The Uncles
I used a pin of mistletoeto unbubble a group of seated men,
who smelled of pipes and musky tweed
and tied small bones with the hair of dolls.
‘These are the bones of yourself as a bird
and we are your cupboard uncles.
We will guide you down the ways of life,
taking the roles of all your loves
and show you joy and the hard in red
to make you forget your sins in cloud.
Now, my dear, it’s two o´clock,
time for nuts and scented oil.’
But I saw that they had the gaze of owls
and midnight crouched in their horny smiles,
so I fled to the house by a shadeless route
and stamped in every sky-filled pool,
surrounding myself with suns in drops.
Now ravens walk on the distant lawns
and discharge their calls in the moving air,
and still I see in the looking-glass
the unfortunate whistling face.
List of poems – click / tap to toggle
- A Plate of Holes
- Amber
- An Old Woman Weeds a Grave
- Auntie
- Bees
- Birds of Paradise
- Bon Voyage
- Cairo
- Curve and Swoop
- Duskfall
- Fiddler'
- First Love
- Ghostwood
- Giuseppe
- Grandpa'
- Jessica
- Lay my Corpse
- Milf
- Miss Johnson
- On Hearing that the Bees are Dying Out
- Room of Red
- Rosa
- The 16A
- The Body
- The Carpenter’s House
- The Child
- The Creature by the Sea
- The Dinner Guest
- The Fish
- The Ghisi Miniatures
- The Gorgon’s Palace
- The Iron House
- The Nails
- The Old Mirror
- The Old Train
- The Other Side
- The Piano Tuner
- The Shadow Garden
- The Spinner
- The Thorn Tree
- The Uncles
Milf
The dead
are making babies still
fucking in porno clips
on the web. That’s my mummy
opening her legs
for that hairy
man. Was I conceived just then, is that bearded
bloke my da, who hugs her
close and gentle in the year
that she was beaten for
an hour, and died in the back room
of her local pub?
I watch her
do it all again — I’m sure
she likes him, her smile’s so real, so’s
the way she comes. Does
she sense we’re all around, unseen
and watching
over her, and maybe even guess
I’m out here too, staring
at the pearly gates
that I came through?
Before
I’m older than her twenty nine
I want to do a film of Jimmy
fucking me, and leave
it near her in the web’s forever now. You’ll find us
listed under hairy milfs, perhaps
with offspring still to come, all fruit
upon an endless vine.
But I’m glad
I can download my mum, know
the fierce embraces
that she gives, proud to have her here
in my own room, the way
she once welcomed me
into her salty womb, and kept me safe, a mad life
bouncing in its padded cell, while her red
heart roared up above, then broke
like a wave of the sea.
List of poems – click / tap to toggle
- A Plate of Holes
- Amber
- An Old Woman Weeds a Grave
- Auntie
- Bees
- Birds of Paradise
- Bon Voyage
- Cairo
- Curve and Swoop
- Duskfall
- Fiddler'
- First Love
- Ghostwood
- Giuseppe
- Grandpa'
- Jessica
- Lay my Corpse
- Milf
- Miss Johnson
- On Hearing that the Bees are Dying Out
- Room of Red
- Rosa
- The 16A
- The Body
- The Carpenter’s House
- The Child
- The Creature by the Sea
- The Dinner Guest
- The Fish
- The Ghisi Miniatures
- The Gorgon’s Palace
- The Iron House
- The Nails
- The Old Mirror
- The Old Train
- The Other Side
- The Piano Tuner
- The Shadow Garden
- The Spinner
- The Thorn Tree
- The Uncles