Life flowed from death.
Ritual and succour,
Bound and intimate,
My life from yours,
My girl.
Incense circles in the air,
Coals red, hot and angry,
Dispersing its purging aroma.

But it burns my eyes,
As it billows over skin.
The harsh ash: Imposition
Can They take it away,
The Blessed Trinity?

It is the dust of the ancients,
I yielded you to that same dust,
The dust I shall one day disturb,
On pilgrimage to my foremothers.

Oh, where was Cort�s when needed?
Where indeed was Christ?

The scapegoat?
Bitter parsley?
Gold wine?

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Lady Luck

I am a Northumberland Lady,
Proud granite,
Rising up out of the dawn,
The fire tipped phoenix
With blood on her wings,
Once upon a time,
At least.

Now it is vicarious,
Robbed of all rites in a single band
It is my children, who ride out now,
In a flurry of splendour,
A fleeting dash of colour,
Among the low fields.

I stand here, day by day,
On these ramparts,
These bulwarks
And survey the dying domain,
And our growing kingdom,
Not mine in right or name,
Kingdoms fall away,
Village by village,
Field by field,
Woman by woman,
Away from natural law
Under your tutelage

But that�s the way of things now,
Our crest emblazoned,
Every mound conquered
Every stream forded
Every forest, tame.

And I wonder if you heed
In your pale youth,
That the past is unravelling at your feet.

For men stamped and women wove,
Insidious,
Delightful
Binding.

This realm was spread at my feet.
A lavish bride
An odd quilt for a marriage bed,
It is the way of things now.

*unfinished*

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Untitled 3

I did all but love my musket boy,
With sweet morning dew hands
And sunset eyes.
In waving russet corn field,
Gladly would I lay myself down?

And �neath his ministrations I would cry,
To the echoing hills and vast starlings
Who rose into the vaulted heavens,
Dancing into twisted patterns and departing our bed.

I did all but love my musket boy
In his gallantry
In his strength
And in his pleasure

For twas not my fair warrior with whom I loved
And when old man time removed the spaces between my years
Twas not his feet as which I knelt
But woman
In all her swift rushing tide of maidenhood
And autumn year of copper prime
And graceful winter

Twas at her feet I knelt and wept
My husk laden hair the only sign to our Sapphic crime.

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Arabian Nights

Leaving Bethlehem that night,
I paced out into the dying desert,
Plucking listless at the orphan rose.
As the myriad heavens drifted down among Sin,
All heralding Night as he spewed forth,

The landscape held no moon,
And in this war it was little surprise,
Nature herself shielded from the blasts
Of fanatical shell,
And true god from true god.

My hands smelt of the sea,
As I bowed my faultless head,
Breathing in the dust of mortar,
Drawing in the blood of the soon-to-be-willed death.

Through Tantric wind,
Oozing indolent from my open, bloodied chest,
The pantheons whispered,
One and all�
�Remember!

How her taste was of the night,
Sweet, dark and poignant,
Summer wine against ruby lips.�

How had I forgot?

How like a panther,
She crept into my sheets,
And slipped away,
Melting into the dark,
Her skin and her nature.

Leaving only the heavy hand of my creator,
To guard this body in vulnerable sleep,
The emaciated child,
Beating fist and feet on my ribs,
Pounding in futile panic,
Birthright of the first-born,
In this matrilineal hell.

Artemis, suddenly gleeful,
Cast star shafted light, bursting the sands,
And from the acrid waste,
Fatigued Beelzebub rose at my feet,
His claws ready exposed,
So jaded with our ritual,
That as I slumped,
�Christ have mercy! Take her home!�
He hollered.

I hissed jubilant praise,
As talon parted flesh,
And the sudden gorge of sin,
Ran rivulet down milky torso.

Calm now, I took his hand,
That world-weary devil,
And lead him to the shore,
Asreal joined us there,
And we cast him off,
Watching Lucifer bob on the buoyant waves,
Leaving him to the mercy of Essene pen:
Eighteen centuries in Bedouin cave.

And as Ra courted Prometheus on the West Bank,
I dove in,
Trailing after my floating sin,
The Dead-Sea salt creeping into my chest,
Through those caustic would we had carved in my breasts,
The waves� rush dimming,
My heart slowly stilling,
Head sinking,
And I had found oblivion for another night.

But I visioned in the flush of the battlefield,
And the cool tempo of the deserted,
Twisted Damascus Road,
With its searing, branded stone,
And woke to its mordant taste,
My nails crusted with red soil,
And salt crystal-tart upon my cheeks.

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Poem written between 5am and 6.20 am nursing a cup of coffee in Ed�s kitchen

The footfalls of your child,
Echo on the rich tile floor,
And happy laughter will creep back
Like a soft-silken kitten
Seeking out the warmth
Of home and hearth.

And your children are grown,
And return with an intermittent clatter,
Friends and lovers accompany
In a bewildering stream
Of faces, noise and youth.

Patio doors beckon,
To a childhood garden
Where memories are strewn as though discarded toys,
And the dying strains of a soft summer breeze carry the wails of a grazed knee,
Bundling into the soothing arms of father.

It is peaceful now,
The steady sway of the old clock
Beats our her rhythmic time
As season upon season
The melting years were measured.

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

M(is)s Scarlet

The city is sprawled,
Below, down in the valley,
A Twinkling mass,
Dizzyingly intense.

It�s tantalising smell:
Petrol, dust with a hint of death,
Is fierce this night.

Spring has edged her way close, stilted
Into stairwells and under the doors,
And disturbed dust,
Shimmers through our rooms,
And we choke,
Memories catching in my throat.

