Silent Call
poetry by Sam Malone © 1993-2003

new poems are at the beginning ... most else is chaos ...

She's Dead, Wrapped in Plastic
Wrapped in plastic
Like someone else's skin
No air gets in

Skin Walker
i
Wrap another skin around you and
Step into the sea, my dark Selkie.
Are they rooted in the the earth or
Do they float free, those little
Isles around Sule Skerrie?

ii
We walked then in the shrouds of our kin,
Aztec skin, peeled raw to let the sky gods in.
Blood runs the street on hoofless feet.
Beat the drum and down they come.

iii
That's why I love
her. Stitch her
eyes and lips and
stretch her
lampshade face

to let the light
through. It was
only a mask and it
never pays to ask
what's underneath,

warm and wet and
warped with sleep.
Woven hair and
threaded bones
catch what drifts

and blows around
my shadowed home.
You're off the hook.
Another skin might
take them in.

Nineteen noses
in my box. Hide
the darkness with
her snow-white
skin. Let no-one in.

Beat the trance
and watch them
dance so free
in the pale pleasure
of our intimacy.

Note: Selkie women were of a dark and unparalleled beauty
Fishermen stole their seal skin and held them captive from the sea
In a way this poem is a metaphor for that. In another way it is not

Empath
An inaudible bang
My empathic console
Has broken

Cartoon Seal
If I don't remember the cartoon character
That fat grey seal reminds me of
I shall go insane

Wander wastelands
The faded sketch gripped
In old woman's hands

The seal hag, they'll call me
And shoo me
To the sea


This is the seal. If you know the cartoon character it reminds me of, please contact me! sam@crowcity.com. Actually this poem has now become a song. I guess you'd maybe call it techno punk. It's also called Seal Hag

Ed Gein Slippers
I dreamed I saw you
Dancing in my moccasin slippers
Like a Leatherfoot
Silence of the Sheepskin
Ed Gein
Psycho

Your sweated terylene socks
Stuffed into my moccaskin
Like an unclean nightmare

And you danced
And danced

They Fly
They fly in the wind
When they are gone
They are not gone
They fly in the wind

Hush: You may hear them whisper
Hush: You may hear them call
Hush: You may hear them call

Owl
The woods are musty in the dark, damp with the
Clinging spore of dew. Nine hours of night,
Where even the dog rose sense your fright.

If you could jump into the air and fly away an owl, would you?
Spring from ivory claws into the soft sky,
Beat silent wings in silent incantation of the gods of flight.

The breeze brings scented messages from
Far into the night. The forest floor scuttles
In tiny s-kraks and weird infra-red starts.

Nothing moves without your knowledge:
Godlike i-e-r-uuu, birdlike i-e-r-uuu.

Moon-painted wings cast no shadow;
Moon-forged wings make no sound.
You drift on the wind for pure pleasure.

Ride a cacophony of i-uuu-ra
Ride a koo-koo-ra of i-a
Ride k'ru-i-a k, k'ru-i-a ka
K'r-i-i-a k, k'r-u-i-i-e

Drift on the wind, pure pleasure

K'r-i-i-a k, k'r-u-i-i-e
I-e-u-u r'a-a, i-e-u-u-i-i
I-e-u-u r'a-a, i-e-u-u-i-i
K'r-uuu-i-a k, k'r-aa-k'a
Ee-k-u r'ii, ee-k-u r'ii

K'ri-i-aka
K'r-uuu-i-ak

K'r-uuu-ii

If you like this poem, it is available free as a postcard, with a picture I did of owls behind. Click here to have a look and if you like it - just print it out. It should work equally well in colour or black and white.
This poem was written specifically to perform with experimental music group Aware

Clones
Let's make clones of ourselves
And live on Moebius Strip, number nine
Three friends
Endless poetry evenings, dark woodland walks
Laughter

Three generations
The youngest born with silver skin
And weird space antennae
Speak with blips and bloops and buzzes
Fall in love with space-faring moths and marry them
While we rest in our earthy graves

