You Call Me Murders, I Call You Hell

Conjoined souls in a lilly wraith
beating rumpuses on the pillow,
I love your hate
you love my cruelty,
where will this fury lead?
This clash of heads
beneath a wilting bed,
stubborn, stark raving Love.

Its all good on Devils Isle;
you gartered heron
stabbing on shores of my greasy waist
while hammers smack fat asses.
Pick and tear each others dins
like cannibals flirting
in fish guts.
Weak for danger
always hunting lies.

Peace be damned,
I hate, you hate
sometimes there is calm.
You burn, I burn
sometimes we see coal.
Aprons at dawn,
there are no arrows in our scorpion.
This no good Love jargon
abandon before its gills dry out.

Dance to cheesegraters
until our thighs fall off,
we gun each other
like howling bandits in a coffee storm.
You beat me
I nail you,
our beats and nails fill tender kidneys
with nasty gentle motions
and we dance to age old quarrels.
We bite, stab and chew
but strip away the dark veneer
and there is only us.
We two, fighting as one for this Love...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

Following My Bones To The Angel Yard Without Stone Or Rib

The weight of darkness drags good men down
into paper paradise promised by snakes;
there are no gunshots on death row
or lillies for clean heroes.
We want our knees to lead us to the garden,
we follow our hearts into coal showers
and crush prayer into whisper.
Wheels drive us mad into shaved pits
the sheppards have no call in this,
our path on rugged shores.
Lullabies may tip us into trenches
and cut the sinewy cord
but all forces lead to bony palms,
savage the dreams of the dead.
Follow passion or destruction,
abstinence or greed,
we the people
relics and shells...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

Mortuaries And Cream

Shake nightmares from cloves of sleep,
unchain the eyes
and smother cogs in cotton.
Let the scalpel brush its tinny finger
over mulched pages of puzzles,
grief always played at dead ends.
Lost in sewers
a swan drifts toward the carvery,
to jelly and drugs,
slopping inside a tattooed shell.
Twist toe tags into furry coils of wheat,
there lies less than a soul
surrounded by ivory,
gone to find honey for its wounds...

@Steven Francis poems 2009