Jenny Craig

Jenny Craig lady
has displaced her weight
to her
fat
white
S.U.V
overflowing
the parking space
next to us

Blackberry

Breeze musses red-petalled poppies,
scatters clouds, insubstantial as smoke.
And see the crow, crouched over my bed
as though it has a right to be there.

Oil seeps from its feathers, greasing
the visage of a holy man across the sheets,
coveting the essence that drives me.

January blackberries have dried
to gritty clusters on branches
in the fall to winter.

They crust the bushes
like eyes of sugary crows,
sweetness and decay the essence,
fluidity absorbed into flakes
of petal skeletons that rise,
'as the crow flies,'
on the skip of breeze.

Correspondence

She lies in her envelope of blankets-
letter of skin, signature
of bone.

He reads her like sign language,
stamps his kiss upon her -
a seal of wishes
in blackness and privacy.

He'll fill her belly full of light
and send her safe
through the cavern of dark.

How They Fall

Angels fall like plungers in syringes,
like mercury, like the fists of a man
as he beats his wife.

They land hard and with precision,
so the bruises won't show,
so no one will see what they create.

Friends of my children fall in the street
at the plunge of a syringe. They fall
into the arms of angels,
they have created nothing-
they leave no mark.

Teddy Bear General

He's made for battle.
Years of marching, climbing,
full kit 10k runs, digging in,
and bugging out, have toughened
muscles to teak.

His chest is wide enough
for a field of medals
and his heart commemorates
fields of poppies where previous
generations of soldiers rest.

He’s a marksman rifleman,
when I asked him to show me
some self defence, he looked a bit blank
and said: ‘well ... but
soldiers aren’t trained that way ...’

It took me a while to work out
what he meant -
he can kill in seven different ways.

But he holds me as if I was a Faberge egg,
and he sits every night painting me
a tiny teddy bear army.

His hair reflects the light
like the glint from a helmet,
and I almost see a ripple of silver
as his charger prances alongside his chair.