30 sth
Hopscotch carved on the back of a giant she-boar
Play for hours: boars don't buck
See the legs shot from under her
Mind the death twitch in the tusk

Wander for years on hooving feet
Rub groggy nubs on lightning stumps
Tramp through ungulation
That hideous trip
G-nip g-nip

Until drawn by chance past the mighty boar-bone Oeth
Mossy ghostship silent in the wood
Birds roost like black basalt shamans along its spine
And columbine clumps and climbs the skeletal totemic heights

Stand tall and strong
You have antlers now
And all your dreams are coming true

Blow Out
Fen road, running straight and flat and long, a Roman
Engineering fantasy, cutting through arable land, horizon
Wide, thick with wheat and barley, like the imaginings

Of a corn god touched by too much sun. No animal
Life but the dumb sheeplike clouds that graze on air
In the vast sky, blown by a shepherding hot south wind.

Flying on a roaring bike, throttle firm and hard and full,
Charging across Iceni country like a war-warped warrior
On a war-warped iron age warhorse, leaning into the

Side wind for cushion, pointed east, a streak of red
Blurred fast and fierce and bang! The back tyre blows
And the wounded bike slides side to side on death rubber.

And no longer master, I am crazy rodeo chancer, sat aback
A spike-mad chrome metal sidewinder that pulls to slip
Away into the edging grass, so spooked it would face down

Oncoming cars and explode in a ball of flagrant flame.
And we slide and don't slow, and we slide and don't slow.
And the road isn't road, but rhythmic chance, thinning strip,

Like light, slurring, oozing and blurring, and the world shifts
To a twilight zone where wipeouts are myth. And we can
If we wish leave our bodies behind and never die. And ride

And ride this Moebius strip, real Hell's Angels, the
Ultimate trip. But in the rush of it all something clicks, and
I remember the throttle and ease the beast's speed, and

We slide and we slow, and slow, and stop. Both alive,
But a whole dimension dissolved into sky. Rubber hangs
Black and ragged from the back wheel: just a playful swipe.

Wounded
On the road
Driving hard
Two cars
Ahead
A crow in the road
Beaking roadkill
Ripping hide
While the sun sinks away
To the other side
Of the world

You swerve your car
To the other side of the road
To hit the crow
To kill the crow
To send that crow to the other side
Where the sun goes to die

But he's too quick
And jumps aside
And as I watch
Some way behind
He hits you with his evil eye

Wow hits you with his evil eye

Then steps right back
And beaks the hide again

And I drive by
On the other side of the road
See your wounded luck
And let you go

Astrophysics
It is night and the little roads that track our way
Are empty as we drive and the skies vast and starry
And a voice on the radio introduces an astrophysicist

Who has thrown in his dark matter and his redshift and
His free radicals to become of all things a priest and we
Look skyward and wonder: what did he find up there?

A Sunday at Whisby Nature Park
Under prehistoric ferns and ice age grasses
Insects wage violent war, pausing
Only to feed on the freshly fallen

Three legs gone but three remain
She drags her armoured body along the ground
Leaving Sanskrit poetry in the dust

People wander the park on two decent legs apiece
Clean and clothed and clanless
Nothing there to disgust their god
Nothing to put them on the wrong side of the law

The pylons bestride the post pastoral pathways
Until they can take no more
And rip themselves free of their powerline chains

And heave their hulks away
Cracking roads and crushing cars
To seek their fortunes in Japanese animated cartoons

Suck
Life support
Will be denied
I tried to try

One
Five, said the preacher
Five fingers on each hand
Five kingdoms to each land
Five Edens drowned in sand
Five sins and then you're damned
Or sometimes only one

A Swan Glides
A swan glides
In heaven
I lick your eyeball

A Russian ice dancer
Dreams
I lick your eyeball

Deep in the mountain
A reptile King Arthur awakes
I lick your eyeball

Beyond death
A skull cackles
I lick your eyeball

A god blows
And brings life to a star
I lick your eyeball

The Dwarf-Eagle War
He'd been out prospecting, seeking the rich
Vein that gave the stream its silvery sheen.
His pocket watch was busted. A packed lunch
Heavy in pastry and turnip had silenced his
Other time-keeper, hunger. The sun had
Voyaged the blue sure enough, but dwarves
Watch the ground, not the sky, for gold;
They distrust what they cannot touch.

