Hanging

Hanging

The screws where paintings used to hang

close to gorillas

I fantasise about robbing banks

with an acquaintance

now that they say we are machines

ruled by the gene

the illusion of free will

two empty cardboard boxes one on top of the other

I am overcome in the margins

in blue genes

a dead chick outside the restored castle walls

I laze in bed recalling how I used

to enter her I’d still like to

with no agenda other than that act

things that need to be done

await the doing

I am overcome in brown fields

in photographs I am not in

contraband coping strategy

one-eyed curiosity

my voice flat and provincial

like Stalin

she lost her car keys on a beach one night

we got home

When You Smile You’ll Be a Dog No More

When You Smile You’ll Be a Dog No More 

 

I wake up

I wake up dead

 

I had been dreaming of cardboard

home made signs on unclassified roads

which directed me to 20,000 saints

or 20,000 whores

it’s hard to decide

everything is everything else

nothing is nothing

let me sleep

my bed my kingdom 

 

I’m sick of having to make sense

if there’s still such a thing

 

 the holes and the cracks

that await filling or recognition

 

I am overdue a bombweed and overgrown motte

Grand Tour of Europe

with a redundant cinema gravedigger hunchback

to disinter Nazis to kill them all over again

mould and its cousins

fungicide and its offspring

the art of leaning on a farm gate to view

wood lice jigs

tail end of a hurricane

the select few cut-up cut-out

 

cry when miners die in the sides of hills

in the tombs of the underworld

in the caress of water 

 

cry when they say your name

when the pain overpowers

when the clues expire

 

cry as men cry

faces to the wall

 

the tears of candles

the clowns of town down

the anti-condensation flotilla at full tilt

freelance apologists freely lancing

 

cwtsh into the huddle

taste her tears so near

impressing me as much

as I had expected

but not in the manner anticipated

 

women with bruised faces

the views from floors

fight for your smile

you know the one

and I will fight for the right to fail

and the secrets we think we are keeping

removing my shirt though it’s cool

nakedness of diaphragm

for what I am

 

the long arms of brambles through fencing

Impressionist paintings in river reflections

the source of the Nile

the source of fibre

persisting with bent nibs

everybody lies

 

everybody smells

everybody disappoints

everybody’s done loot

this town’s got much to answer for

eat what you are

food replaces sex

those poached brains

shopping as sport

lions as lambs

 

distance will bring us together

The Trigger-Happiness

Squeeze me

Prince of Dyfed

Prince of Dyfed 

The giving and receiving of gifts

until the batteries run out

in facial re-enactment

I paint my kitchen with vomit

and sleep on it

re-imagining the Mabinogion

as a quest for middle class confectionery

and its adventures

in a contested leaderless land

Three Spring Scenes

Three Spring Scenes

 

Blackthorn ectoplasm

with muted daffodil trumpets

gone green in morning fog beard

 

the shadow of a hovering bee

on my bare chest

 

a meat crow above a grey gutter

pointing

Pith

Pith 

Poetry is one letter poorer than poverty.

Bombstar by bombstardom

Bombstar by bombstardom.

We Chose Hell

We Chose Hell

We come from the fields
along the valleys
past misshapen road signs
on stream on flow
for your riches
the curtail cut crops
of splendour of daughters
the keys to quays
the quays to keys

we come from ruin cottages
cow-sheds with rafters
of revealed dog rib-cages
from which we fly
on the backs of wasps
which capsize in beer
like humans do

remember us
for we will arrive on time
at the table no one leaves
exult salute
ballad bullet
parry then harry

anyone could slay under
the influence of a border
that’s what that line orders

each corner
is a border
of murder

Ebb

Ebb

Women sway to film music
in a champagne-dampened field
like women move,
like nothing else moves or could move.

Lull of the Bull by Paul Steffan Jones

Lull of the Bull, ISBN 978 1 899530 36 6, my debut collection of poems, is now available as a signed hardback at www.starbornbooks.co.uk. It is also available at the following outlets: Custom House, Cardigan; Siop y Pethe, Aberystwyth; Seaways Bookshop, Fishguard; Monmouth Bookshop, Monmouth.