OF CYNICAL REASON

Dulcinea

Coins trapped in the tallow
Of pew wood

A boast of sins
Yet to be remitted

Or recast
In his image

(Faust’s curse some say)

Cervantes drank wine crushed on the millstones
Of Rozinante’s hooves

Cleaving and remitting
An awful stench

And Dulcinea dancing thorn-footed
In the menace of his thoughts

A fate worse than death
(Some say)

Forget-me-nots

Corn silk whispering forget-me-nots
In the cones and stirrups of my ears

Not hard and bitter as I am wont to believe
But soft and lilting like a mother’s kiss

Her breath sour and milky against the crime
Of my cheek

His heavy breath sour with whisky
Boxing my ears

Forgetting who’s rod
Bullied me into being

Poking around in the sanctum
Of my mother’s ear

Harping Wind

Scalawags advent the coming
Or going

Of spring

I, of course, eat scurvy bits
The impetigo

So it seems

Is back with a fury, biting, harping
Reminding me that God is watching

keeping a check on my meandering

Crappies
Sun-touched, yellow

Wrapped in the sac-cloth
Snarled round my hips

All I have left to eat, God
Are fish

Crappies, slung low round the hoop
Of my neck

Sun-touched, yes
The impetigo is back with a fury, so it seems

The advent of a coming
Or a going

Who knows when
Nor where

In Between the Two

A black moon
Cut from a nick
Of cloth

A razor edged
Inward towards
The centre

Skirting
But never risking
A laugh

Or a nick
On the clove
Of the ear

Or a box
For that matter
In between the two

Such simple displeasure
As these
Are rare in deed

Incautious
And cut from swaths
Of cheap cloth

So as to prevent the fraying of ears
And twits of hair sheared
From the centre out

And the moon black as night
Perhaps blacker

Yet I will risk a laugh
Boxed in between the two
Of my ears

Cloven and sheared from the centre
Out

My fathers’ knuckles
That’s all I remember

Sharpened on the clove of my ears
And sheared white from the centre
Out

Marzipan

Skin like marzipan
Honed smooth

And the crazing
Beyond words

Simple
Yet wordless

An avarice that schemes
And hungers

For a mouthful of skin
Like marzipan

Texture’s like phrases
Yet wordless

Articulating the crazing
So far removed

Yet nearing
Closing in on the nectar of skin

So nurturing
Yet hard and scheming

Like marzipan
Splitting your lips

Crazed
Yet unable to sing