REFUGE 
       
               “Menos tu vientre, todo inseguro…”
Miguel Hernández.


The unfastening of her skirt, a sighing wish,
her brief lace knickers, a whispering swish,
a murmur that softly slips
while caressing her pear hips

down to the floor, a pond of gleaming hardwood
(this whisper and swish all noise outside swallows).
The bra releases flesh moons that gleam, flood
the lavender gloam that mellows
around the dark silk curls, shadows

between orchid-plump thighs whence a. mild fragrance,
vanilla, flavours my darkness with radiance.
Outside, the cruel world at play,
tortures yet another prey,

its lethal horrors secrete ooze, and howl :
wars, sickness, and crime, always on the prowl ;
ambulances wail away
patients by time mauled, befouled
to where science cures what it can today…

And I, fleeing the world’s destructive might,
enter the calm shelter, her fragrant night.

TRANSFORMED AT 60’s IBIZA

A pine-wreathed, nude faun, bristled man goat, swayed
and blew a sun-glittering sax,
jazzy triton’s conch, surf splashing his knees
and around him naked, flower-crowned nymphs trailed
wavy locks of sunlit flax
as they danced, in the warm breeze…

I’d seen him earlier, at port, all in whites
“Noche Blanca” to promote,
held at the disco clubs, Pasha, The Q,
his nymphs just girls in matching cotton lights,
who later with the man-goat
would prance my whole world anew,

girls who’d dawned, stripped nude to worship the sun
amped up by club-hopping, blow
and love just everywhere easy and free.
Back in old London I’d heard of the fun
at the Isle of the Blest, must go,
my last school summer, nineteen sixty-three,

“the year sex was invented” le mot juste
from Larkin’s acerbic wit.
My first morning was to Salinas Beach
where these nudist Nereids deified my
lust,
buxom bouncing nymphs who made my past flit,
Elysium bared within reach.

I chased these maenads ; we frisked ; the faun blew
his sweet, dazzling magic horn ;
all real vanished, puffed in fragrant spliff smoke
to clouds and waves rolling in amorous blue,
bore me as fey faun newborn
from strait-laced, boarding-school bloke.

TRIPPING DOWN NOSTALGIA LANE….SUCH DAYS OF CLEAN INNOCENCE —-" https://share.google/VAHsCgtFausD8Rw4f

BACK TO EDEN

“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.”
Last verse of Dante’s Inferno.

Eden was a pipe dream we got kicked out of
by an iffy god struggling with bent levers
to work his low-budget Coney Island universe,
till Tech fetch us back or burn us to puff.

If you’d escape illness, neighbours from hell
lethal air, war, noise-pollution’s stressed racket,
then drugs, movies, sex, science, art can rock it
to trick us heavenwards or nigh as well ;

yet poetry must be our surest sanity,
our way out of toxics, our healing melody.
Recall Dante’s words when he left Hell’s tears,
with Virgil reclaimed Eden from reality :
“Thence we emerged to gaze again at the stars.”

WHEN WORLD WAS WOMAN

Colonial homes of chalk-white-walls repose,
Spanish roof-tiles nielloed by happy years,
arabesque grills on windows where sit close
boys and girls singing and thrumming guitars
over plush lawns coloured croton and rose.
Eden that a mother, wife, teacher, poem
of a woman centred in roots of home ;
the stove wafts dishes only chefs compose…

Fragile memories, hourglass windblown sand,
fading film, ghosts trembling under the clocks,
irised soap bubbles blown with magic wand
now on this crowding of brick-and-glass blocks,
surviving acacias sooted and paltry
as he shuffles, hems, coughs totters and rocks
and the filmy ghosts ask who’s that, who is it?
this codger coming through the trees to visit,
clean boy of long ago in that green country.

Under clash of cars honking shrill lambadas,
la cucaracha, I can just make out
the dwindling chorus of birds and cicadas,
surely that’s my nostalgia’s echoing clout
evoking dreams as a vanished man should,
cracked bones in a modern planet all blown,
last of a breed that laughed, loved while he could
rooted to a woman roots deep in the home,

then a sparsely-built world, a life so light
ere it cemented into stinky coprolite
where men, women strike lonely independence,
compartmentalised lives, a selfish arrogance,

this heated and chugging and smoky race,
barely a pause, breath in such mindless maze.

WOMAN, HOME, CASTLE, UNIVERSE

She is his cosmic castle.
When he enters, she keeps out fears,
the outer world disappears,
she blocks out every hassle.
Out the windows all is empty blur ;
protected vassal within her walls
impenetrable to all outside her,
to troubles, violence, urgent calls,

no dunner knocks, wouldn’t dare to.
The thousand shocks flesh is heir to
dissolve in her divine caress ;
she’s sandalwood ashram, samadhi
against depression and anxiety,
candlelight paradise, cleansing bless.

Her fortified embrace, absorbing bed,
isolates them, this sighing refuge,
she’s the universe, an inward deluge,
centripetal, finite but unbounded ;
road along which every dream tends,
infinity where all starts and ends.

She commits and purifies every sin.
Whenever he’s escaping gloom
he just needs dive within
her encompassing blackhole womb.

His centre and spiralling universe
live and love within warm ramparts,
fragrant moat, playful court, proud towers,
welcoming keep, her arts
to please, to be his bastion,
the answer to every question ;

she regales his contented soul
the home he’s dependent on ;
he’s just the wayward piece
her loving peace makes whole.

CREATE OR DIE

Not to be beats to be
but better is being free
by never having been
on this troubled scene,
absurd, meaningless stage
where your body is your cage
(once you’re trapped in this skin
it’s hard to face a bare bodkin)
yet the play’s the thing,
wherein conscience is king :
the playwright plots and rights all wrong,
or paints his meaning or sets it to song,
transcribes himself into living art,
has fooled life, found a purposed part,
given scripted thrill to his strife,
above the grunt and sweat of weary life.

BEAST OF EDEN
"Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando…”
Virgil

Rain clears; our quiet, scent garden seems
our most Edenic of sanctuaries :
drops - leaf sparklers - dripping gleams,
petrichor buttercup fairies, but Death
lurks on her twinkle-webbed berth,
lures to pincer off delusion’s dreams :
butterflies, flies She wolfs down,
munches on hubby with sexy frown :
literally eats him, the poor dope
though he palpate with figurative hope
(funny how life hangs by a thread
yet we joyfully rush to our graveyard bed)
This huntress is all Nature, real of reals she,
our digesting time-entropic Argiope.

A maiden too loved that garden, rose who
throve there, while stalking Mother Nature
spun cancer in her bones, through and through.
Indifferent, Death weaves threads from nurture,
deaf to all our desperate dying throes,
creeps over prayers, from our body grows ;

in vain to gods of hope you will pray :
life always meant to make you her prey.

MEDITERRANEAN CHAFFINCH

Melodious morning dew, drizzle of crystals,
soothing jingle of sprite and fairy bells,
pour in through my bedroom widows in spells,
the pure cleansing joys of his chirpy madrigals ;

yesterday's wasp-nest of buzz-poisoned sores,
dissolves away in his bright ritornello,
sunset-pink chest, raincloud crown, his cheer soars ;
even his name sings “Canta, Bel Fringuello!”

No flutes of spumante or pink champagne
can buoy up my moods with bright bubbling splash
or refloat my soul from abyssal pain
like the warbles in his upwelling wash.

So FB’s Former Zoe Folks is now a ghost?