Crimson tower
Her underground cellars
Becoming
Primal hut ascending
Sound of blood
Breathing.
A vision, a longing.
Behold.
Receiving.

Today is my night
Falling asleep,
I dream land
Your wing-hand, moonlight.

I walk down Marylebone High Street
With rain-mist on wool, streetcars and my desire
To have a coffee and some cake.

Now a cafe, full of steam from conversations and cappuccino.
A romance with sweet things, with caffeine bean things.
Lines are forming and I wait with need.

Cold hands, warm mug, flourless chocolate cake
On white ceramic, a debit card fl ing brings me back.

My window seat, biting deep, sugar and butter sheen
My teeth and tongue make a sludge slide
Now landing...

My third wedding dress. No to lace but yes to ivory.
And bamboo.

No silk, poor worms.

It floats around me like a 57-year-old dream.
Pearls dangle from lobes that have lengthened with time.

My first one worn in Santa Fe was the colour of Emerald.
Made from Jersey cotton, full of fl are, loose girth...

As I jump on board the underground I am bathed by a sound
cloud of sprout-green chortles, a schoolgirl laughter fills the
tube from Oxford Circus to Regents Park.

hey are a Golden age of Girl-chorus.

Bubble streams of unearthed fairy spittle rising from the juju
bean filled belly up through the throat of youth, their heads
thrown back and weighted by pony-tails and headbands.

Unencumbered by ‘do I look okay today’...

Waiting. Lights flashing
This time no turning back, wait;
Remember the time

I turned back, wanting
To wait for the fl ash of Light?
Breaking through doubt lines

That formed, my head turned
Down, away from the dawning.
Now I rise, wheels turn.

Wrap tight round other
Seeking t’other, tightening.
Gut-wrench as feet stick.

Felt you seeking right
all I had left was middle
Ground. Love knots, barbed wire.

All night horizons
Never dawning. Unwinding
The dreaming of two.

Phoebe dreams awake.
Fallen wings, oceans dark.
Feline shatterings.

Whisker blend of Red
Wine never tried. Wings heavy
With down, Phoebe’s ground.

Rest now my lovely
Silk oceans reside behind
Dark eyes, blue as Sky.

Wind ripe with praire
Arid skin caught in time-silk
Whose hand guides me through?

Hands touching, eyelash
Damp with water-salt, blurring
The way back, homeward

Bound to a future
Imminent transformation
Heart leaping through Yours.

You opened me that cold May morning, caught in your
Dove light

And temple glass. The wax folds of your spiral collapse.

Calla, you ask for so little.

Painters glean the mythic Virgin, white wings unfurling
through poet’s pen.

Location so important to consider...

Pearls

Third dress. No lace.
Yes to I.

Bamboo-worms float around
An old dream.

Pearl-lobes lengthened time.

One worn in Santa Fe another one, Roses.

Full flare, girth hiding

Birth. Hand painted groom...

Last time I saw ma
‘Twas lightening, Nebraska
I35 north bound

A storm inside me
Fleeing the scene of mother
Thunder hearts turn ‘round

Now south bound, working
Not expecting my return
Our eyes meet, burning...

No poem was written today...

Kansas City 1966.

Saturday, my first haircut.

A date with Mother, the two of us push
through glass doors that spin ‘round.
We are full of eggs.

Rapunzel and Lady Godiva, marrow and salt,
dark snakes dancing in us. Waiting to be born.

We weave our hair into a tangle of palace
mirrors clear and golden.

Look!

The future is behind you...

She is walking
away Like a cloud-parting
A fog lift ing

There are babies wrapped in blue
Waking now wading
Through a river
Once a street.

Her feet like canoes.

I am watching her...

Lamp swinging above

The choosing door:

Moon song or silent sun?

Between your open palm are parting lips

A breathing that divides us
Coal fire turning ash, a red hot inhale

Don’t hold it!

Remember our flaming?...

Love rings. A bandwidth
Of hearts near bursting, rise
Up like a billboard

On nighttime highways
Black lines through coyote hills
Lakes reflecting beams

Sky, diamond lights
As you draw nearer, mirror
Closer, you appear.

She’s bled them all:

The never-wake-up venom
The live-happily-ever-after opiate
The locked-in-a-tower-until-you-gather-it-all-up riddle

There are dungeons
Toads turning into princes
Eyes plucked by vultures

And my favourite:
The forever-alone-because-you’re-ugly-and-old

The sterilised
The insane...

Mirror, mirror my
Reflection or projection?
Walls fall down, I kiss

A prince who once croaked
Meeting my lips with hunger
Cloaks, little girl I

Am waiting for your
Memory to bloom within
Seeds sown. Alice, land.

out my window view
barbed edge fence, wind filled plastic
caught or left behind

beside the river
whose ice melted long ago
near fish bones, rock-caught

women weep under
fluorescent lights, public loo
near blood box, sins caught.

My God is a Worm.
Winding through muddy root shoots
Non-see, all feeling.
Baby pink Worm God!
Nine hearts found, godless classroom.
Brings light underground
Into wild yonder
Where meadow monarchs alight
And buffalo roam.
Fragile, moist vulva
Pink God Worm, underworld She
Beast, daughter of me.

Girl digging, she wanders
Always below the skin-mask
Surface undoing

First love-touch
A dark skin, a-be-afraid-of skin.
Smell-of-Nanny’s-arms skin

Cocoa butter
Cinnamon
Something sharp that wakes up sleepy bears...

theatre death lincoln,
ariana

helter skelter

drum beat downtown
smokey grey exhales
pink lips...

Mind the Gap, look down!
London underground tube stops
‘Tween landing and train.

Click, the sound, my head
Momentary disruption
Look! Something else clears.

Winter. I, alone
Downtown Omaha waiting
An urban errand...

I am Linda
Daughter of Kay
Born of Frida
Daughter of Kayla
Whose mother is Channa
Birthed by Freja
Born of Zisia
Whose mother is Ester
Birthday unknown.

The egg that became
you was in your
Ma ma
When she was in her
Ma ma

Stories that live in Grandma’s eggs
They need a telling,

A mermaid tale swats
Calm surface of deep seas.

Look, up!

A flock of swans heading north to the Snow Queen...

dream petals falling
like snowflakes morphing into
desert windstorms, sand

castles built on shores
unexplored yet recalling
the sound of your voice

singing dream-storms fall
like whispers through hourglass
one precious grain...

Muscles blooming in
Places you never dreamed.
Garden of Fem flesh

Rubbing up against
Outlaws, bygone laws, resist
Not! Polestar illumines

Summer skin, dripping
Rising on smoke screens, I dream
Your heat, tightly wrapped

Silk dress bound, leather
Impulses, first time crossing
a lifeline caress...

crack open blue night
raven caw vibrates open
sounds I could breathe move

forward seems a dark
alley, danger zone of pain
this crack in the vase

seems a portal, view
past my own long shadow dream
waking up, peach sky...

Death is a masque that is Moving.

I can feel you

In my love song.

Death a masque
That is moving.

Back of beetle, shiny pink worm

Death unfolding

A story retelling

Death is a masque moving

Now rising
In this roiling
A dark unseen...