Archive > Necromancy
Mid-Atlantic Depressions
A thud! and boom and roll of thunder
On a seeming calm and clear day
And suddenly the storm broke.
Under the weight of the clouds
Spars cracked, timbers splintered
And the ship went down,
Diving silent through turbulent blues
Like a bird shot mid-flight.
From on board, a single scream
Returned to the world as a column of bubbles.
Too quick for the launching of lifeboats
All hands were lost.
Later, pearl-divers found the wreckage
Lying broken upon the bed
The glint of gold and something sparkling
Catching their eyes.
Inside the broken hulk, miraculously
They found life still breathing
What looked like dead rock
Was living coral encrusted onto skin
Limpets for eyelids; eel-bones for a bed
Kept alive at the hand and fin
Of sad-eyed, reverent merwomen.
Torpid, frozen cold and blue
But sleeping, only sleeping
The nightmare dreams of Kraken kills
Rocking gently within the tide's swell.
Carefully they were lifted upwards
Through the racking pain of the bends
Through black, purple, blue and green,
Their heads held clear of the sea,
Liquefied ice forced from their lungs
And they breathed in air once again.
Lips moved, eyes opened,
The sun wiped salt-water from their faces
Skin lost its aquatic tinge
And the survivors remembered what they once had been.
While away in the west,
Clouds with the scowl of death
Writhed and ran from the light
And a gentle breeze breathed through the beautiful air.
Counting All the Bricks in Manchester
Through widening cracks in reassuring Tarmac
Looking out at us from Victorian depths
Peeping around the roads' rough edges
Loom like bones in shallow graves
Cobblestone cobs, that clogs shuffled over
Where pools of water quietly collect now
That broadcast quiet frowns at each drop of rain
And work at washing away the crust of today
Down to sewer tunnels a century deep
A maze of coffins that gape under streets
Infested by ghosts in numbers unknown
Bemused in numb incomprehension
Who breathed bad air in cotton-mill days
Choked on smoke, grappled spiked steel
Lived between walls of red-brown stone
Machine-cut, ground-down, cheap and abundant
The buildings still standing down shunned side-streets
Small windows dark in hulking facades
Fading like bruises in dusty parts of the city
Rusty and brooding on what has been lost
Like sepia photos of hard and dreary days
Their roofs worn through by all the rain
Their walls seeping damp memories of pain
In this universe whose atoms are dried-blood bricks
Words Fail
At the sight of this
In the face of this
Words fail
The tricks of poets
An empty game
Primary school rhymes
Reused rhythms
Clever metaphors
Reproduced images
Lines on paper
Dots on a screen
Noises in the air
That which tries to describe the thing can never be the thing
And sometimes the gulf is too great
The nest of human twigs is unearthed
See Bhopalescent baby eyes
And mere words fail
If you enjoyed this poetry, feel free to throw a coin or two in the hat!
