nk spots onto an El Greco canvas
where Garcia Lorca's green, Andalusian hills
find the wind a gypsy bandit
sage, red flower of the cacti,
ballad to rakish cloud.

A ship shamelessly at sea--
the scorpion cloth of open wounds,
dark implants, sturdy oak
constellations, English yew
spouts tremulous shafts
across weather-burnt sky.

A dock in a prison of rose-petal harbour.
Piers along deep, inner space.
Our planet, rockface. Sheer plummet.
Accordion of white light.

Up green ache of mountain
the muffled sound
Goya's Colossus,
the head of the giant
voyaging thru
embroidery and stellar, black space;
tombstone lock on a pulsating world.

ADVENTURER

How desert islands
in a cartoonist's imagination
invariably are flat,
palm-studded
peopled by a solitary, abject
yet humorous man.

In real time, no delight;
such islets
are razor hot,
rock sharp
treeless, barren
slabs ... examples
of art shirking, but
not shrinking life.

Three days growth of beard,
bottle with note on the incoming tide
comic survivor swimming up
(tramp steamer in the distance),
shirts waved in unison
predictable disappointment et al,
glum hands to face
then the inevitable credulity
splitting retort
amid plaything for the crabs.

SLIPPER

When I was very young
onto school,
a slick of water curled
under a behemoth, silver poplar tree ...
there, white underbacks
of leaves waved in showy pride the
dead underbellies of bass ...
as tall boys,
big with rakish, probing, anthracite eyes,
stooped in the creek
their red, exposed flesh
colour of school brick.

HELLULAND

We built bottlecaps off
ship's sides
(soft, cedar bough),
Viking masts
shining thru imagined
Norse seas.

Sporting logs,
(sweet, cedar-wood shavings)
piercing beer hats/silver foil,
grey wraps & burlap,
Atlantic capes,
our twin peaks soared.

New Found Land
(a child's faery shrimp logistics
aide-de-camp simplistics)
marvelled tale
of warm, butter moon
with outpourings around
penknife's blade.

To tame Sutton Hoo,
(I am very close to myself tonight)
bronze copper, cruising wintery water,
Anse aux Meadows,
occasional dirt shack
skraelings,
jagged blade & arrow
backward into time
for Helluland,
yet marooned in the Land
God gave Cain.

TRINKETS