To Bethena

I missed your love and kindness,
your soul of souls,
but beauty with its assorted delinquents and trinkets
never fades or wilts,
and 'tho I nest amongst adders in the dawn
I am at the gentle mercy of you always.
Those eyes, that smile,
a face which had all the answers
and hangs forever, a portrait in my chest.
Oh to have known you darling Bethena!
To have held your hand
and walked with you, both poets on fire,
a furious blaze all together smothering the page.

I gaze into your eyes, those chessnut pools
and know what might have been
is happening now in the emerald garden
where your delicate touch is freezing the furies.
Bethena! Gone before your time
but time itself will be your tribute
as those you Love remember you,
and this ode, testament of your inspiration
which reshaped the horizons of a distant hand.
Oh to have known you!
But content am I to know that you live on,
triumphed over crocodiles
and sending Love in butterflies...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

The Hook Flurries

Metallic coils choke heated fronds,
from breastbone to hollow teeth
where pittance in sands are measured,
death is welcomed as the hams are cooked.
No slivers of fear sweep the eyelids
as kidney plates turn daffodil soft;
crossbone strikes settling in sinkholes
where dogs of moderation are skinned
in favour of lust and avarice.
Gravity pulls the cannibal babes
to their filthy cots but sleep however fancy
always a stubborn bolt away.

Curious freckles simmer on catfish jowls
pricking the glass shell
like stars burning on the edge of space,
breathless icons kept from us.

Beggar at the night scriptures;
silence reigns as crowned eagles unravel
the spring works of Life,
taking hook eyed beasts down into sacrament pits
while frail sons set their fins to knuckle music.
Suffer,
suffer in the depths
eager for refuge in needle arbours...

@Steven Francis poems 2010