He grumbled to himself, probably, when the
Shadows stretched their long chill fingers
And poked at him like a giant's fingers will
Poke a dwarf in a box. Slow and mean and dumb.
He shivered, I should think, and checked his
Pack and threw it across a shoulder, turned
His collar up against the coming night
And set off along the woodland path, home.

She'd been watching the nest, her mate
Fetching her snacks as she sat the eggs.
There were three and they were their first
And they waited for the life to come forth
In mewling eaglets who would grow to become
Most noble amongst the birds. When the giant

Pulled down the branch on which their eyrie
Sat, she stood her ground but was knocked
Aside. Let them go, she told him. There will
Be more. But he would not give, and lay now
Upon the ground, wing broken, growing cold.
She sought some morsel for her mate, to give
Him strength and maybe help him heal.

Her eyes were blooded by the fight.
She thought him a mouse when she swooped.
And, then, the deed done, he was dead,
And in such a way began the Dwarf-Eagle War.

Ants
An ant tugs and drags his dead comrade
Across the craggy scree of gravel country,
Home. Not to be eaten in the nest by hungry
Primal feeders, twisted and torn in insect jaws,

Chewed or sucked by larval young, but
Buried, perhaps with ceremony, perhaps
With sorrow, perhaps with a measure of quiet
Contemplation, in a sunny glade of soft earth.

My neighbour found a colony, inconveniently
Raised amongst his azaleas, and boiled a black
Kettle and poured the liquid murder into that
Subterranean outpost, like a celestial judgement.

The next morning, two hundred ant dead lay in
A row upon the white wood of his windowsill
And, once marked, were collected one by one
By their surviving clan and laid finally to rest

In a giant ant mausoleum, deep within their
Scarred city. No white flags were raised, no
Lengthy peace talks around a heated table,
But an unconditional truce holds to this day.

Catfish
Without a splash
It fell from a fairytale
Of another land

Scattered seedpods
Frozen fountain stretching to the sun
This a twisting fish

In future fable
Steel and sun stricken
Surburban water trap

A ghostly sheen
Plik plik aquatic harp
Plucked by speckled angels

You drown, my friend!
Gasp closer to my heart
You are lost

In this alien dreamscape
Where you walk upon your fins
And step into the sun

This poem, then called Géant was exhibited in the One Heart, One World exhibition at Cotton's Atrium, London Bridge City (by London Bridge Station) from 10th - 25th January 2002 and travelled around Japan and USA. You can see all poems and commissioned artworks on the website.



Actually the website looks to be dead now, so here's the artwork commissioned for my poem. It's by the fabulous Spanish-Mexican artist Luis Rey, who's also inspired by Aztec stuff it would seem. The work was pretty big and done in acrylics. Here's more stuff about Luis and his art. And here's his home page.

Mystery
Soft moon swathed in autumn mist
Scattered stars, a whispered breeze
A hare peers from the silvered quitch
Whiskery mask
Ragged hide bagging witchy bones
Her eyes gleam mystery

A dead stick snaps in the spinney's gloom
She kicks the moon, and beats
A trail along the shadowed bank
Barrow hump
Ghostly rise hiding iron bones
Lost in history

The owl, earthly lunar kin
Fearsome eyes in measured gaze
She surveys the breathing night
Witness in white
Holy ghost hosting holy bones
Lost in mystery

Primal Scream
The scientists say
No Neanderthal DNA
In mah body

Full chrome Cro Magnon
High cylinder capacity Cro Magnon engine
Nice metallic Cro Magnon paintjob
And rear Cro Magnon spoilers
Is the model ah got for you, son

But if a man
Can take a sheep
Or a cow
Or a goat
Or a mule
For his woman
And they do

Why not a new-world-weary highbrowed man of Cro Magnon culture
Find peace within a Neanderthal Na-Gig?

