copyright ©
Charlotte Puddifoot
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