Some poems I wrote on the weekend and I want to save somewhere. They are about animals, mostly. There is a fox series and a couple of extras. I’m pretty happy with them, although they may need more cowbell in places.

Fox Skull

The skull of a fox
a fragile fragment of dessicated bone
protruding from the sand
among the dunes of an empty winter beach

I hold it in my hand
it is thin, and domed like the sky
fringed with teeth

I would -
bribe the ferryman and follow your bushy tail
through the endless holes of the night
your labyrinthine kingdom
but my last coins
are for bread
and bread alone.

All I offer is a few crumbs,
twisted off between fingers
and left there
in the dark between the street lamps

***********************************

Black Halo

You.
You have a red coat
that cold cannot penetrate nor fortune tear
you have those teeth
as sharp as necessity
and as hidden
as the rich hide necessity
and avow their freedom
anyone else would scavenge from a garbage bin
but you feast
righteously neck deep in garbage

hail to the Fox King
with a divine right
a portion of the infinite cosmos
draped in fur and teeth

You.
You have a black halo
crown of the earth
your kingdom encompasses every map
expanding over every space
to a height of one metre.

You have a black halo
your majesty, Silent Fox

*******************************

God, King, Thief

A story.
One night you emerged from your hole
with the subterranean darkness
snagged on your tail.
You dragged it behind you like a cape
as you wandered here and there
and when you saw the coming daylight
and you ran, and you disappeared
the darkness from beneath the earth was left behind.

this accident
has forever covered my world in half-darkness
made purpose and value unreal

hail, Fox,
god of negative space
king of the earth
and thief of all that I own

*****************************************

Oh Hail

trotting on pavement made for my feet
your splendid heels undo the unseen web of purpose and place
playing in streets that take me to work
eating what I have thrown away
crying in the stillness of my sleep

Thief.

you have taken the kingdom of ends
and made it your own
its empty car parks
its deserted alleyways
its scraps of wind-scattered garbage
are the seat of your red-coated reign

like you ran through the streets at midnight
you began to run through the lines I write
digging under my fences
relentlessly breaching all my defences, vain pretences,
making nonsense out of my senses
now the bright and slicing diurnal singifiers
twist and turn suspended in sempiternal half-light
and I am tricked, a victim
taken helplessly into your sinister kingdom of night

The virile essence
that a man speaks
hangs from me,
as a child in his father’s clothes.
Too thin, too pale, and he talks only of foxes.

Oh hail, Fox
god of absence
king of ghosts
thief of the world

*******************************************

European Red Fox

searching in the darkness for scraps to eat
at 3AM on an empty street
clicking claws on the concrete
and rattling garbage bins
a quiet fox runs, nimble and thin
wrapped in his red coat
as night’s black throat
swallows the heat of the world
tries to eat the world
unspeak the world
and the zero-degree freezing cold void expands above
and the fox, he cries
to another fox
signifying only that he is here

weightless feet
jaws that waste nothing
heart that beats relentless
in the cold and desolation of a vacant city

oh red fox,
I will crown every one of your cubs a prince or princess
and turn the wealth of the daylight world
into scraps to feed them

**********************************************

Beachcombing

In the first dull throb of light
and wave of rain at dawn
on an empty beach
the morning after a storm
when the vast ocean
explosive and ferocious
has spat its shattered trash onto the shore
and the rain
has soaked
into
everything

follow the red fox
in the dawn
and the wind
along the frayed and winding line
of wrack and wreckage
scattered beneath receding storm clouds
looking for
the limp and ghostlike shell of a dead crab
a stiff and sandy fish with milky eyes
a bird, face buried in the sand
and tattered feathers fluttering
in the cold
seaward
gusts
of
wind

**********************************************
**********************************************
Picture

picture
mirrors in an endless hall
all lined with silver on the walls
and glass that hangs at every angle
mirrors propped and posed and dangled
splitting and splintering like a brilliant snow there
is a light that shines as if from nowhere

I did not write this
any more than a mirror paints a picture

**********************************************

Elephant’s Birthday

Elephant threw a birthday party
and she asked all of her friends to come
so giraffes and zebras and lions and tigers
followed by a flock of fantastically bright green parrots
came across the dusty plain at dusk
when the first stars poked out of the darkening sky
and the moon was rising
they were happy it was the weekend

at the party elephant danced with all her friends
she span and span in the dust headlong
in a circular hurtling to her favourite songs
and the ground resounded with the pounding of her colossal feet
in the nearby hills and across the riverside plains
that run down to the far-away sea
teacups wandered across tables
made crazy and unstable
with the tremendous vibration
tiny animals ticked and trembled
gnawing on their tails till the tremors ended

and Elephant did spin and spin
long into the star-blazing night

in the morning,
a beautiful disco ball
made from a balloon and some tin foil
gently revolved in the gathering wind