.................................
animals
.................................

the animals are getting
their own back --

Boy killed by crocodile
Woman mauled by giant panda

ah, this is good news --

while we run around town
with shotgun hair
swearing at polio buildings,

while we fuck each other in
bursts of stone behind the
engine shed,

slowly, the suburbs are being
undercut --
vines are hissing in cellars
and my grocery garden has become
violent with herbs.

 
.................................
on going to britain
.................................

this enamel sand from
ostrich days

is hot shocked
by the stain of the sea
putting out stoking up
putting out stoking up.

behind the dunes
where men
limbo in lust,

sits the english girl
strung in cancer clothing

(black costume gone to seed
compost towel
hat plucked from a broken tree.)

hooking the eye of the horizon
she burns a rubber trail
along her spine -
her skin growing wide from nights of
kindness.

 
.................................
trees
.................................

i am struggling with the
heat of my body --

bacon fat in my eye of
the beholder,
anger hard as
a boiled hen's egg.

this skin --

angelic slough
tribalised with nicks
from quilters;

filament stuck together
by a thousand iron
lickers

betrays me.

it will not go moist
under trees.

 
.................................
bob james
.................................

what's wrong with country music?
these floors are scuffed clean by a thousand cowboy boots,
by a thousand beery kisses from next-door-neighbours cheeked-up on apples,
cider and good times.

what's wrong with country music?
old tom's borrowed lights flit a
torch-light lit around wood, puddles,
smiling plaid shirts in hues of
the forest.

what's wrong with country music?
the resin of the night small children
chases
in pick-up headlights parked
cold near bars.

what's wrong with country music?
techno-schmekmo irvine welsh
heroine chit.
dances with aliens in big women's
boots.
this floor is thick with a thousand
miles of rubber,
a thousand skinned thoughts
of a stitched-up kiss.

.................................
Helen Walne
.................................

 
Copyright © Helen Walne
October 1999

...a poem in this room by D.S. Black...
candy
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