verses on old age-

after egill skallagrimsson

a knacker’s yard of neck

the boiled egg barnet

hairline crack-

a third leg jellied eel

rests soft

cock robin dead

as sexless nights

no tits or groan

of horns thrust

up to cause

the slap slap slap-

the cut-short waves

on an intact craft...

i am blind!

fireless as a nook

my tips stretch out

toward the smouldering

wicker wench

for warmth and coos

to smooth

my clashing-vales

with rise not set-

to think

i once in golden rings

took giant bites of

Ymir’s flesh

and spoke her up in

skull and sky-

corporeal

yet soon...

i die!

olden as spinsters

in a tumulus of sheets

my feet

lend me no hand

artlessness on a friday

and they’ve put the grit down

no sky, no smell of fire

no fire-burned char-

blood-flat london.

a split open arm in some tug of war

Daffodils by WW: Rewritten using Kennings

I roamed heart-blank as a white ship's cat,
that winds across a muse's breast
when all at once I saw close breath
the yellow teeth of Spring's first smile,
beside the sky-held watery yawn
& under drowning men's last hands,
within the gentle fire of dawn
amidst pale-whispered words.

Continuous as God's blinking eyes
that wink all through the curling skies,
they stretched in open-thrown wide arms
along the fingernail of land,
10,000 I saw, wild-tossing
caves of dreams in a battle
of limbs & days.

The foals beside them whinny-sang
but fell by one like crumbling walls,
Kings of words made always new
with such a crowd of perfect rhymes,
I gazed & gazed but little made
of golden treasure now made free.

For oft when on my net of snores,
in empty-think or red lid space
which is the joy-purse of alone,
my loving clock glad maddening fills
and quick-steps with the soundless bells.

Hare meets Gnome: Kenning

Sack-eared witch-zipper of the wild seas of grass

darts drunk through a crazy-paved mouth of flowers.

Small Sir: bell-hatted monkey of the beds, watches silently-

his one still eye on a single ebony breast-
the crone of clouds that spills like oil across her haunted torch.

POEM IN WHICH I DO NOT BORROW ANY OF THE WORDS 
FROM A POEM BY HELEN MORT AND USE ALL OF THEM IN A 
DIFFERENT ORDER TO CREATE A POEM IN WHICH

I stepped up
towards mother pines
on the brighter moor,

I saw where five deer
more ragged than
the rose that flickered
lapped every God
to water,

I followed the river back
like each of the otters
at Ullapool did
for them and who/
whatever waited I
at the garden's edge.

The night that never
followed stood on
through fur supple eyes
they-darned in mother,

and Rannoch forest
graceful from
the kingfisher south
where we saw the night
stealing in-between
time,

the pound-coin holidays
she brought out to hers-
the watched ones
looking for their ribs,
and those swears that saw them
the same before teatime.

I must have been
that window in my middle
because I have
no memory of them,
of the house we were then-

the years more
coloured than the trees,
fish-bone closer
than hooves.

7 and encased in the velvet catsuit purple with the white piping, on the edge
of a bridge where water slipped past like a ghostling

i was- with my little feet dangling and the roaring in my reddened ears saying
SATURDAY as dad was one-hand pushing the clouds out and mum

was home with John Player and her radio and roasting things like a cricket
rubbing her legs together and crying or whatever

so here we were on Timmy’s Lane where lovers came this essex Shangri-La
where i would give boys great head later on

and i was staring into the water which rushed under me and through the pooh stick
tunnel but all i knew was i hate this catsuit in the shape of me

so i put myself further on the rim and tipped my body off until i was falling for
miles and miles upside down like a Red Arrow with smoke which wrote

O God and my face hit the water and the waves came inside the suit and blew
me up and i heard dad say ho! and he came in the river and grabbed me

with a hand the size of that kid’s house whose dad was put in prison and i was
saved not dead and the smoke from the spinney spilled into tears and

cried me all the way home in my cocoon of skin down Crow Lane where the
crows made nests and swooped me up in caws when the sun came up

and onward still to Goblin Hill where i was made- over the sewer and lost plastic
men the graves of cats and all the nooks out back where the chickens

screamed

people in kernels
and dark straits.
you, my sunlit
trudge-

your world is not
important. light
makes you up
strange fish,

cramped up
oh god
like a headlit eye
come out to look

at your true beauty. i
am perplexed
into your

skin, a range
perhaps. it’s tiring
innit.

a blinding bullet of
blue lodges in my
reverse procedure.
i was a complex

child. how we like to
paint our miseries;
apart
from that

mid-deck in the eye
of the storm
 
the
centre of the teacup
is where i’ll be 

ton 80

as the waves in my
lap speak of 

window cake
and the chipped 
o-zone 

your search ships
clank upon

anchors in cubes of
sugar

the view across the table leads not to the sea
as the multi-spiked flowers might suggest

but rather towards a piecemeal idea of future life
called ‘i have done it and have a dog called SNIP’.

he is a good dog but Boy does he blend
and run all over chasing a tale or 2
to tell at glitzy parties in his best ruffle.

well, i’m not sure i have time for that kind of thing,
i have other people’s art to look at and it
takes up a lot of time. i barely

do anything else and my fingers are worn to the
bone- i have blisters from gripping the days in a
semblance of doing- it’s exhausting son.

while all through this the drought makes mirages
in the shape of space, i shuffle towards them but
like an eyeless magpie miss the glint. oh my

it’s probably better to be enrolled, yet the grass
is dead. my therapist has broke her foot and i want
to put her in a litter. i will ask her if this is normal

with my common sense face, and she will say
‘but what happens when we reach the sea?’
in a voice of wonder, of dread.