Poetry

Her hankerchief
a crumpled grief
the ragged years
torn from a life
of happiness
hid in the night
the road that just kept going straight
when he turned right
to lose the holes the shadows make
her eyes are stars all night awake to ache the dawn
grief feeds on stars and wedding cake

by David Swift Jessop

When the heat churns the afternoon to dust of scent
and flowers weep petals over the green age
the passing of earth-fed corpse through wispers or roots
and rock stares stonily its strength
and songs dance hungry for lapping tongues
the funeral songs
for each corpse is a mouthfull for the hungry earth
with priest-teeth yellow as Old Book pages
scorched with firing eyes and raped to centrefold;
when the heat turns genius against itself
and mind is split in argument
with fingers of the lightening probe nerve
and flicking visions through the clouds of eye
all stretched upon a tight wet sky
the vanish of a moment clipped from diamond
bleeds me
and wounds in passing my human vanity
in the heal of time

by David Swift Jessop