Newsflash!

In the Burry Port Star

This was one of my appearances in local newspaper the Burry Port Star in November 1997. The headline is inaccurate because as good as a poet as he was, Dylan Thomas was never an inspiration of mine. I was/am more into the other Thomas, R.S. Thomas and Hedd Wyn, Coleridge, Ginsberg and the like.


Poseur

Linkway Magazine

My poetry inside...

In Burry Port (my hometown) back in 1993 a lady named Fay Davies (a writer herself) published the Linkway magazines pictured above. It featured poetry mostly but short stories were also included on occasion. Naturally being an enthusiastic, young poet I submitted my early works to the publication and they appeared in several editions (all of the ones in pic) of which I was pleased.
One must remember that in the early nineties, blogging and publishing work on your own website hadn't yet arrived so to have a platform like Linkway where your work was distributed all over Carmarthenshire, was very exciting. Even more so for this hungry poet because I loved seeing my works in print with my name underneath boldly announcing my arrival.


Shine young poet!

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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

Delightful Engine

It slithers in my gut
like lard;
this wall of fat
behind my ribs,
burning beyond the epiglottis
pull on alcohol
as if it was sunshine,
life eternal.
A bloated centipede
hitched onto my skin
like buttered saddles,
freezing tears
before they roll onto clockwork triggers,
aiming for bone in a pubic forest...

@Steven Francis poems 2010

A Death Mask

Often I lay with frog spawn eyes
staring at balls of space;
a hammered tattooed pig hulk
in ruffled bedclothes,
sunshine billowing
the silence,
posing, me dead to world.
An overdosed globule
catching bats
with granite cladded mouth,
my tongue tolling
for soft dew
and guillotine hymns.
I play dead before regal mourning begins in earnest,
a wick for the spirit into oils
of rigor mortis -
until air falls back into my lungs
and I suck,
a pull on the death
that keeps me alive...

@Steven Francis poems 2009