And civilised women of high esteem
Hunt the rivers and forests and mountains and streams
For a primitive man and a primal scream

Got furry dice dangling from mah mirror, pa

Primal Scream was a finalist in the Jazzclaw International Poetry Competition. It didn't win though.

Hedgerow Incest
Swards of nettle stand still and swarthy, shining
Their several icy flowers, fragile reproductive organs,
Hanging chill and serene and unafraid. I stop and
Watch a moth lick the nectar with his tongue, chance

Stranger here to suckle and yet with this act to nourish
Young life in turn, sprung from the pollen he might loose.
Babe, lover, father in one simple act. Hedgerow incest
Sucking and muttering and sacred in this cold Eden.

Goat herd
He bangs the goat bell
Like a Grecian goat herd
Charged with summoning the
Goat nymphs to slaughter

Fen Ghosts
Long and leathery
Aqueous and cold
Creeping in twilight or no light
Masked or headless
Never human, some
Some with clumps of scrubby hair
No eyes
Or eyes that once were there
Some hold down regular haunting jobs
Some have their own swamplands even
Dispossessed
But they're doing all right
Woken again by the whispering night

Resurrection of the Mule
Holy ghost
Noblesse oblige
To tread a life or two among the living
Then shrug this mortal maze like so much skin
And walk back in

Cigarettes
Twenty years of
Dedicated smoking, my cigarettes
Smoked and spent, laid
Here and there like birdbones, or
Sucked back into the
Earth. Still far less numerous than
The seed within a
Single shot of sperm, come
Into the world, to
Try their luck

King Piranha
King Piranha lived in his skull
Swift poison dart
To split the gloom
And snatch a stray morsel, aquibious crumb

So death may come
No black cloak
No moon waned scythe
A jester's jaws
A harlequin bite
A neon splash
Goodnight, goodnight

Ninth Tyrant
Ninth tyrant
Holy waters told
The power of unbecoming
Measured in his face

Fortunes wither
Bones grow cold
Now in slumber
Her faint heart rests

Bound and broken
Bested by a song
Yet he'll deliver the
Cup of shrouded mirth

Softly spoken
Your words hold strong
Bend me and break me
I'll gather and come again.

Breath of
Now and only now it gathers
Softly, like a lark

I hardly heard its passing
Barely felt its breath

It's the not quite knowing
That draws me close to death

Stealing Starlight
Stay close to me, love
Spill your golden hair
where you will

Here, don't shiver

Stealing starlight isn't wrong
It only serves to make us stronger
And reminds us where it is that we belong

Three Year Voyage
Harpoon!
I only wish I'd wished for love
On a sunny afternoon

Stand clear!
Blossom in her hair
Drifting on the water

She'll blow!
This time for sure

Another Great Crow Triumph
It came upon a dusky night
When all the crows were sleeping
Ghost dance in the shadowed black
A silent owl came creeping

His beak was cruel, his talons mean
And many crows he’d eaten
He didn’t know that on this night
He’d finally be beaten

Ten hundred crows were in that roost
Their dreams revealed his prowling
They saw as one his dark approach
And readied for the owling

In measured flight he chose his prey
And swooped into the killing
But the crows beat off his murd’rous might
And set his luck to spilling

They pecked his calm and pecked his stealth
And pecked his wayward stealing
And by the time they’d pecked their fill
They’d ceased his errant mealing

Five
Which dimension is greater?
Space
or
Time
or
Consciousness
or
* Myth *
or
Nothingness

Jungle Dance
Little miss stranger
Thin wraith swathed in perfume mist
Your eyes bewitch with glamoured guile
Hunter's stance, hunter's smile

Far away from the jungle dance
From glitterball moonlight, mesmeric trance
The dolls of your childhood are eating each other
In dark doom playroom cannibal rite

Wound secretly around your Amazon hips
Hang shrunken heads on knotted cord
Warrior dolls maraud your nights
You dream you dance you dream you dance

