PPM

What is it I have seen beyond our lust?A sealed sarcophagus of torpid stone.The future has no rain to cleanse the dust,Nor air to stir the linin from the bone.How heat, and all his pestilential court -Exhaustion, Thirst, mute Apathy that numbs,Will caper to the music Hunger brought,The steady beat of filling oil drums.What I…

Post cards

Two days I have been clearing junkAnd now I find a memory,A cardboard-gilded reliquary.How should one feel before the bonesOf saints? Ecstatic aweFrom admiration of their deeds,Or mourning for their early deaths?I - both. Two brittle sealsOf rubber guard the holy writ(One snaps and slaps across my wrist).Now lift the lid in stately hands,And crown…

Three eulogies

I The pyramids, of limestone skin Were flayed to feed man's living need. So mountains bear the half-healed scabs Of quarries cast in ages past. These tombs of rock, of king and sea, Each a fleshless ossuary, Are mortal too. Build bone from bone, Consume the dead and call it home. II Now is come…

Locking and Unlocking

A snowless drift to Winter's desert heart, Which withers hands to dormant elm. Dangers Congeal under milky ice. Their start Find fear in the open mouths of strangers. Cold fever breaks; regain the Sun's warm white, A light that shades the memories of dark, A lotus fed that sets the past aright, And heals the…

Sky Shores

We're planet sorts, I'm sure, All molten cores and dynamismEncased in stony skinsAnd coldness, blackness, barenessTo describe the in-between. Astronomy's a safer jobThan spacewalking, by far.It doesn't make your tongue freeze over,Or your eyes pop out your headWhen you go and mess it up. But who wants to be stuck behindSome old chipped-brass telescopeWhen there's…

Burning black

Creation was a crystal sphere In my design. Completely clear To light that witnessed every space. Moved planets in their paceless paths, Bred ferns that flowed with scaled tongues And guided hearts. These laws defined The workings of each worldly part In my unending cosmic play. So this design I split to seven, And every…

Forty days

Upon the hill a temple stands With high chimneys and glassy flanks That shine bright white in the mindless Sun. Within, the priesthood of delay Acts out its rituals, pauses decay And tries to check a pale king Whose grandeur grows with every hour. Without, and all around abound Us, we living ghosts, driftwood Stranded…

Isle of Mull

4pm upon the train from Glasgow, on the East Coast Main. Cabers tossed and Munros bagged, by this point we're pretty fagged. Still, a neighbour’s greasy cough makes it hard to just drop off, even in my dozy mood...