That scream
At first we thought a baby’s cry
A feral howl of too much love
Culling the insouciant silence
With vibrant, vivid intent.
Foxes then
In a tryst of tangled desire
Bodies intertwined as if sex
And death were inseparable
In a ravenous feast of flesh and blood.
I imagined them
In a velvet sheen of darkness
Down some desperate side alley
Back of the bins off London Road
Between the scraps and cyanide caps
Seizing a morsel of pleasure.
And afterwards the’d pick the bones
Together from some rancid carcass
And slope away along the conduit
Alert for rats.
Tough love
When every dream is toxic
And every thought expects betrayal.
Adder, coiled comatose by gorse
sullen in a sunless torpor,
the adder awaits spring’s kiss.
A sudden turbulence
a westerly transition
will rock the stones
and send
mountainous waves
crashing to the shore.
The centre of viper universe is here
coiled
he speaks the language of the wind
with the patience of slow poison
and in a secret place he stores
his special place in history
the loci of the adder myth.
And every thought expects betrayal.