The summer here is sweltering,
But the North winter smothers,
Close, uncomfortable and endlessly long,
Gleaming land,
Glistening and raw,
My scarlet sin,
Cannot hide in that place.

My father�s quiet concern,
A dysturbed dysfunction,
I ran.
Whipped into the night

Flee this neon mass?
Yes, I will return,
There one day,
Perhaps,
Soon?

But you could not hide there,
Darling,
I could don my childhood
And slink, imperceptible,
Back into the cracks of my mother�s armour,
But you, dear?
Plain as day.
Our sin as scarlet.

A storm is blowing in the south
With tendrils of cloud,
Begging to lift me back,
Out of hiding,
Away from exile,
Away to my childhood land,
Of emerald trees,
The swollen tear-stained river,
And smoky mountain.

For here, on your plains,
The earth never ends,
Never falls away,
But gently fades,
Day into night,
The child to the woman,
Seamless.

The cobbles feel different,
Trod with an altered gait,
And the bloated sun,
Low in autumn skyline,
Is warm on my skin,
Like your hand in mine.

*unfinished*

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Displaced

The careful dome rises in the sky,
Nursed, hungover, by bleak clouds,
Doors slam.
And the street girls trickle away,
Slipping switch-blades into figure hugging pockets,
Retiring past failing street lamps
To a candle lit bed.

A city worker scatters traffic cones,
A glaring orange barrier
To the enveloping commuters
And night closed her eyes and rested.

South side: Concrete towers slink out of the river mist,
And the oriental rice child
Basks in august contemplation,
His mescaline love,
Bright skin and wax eyes,
In tarot and teacup remains
Her raw life will be mapped.

The Moon is stirring now
And the sewer splutters,
Sailing past the briefcased Apache
As his feet enter the tavern,
Drinking to the reservation riot,
The crimes of exoteric religion:
A curious knowledge.

In the iridescent mist of this alley
He can hear the crying mother
And the knowledge of his barefoot sister
Bursts with sour fury
And Memory of Pine Ridge

Yet the wail of futile sirens
Echoes, like buffalo thunder
As Venus highlights White Mountain,
Even through this smog.

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Untitled 4

It was a gothic night
And Rose had long since blown away,
Passing like the sweet mystery of April
A tantalising gale.

But only when sullen snow
Had covered the burnished ground
And dark portent hung in the sky
Did I fall hard.

In the black night air,
Flushed cheeks
And fiery eyes,
Liquid deep.

And like a babe beside me
Short-cropped hair nuzzled my neck
And my slender fingers stroked soft flesh.

Black Silk River,
Flows beside the window,
I travelled hopefully down my memories,
Ignoring the deep melancholy pools,
Oozing like tar

But I paused,
And drowned in you,
The tender ache which I still nurse,
And sweet longing overcame me.

*unfinished*

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

The Telephone Call

Your voice was warm,
Through the miles of time
The air grew sweet
And my day grew welcome.

Rich and deep,
Cadence over cadence
The years settled with
A disturbing peace.

I dreamt that night of the battlefield,
And the cool tempo of the Desert,
Twisted Bethlehem street
With it�s searing, branded stone
And woke to its acrid taste,
My nails crusted with red soil
And salt tart upon my lips.

My waking was fevered,
And gentle hands reached to calm,
But I slipped from their assurance
And left the warmth beneath.

Garden air was clean
And I marvelled,
How you disturbed with such ease

*unfinished*

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

Idle Thinking (To my mother)

Flying fast to the foothills of your future,
Straight-set on the Old-Man�s way,
The rolled black asphalt, and cats eye light,
Delving deeper,
Further,
Fleeing from the shoddy,
Spinning, wailing Jenny,
And the rough, clumsy hands,
Of night-lamp Luddites.

To old Brigantes seat,
Taken so canny,
By feet,
Hundred upon hundred,
Sandal, Sword and Shield,
Calm ordered possession,
And sealed was their pact with this land,
This carpet of culture allowing hearth and home,
Sold with the blood and the bread and Saint Paul.

Pail line drawn: Here Stands Civilisation!

As Keatsian Urn,
This past is cold-time,
A fleeting footprint,
Perhaps impertinent youth,
Danced through his future,
Still in construction,
A fluid, hardening foundation.

You stand abreast,
Proud on fortified knoll,
One hundred and seventy centuries apart.
Their measure: our measure,
That travelling empire,
We still legacy bound,
To honour,
And live.

Maybe the swirling shipyards,
And ever rambling road,
Would offend the logistic supply-line eye.
But he too could understand,
The judgement of time in its quantity,
And the inner working of under-floor heating,
And the etiquette of the steam room,
Peak-Times Gym, 15 Ember Road.

But did he understand frail symbiosis,
How the bread,
rough and pitted against his hands,
as its pieces lay,
waiting,
in his crafted Samien bowl,
How,
How it was only ever,
Can only ever be,
Someone else�s waiting meal.

How,
A shift in the sands;
A turn in the wheel;
And the yellow eyes of death�s horse;
Frozen patient on the native's kismet card,
Meant a few centuries later,
The brief Romano-British season,
Is over at the Stadium.

And the land,
With her deep ruins,
That mathematically architectured scar tissue,
Yields to all,
From the fire breathed waste,
Of a Norman war-dragon,
To the firm tramp of doomed Jarrow men,
Serenely allows all.

Click here to return to top

Email any comments to me by clicking the link here

All works contained within this page are the produce and property of Ms J F Thomas
Copyright J Thomas 2002