Your barebreast tribe of foot-high braves
Wide-eyed black-lashed shadow-dweller babes
Deep in the jungle where the jungle cats crawl
Heads on spikes where the jungle dolls fall

In fixed smile vigil in the cannibal dark
Tattoo their faces with the tribal mark
Now they live by jungle law
Barbie's blooded veil stains the jungle floor

Back on the dancefloor I watch you smile
Your eyes bewitch with glamoured guile

Chimes
I ached in a chasm
While the winds of the wilderness
Blew bare my bones

Alive - yet - alive
The ragged wasteland wind
An old lost language

Howling mournful moans
The dry cries of deaths
You have forgotten

Spider
Gossamer god
Ethereal architect
of
destiny's dark design

Creeping crawler
Black bodied feeder
Death has shape for you
purpose
reason

Osiris' Song
The dead lord's crawlers trip the black
Creep the cracked and cobwebbed night
Spinning moods of blood red colours
Maroon shard dreams of shattered light

Dark in the temples of the doomed and the dead
I hear a thought rip the gyre's golden thread
Thousands of spiders erupting from his head

Osiris is a black god, a black god, a black god
Osiris is a black god, a black god, black

Hungry heart I hear thee, pray draw near
Climb upon my knee and have no fear
Long is the time I have waited here
Joyful in solitude, mournful in cheer

There are ragged cobwebs in heaven, child
Ragged cobwebs in heaven

See the tramp beside the road
He's haunted by what's old and cold
And moves as slow as stone
Icy thoughts interr his mind
Much deeper than the bone
Ninety thousand frozen nights
That ache to see the sun
Dread in rapture, rapt I croak
A song with shrouded toads

Bulltoads, they are bulltoads all
Wrapped in heaven's evening thrall

Storm
The night blows dark upon my window
And I awake, hot and hard
Dark dreaming, bred of
Backbone bonding snakes
Writheing in ancient desires
Coupling in water's backbrain heat
Giving form to dark longing
Firing chasms of stone cold wonder

Love
Cut out my bleeding, beating heart
Drink your fill
And throw it to the dogs

Hunt
Hunt in the dark wood
Hunt in the flashing city
Kill your prey

Tribe
Come join my tribe
Shave your head
And swear allegiance to our gods

I'll hold your hand
While you're tattooed
Whisper you tales
Of our heroes

Come
Eat our meat
Be one of us

Mutiny
Blood! he cried. Mutiny!
The captain has flogged me one time too many
Strip him naked and feed him to the sharks!
But sir! cried the cabinboy
You are the captain

Blackbird
A sacrifice
To the modern mechanical
Gods of the highway
A black bird
Sitting, staring
Eyes of death
Pool of black blood

Crab
There is no blood
The crab lies on its back
It is dead
But there is no blood
No flood awash the battlefield of sand
Nothing drowns
In its crimson warmth

Black Valentine
Creature of my heart's accretions
Traveller of some far distant star's temerous pulse
Tasting night's nebulous dissimilitude

Oh Muse of strange passions' fierce and fiery heat
Who garlands with gentle godling hearth flowers
Your silvered touch
Makes my very soul to weep

Stallion
The finest stallion
Breathe snorting whinney
Shakes of tossing mane
Gleaming black body spirit
No stabling hay sugar
Just open prairie
And wild and foaming bareback rides
No spurry boots
Naked

Hunter
I hunt
The dead of night
I hunt
I stalk I fight
I hunt
I prowl
I share the night air
With the owl

The moon was soft
The moon was dark
She taught the women
How to talk

The moon was dark
The moon was hard
Knife in hand
Dream in heart
He taught the menfolk
How to stalk

Stars in sky
Spear held high
Sound of deer
Running by
White light flashing
In my eye
This night's a good
Night to die

Desolation Wilderness
Breeze overcame
Lake claimed
Showed
Watery depths
My soul
Hilarity
Its pain

We lost our innocence
(Wounded knee)

Innocence?
We lost our fucking
Minds

Doll
A doll hangs in the branches
of a red sequoia
Everything is sacred
In this woeful world

