A Love Potion Concocted Together with Leaves

Careful, careful – as mother’s recipe said –
add in the something leaves,
one at a time is best;

snip-snip the Seven Sisters’ rose
like it was the littlest toe
of your lover in bed.

Honey

According to Nemesis’ erotic handbook
      The Night and the Perfumed Rose –
written in a dripping cave
sometime in the fifteenth century
somewhere in the foothills of old Greece –
a buttered bowl of honey’s what you need 
mixed with chicken stock to make a soup.
      The thing for the lover of all lovers –
to pluck the thick gold honey
from the thick of the locust tree
with a long thin barb
and your five fingers spread out for balance. 

Travelling Eye (Looking Down Summer)

Past St Peter’s and Desire Street, past
the red love heart shaped hibiscus
and Uncle Earl in his cast

sipping a cup of coffee, past
the hanging gardens,
then turning left, past the Gasthouse.

Past old Nellie knitting a sock, past
the red phone booth
burning in the sun

(that’s been kaput now
for almost three weeks) past
the melons; you’re nearly there, nearly there.

Past the little restaurant on the corner,
owned by the French man,
and where they’ll be cooking up

pumpkins and raisins,
coriander and cinnamon
and plums and ginger to stuff in pastries.

Over the high walls into the secret garden
off Ursuline Street,
where my friend and me

shattered our soft knees
trying to net fruit,
or catch lovely ladies bathing in the nude!

Past all those wooden shutters – green
and yellow and blue
shut close-tight

in the middle of the day
and all whilst the sun is blazing!
What the devil is going on behind there? –

Homoerotic love affairs, horrible marital
breakdowns, arguments
and lots of red hot sex!

Well that’s our guess,
and this little place
stinks of donkey’s dung all the year round.

Past the house where they brew damson gin
in long classy thin
lovely bottles, past

the Man with the Glass Eyes
and his big polished trombone;
ah you’re nearly there; it’s almost in your reach.

Hair and My Grandmother’s Ring

O Mother used to cut it with a knife
         taken from the butcher’s bag
or the hatchet from the stairs.
I’d sit in the chair
and let her cut it back;
I suck from a dish of green-tops and beef.

My old grandmother’s plaited up my hair,
         thin as a sapling.
She’d smear some Glory on
with the flat of her old palm
and turn her wedding ring
three times for luck and sometimes four.

The Dog:  A Tale of Love, Bad Love and Longing

1

Then devilish, rooting for pearls –
her trousers, gusset, blouse –
her cuffs – a scent – cunty! –
rises up through the lot.
She’s been seeing Major Cott
on Fridays and Sundays
for seven months straight now.
A dirty, blousy, wayward girl.

2

I plough down, upend, career –
a cold and scentless thing,
like glass –
geegaws, a diamond ring –
things she’d snaffle and stash
from her ugly old man.
She’d gladly live in a caravan
a million miles from here.

3

An endless line of snout –
I’ll sing to you and push
my body through the seven
zones of palpable pleasure:
toadstools, minerals,
mossy turds,
sweet-peas, semen and blood.
I’ll root and rout them out.

4

Of course there’re tales to tell –
these back up pell-mell.
A cleaver crashes skulls –
well, one time, yes.
The woods a hush-hush place
as that grave was dug
and the body flopped in.
The wallet went straight down the well.

5

By nine the window’s up
and a big bun’s cooling.
Sign:  Ready when you are.
The Kansas man cleans up,
shifts a rag and cup.
He sorts his hair in the mirror.
Sign: Ready and waiting.
He clutches his bag and comes.

6

Her hair, well what’s to say?
That’s white gold spun
through the fingers of Homunculi.
It’s sweeties, herbs –
saffron, maybe – it’s weeds.
Sometimes peppery,
throwaway candies, a plum
on a dish in the sun.

7

The skin, well that’s a tale:
a fairy tale, all that –
corn and spice and sugar.
(A fairy makes nice things
with pretty things inside.)
They bet to find its peer
in the woods-floor hut
but they’re drunk, and fail.