New Poems
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The Magnolia Tree
The room is large and cool,
Silent as a library,
Save the clock that drips time on the mantel,
The curtains quietly breathing,
Nets billowing brightly like skirts in surreptitious draughts
That flit furtively through the open window,
Light, freshly washed,
Of a Danish summer,
Refracted through old panes,
Bouncing off mirrors and firing the grain of old dressers
In Armagnac reds and browns,
Caressing the folds of linen dresses,
And wisps of blonde hair tied in black bows,
Outside, the magnolia spurting pastel jets
Of milkshake pinks and whites,
And the old lady lying in her bed,
Old grey hair combed by her daughter,
That has forgotten to fall into ringlets
But hangs straight as a Lutheran,
White nightdress starched, fading to grey,
And a speckling of fresh blood on the ironed pillows
Impressed with the weight of a head
Too heavy to lift;
She sits upright, the daughter,
Hands folded on her lap,
Antique bible casual on the counterpane,
Awaiting the next entry,
Face impassive, thoughts far away,
She does her duty, she does not cry;
What does it mean, this corked silence,
Impending tide foretelling illimitable passage?
What does it mean for her?
When the old lady dies,
Will the wind stop blowing?
The Ballad of Billy Bones
This be the ballad of old Billy Bones,
As wicked as any what sat on thrones,
His da’ were a drunkard, his ma’ a whore,
No future for Billy on London’s shore,
Said old Billy Bones.
Billy Bones, he were a wayward kid,
Grew up in poverty, lived on the skid,
Took no taming but answered back,
Stole from the apple cart, ran with the pack,
Did old Billy Bones.
Billy Bones, he took to the pirate’s life,
Took a strumpet for a wife,
Raised five kids, then had none,
Strangled the strumpet when he were done,
Did old Billy Bones.
Billy Bones, he took his rage to sea,
Killed men as soon as one-two-three,
He took their women and he took their gold,
And sank the Navy’s ships, more ʼan one be told,
Did old Billy Bones.
Billy Bones were fierce and he were hot,
And the Navy, they wanted him a lot,
They sailed him down on the Spanish Main
And made sure he didn’t get out again,
Not old Billy Bones.
They took him in irons to Wapping Dock,
And there they chained him to a rock,
The tide passed o’er his head three-time,
Then they threw him in a pit of lime,
Poor Billy Bones.
Now if you chance down Wapping way,
Don’t walk at night, but by the day,
The moon, it casts his shadow ʼpon the wall,
Striding long and striding tall,
That’s old Billy Bones.
He'll follow you as you swill your beer,
Flitting here and flitting there,
He’ll cut your purse or he’ll cut your neck
And leave your eyes for the crows to peck,
The ghost of old Billy Bones.
Changeling
I'm not really here,
just a blank where a person should be,
a head stuffed full of rags…
or just nothingness gazing out at nothingness,
a pond reflecting the vacancy of sky,
a seaside grotesque waiting
for the dumpy kid to put his face to the hole
to be snapped by the fat woman in the one-piece
with the red glasses,
a boarded up guesthouse with toothless windows
as December rain pelts papers along the street,
and the bins stand outside in drab rows waiting to be emptied.
I was never at school,
I never stood outside alone in the playground,
a black shape in the corner of someone’s eye,
I was the never the whiteboard waiting to be filled with equations,
or perhaps I was the equation no one could solve,
and when my heart stops beating,
there will be no soul to traverse the vastness of space,
no loving hand of God to receive me,
because…
well, you must know by now…
I was never really here.
Ladyhawk
after Emily Dickinson
Winter is a lonely note,
Held upon a string,
That hovers on the frozen air
Like the hawk that dreams of spring,
It keens an elegiac strain,
That speaks of love lost by the way,
And the blankness of a maiden’s heart
Is the blankness of the day,
Those, the broken hearted,
Who through the window stare,
A wan-eyed girl with cast-down eyes
Whose thoughts are lost somewhere,
That whisper in the whipping grass,
Where wet-skinned hills do rise,
In the wind-tossed hair of blackened trees,
Smudged mascara of rain-filled skies.
Winter is a lonely note
Held upon a string,
And there’s a lonely girl out there
Who sighs and dreams of spring.