Fenland Sky
The wildlands where
At dawn and dusk
Bloody battles are fought

Once
A memory
Eclipsed by the moon
We stood upon the shore

A changeling spoke your words

Starlight
The lapping lake

Strong and brave and free
We go

Chameleon
I cannot see you
Against the blue sky
'Though I know
That's where you hide
I thought I saw you
Once
But it was only your breath
I saw

Winter Solstice (Dragon Christ)
Christ creature
Recumbent chryssaloid
Coiled around winter's cracking bones
Creatrix of cold Christmas slumber

Pools of mesmeric omniscience
Upon the dream's floor gather
Firebreath refractions of trance's chill

Hiss of steam, venting
Blood flows still

Jagged shards of divine elixir
Scrape the veins of eternal ritual
Crimson sex and death reign still
In these ever forested wilderlands chill
Transcendental true brave Eden
Cold-skinned sharp-clawed celestial thrill

Come, young sun, in raw open honesty
Dance the day's ceremonial dreams
Breathe young life into fresh raw majesty
Rip the wind with sacrament screams

Birthed in the first bewildered bloody light
The dragon christ lifts its head to the skies

Horror
Horror sucks my breast
Like a black impish changeling
Not of woman born
A bloodsucker
Feeding

Isles of the Dead
silent ship
of freezing
ghostbone mist
slips silently along the shrouded shore
bitch witch figurehead smiles no more
uncounted islands chill the grey non-day's
fog funeral pall
dead soul trees
their ornament sole
motionless hangs
on every tree a man
heart ripped out
and long devoured
this ghostly garden
of carrion flowers

Black River
Watery river graveyard garden
Carved stone rough lattice temple pillars
Thick creeping vegetation
Dangling down, all around

Ripples of dark shadowed night
(Pull smoothly upon the oars)

Dark dead dancing silent movement
Stirs the spirits
(Slowly, slowly)

Voices drift and cry
Echoing the wind's
quiet lost considered breath

Pull smoothly upon the oars
Move, move

Autumn Rut
Bellowy ullulations
of warmblood moonmen
Horn on horn
In the shadow
of her veiled bowers

Hermaphrodite
I can drink whiskey in seedy bars
With bearded men
And feel the rush of my phallus
As I thrash at my guitar

I can bathe my throat and breasts
In fragrant perfume
And feel the gentle pull of the moon
As I pluck my harp

For I am a hermaphrodite
And I am not the father
Nor the mother
But the brother

Harvest
Harvest me
O hooded mother
Cut me down
And leave me in the sun to ripen

Harvest me
O hooded mother
Bundle me up
And take me to the market to be sold

Gold
I filled my knapsack with gold
And took myself to the city
Where the women sold me their souls
They signed their names
In my dark heart
With my black blood
Now my knapsack is empty
But I am enriched with sin
Pray, walk in
And gaze at my tattoos

Ring
The dowager's wrinkled finger or
The dark musical jewellery box or
The magpie's glittering nest

Snake
A gunshot in the moonless night
Kicking up dust
To mask primeval intent
Clouding my chamber with
An echo
Hiss
can
strike

Tear
Somewhere in the ocean
I came across a tear
Was it yours - or mine -
Or did it belong to a stranger?

Time
Involve yourself
In the fluttering passing of time,
The gentle bird
Who through our life flies.

Untitled
Sweet music
The hour is complete
I walk towards your garden
Soft within the dream
Of sweet music
And your touch

Fear and Love
I dreamed I heard a whisper
Telling me to cast off the shroud of fear
And let all the fearsome faeries
Really appear

I dreamed I heard a scream
Telling me to cast off the chains of love
And let all the lovely goblins
Push and shove

Bluesman
The reptile slides its scaly way
In my soul
Biting hungrily in the water

The horse canters its carefree way
In my heart
Pounding the hallowed earth

The twins consider their artful knowledge
In my mind
Lost in timeless thought

Air
Let's do some air! she cried
And reached for the canister
A few seconds later
I heard a bang
And her lungs had burst

Soul Song
Birds fly in the temple of my mind
Fierce caress of freedom there to find
Way up high above
Is the precious, hopeful dove
Birds fly in the temple of my mind
Birds fly in the temple of my mind

Horses run within my sacred heart
Horses run within my sacred heart
Freedom of the spirit
As they gallop, free the spirit
Horses run within my sacred heart
Horses run within my sacred heart

A man as bold as love can touch my soul
Beautiful and brave, embrace my soul
The world is red and gold
Let your strengthened wings unfold
And fly within the dream of many souls
The promise of a stone-washed sky to hold

The Calling
"Enshrined thou drawest thy behest.
Yet first I ask, through veil of night,
Irridian moon glades with jewel toothed bite
Should douse these springs of crystalline dew
And tint these bowers thy silvery hue."
Agent of argent, dost hear this request

From amongst the shimmering silver birch's
Spangling coins and beckoning branches?
A hyter spirit, embroidering stanzas
With the greenest and bluest and whitest of threads
Is coaxing the asrai from watery beds.
Awaken their surf playing, salt spraying searches!

In your light, O Mirrigu, of full beaming face
She weaves on hessian woad-dyed dark blues
An arena of sentient, star tinctured hues
Where the wandering, wondering, wand-wielding spirits
From oceans afar now gather to visit
To play, as of old, in beauty and grace

To go wheresoe'er their leaders might dare
In search of the Looka, beast of the deep,
These nine years and ninety encaged in a sleep,
A slave to the Dreammaker's twistings and turnings,
Sought now by the seafolk for mystical learnings
Begot of the Dreamworld, in which they might share.

The cool evening breeze gently breathes
Whispers the ocean to heavings and swellings.
Her creatures she beckons from cavernous dwellings:
"Come join the game! Pods, schools and shoals!
By moonlight the asrai are taking their roles.
Come join us all from the farthest of seas!"

Gauntlet
So Sorceror
Thou think'st to bewitch me with thy formish ways
Knowest not that I too follow the path of wyrd?
And have brushed the hair of gruesome beauties
And suffered many more to feel the strength of my sword
Would'st with me in battle?
Do'st offer thy scaly cohorts up to
Bloody sacrifice?
Yet let thou knowest now that it shall be Truth
And her daughter Justice
Rip out thine heart should'st thou weaken
For mine own dalliance
Armest thou well

All the Fish are Dancing
All the fish are dancing on their tail fins on the water
Laughing at you
Because you haven’t caught any of them
And the mice are eating your landing net
And all your groundbait has been eaten by replicants
And you find out that all the fish you ever caught were replicants
And you find out that you’re a replicant
And it’s still raining
And it says on the radio that it’s never going to stop
Just before the batteries cut out
And your girlfriend won’t stop talking nonsense
And you’d rather be at work
Even though you hate your job
And your girlfriend’s poking you
Because you’re not listening to her nonsense
And you reel in your line to find the bait fell off hours ago
And there’s nary a roll
And you need a crap but the rain has destroyed the bog roll
And your girlfriend has given you crabs
And your bite alarm sounds like a mobile phone
And all the fish are laughing at you because you haven’t caught any of them
And it’s still raining
And your girlfriend won’t shut up
And you fear it’s all down to the powerful witchcraft of your fishing nemesis
And your powdered tea is full of too much artificial sweetener
And another sanitary towel floats by
And you’re cold and wet and miserable
And your mouth tastes like a badger’s arse
And you’d rather be at the dentist
And you’re losing your hair
And all your dreams have turned to dust
And your girlfriend saw a toad and you didn’t
And you’re soft as shite
And everyone’s having a good time except you
And your neck went stiff in the night
And your cock didn’t
And your girlfriend won’t shut up
And fishing’s your only escape
And you need to escape from it
And there’s no escape

Check out the fabulous Crow Haiku Generator and Insect Haiku Generator

e-mail: sam@crowcity.com
Crow City Books: www.books.crowcity.com