spring
sitting out on my doorstep this afternoon. and this came out... it's a little messy and needs pruning - but i do fancy that there are parts of it worth working on.....


*********************************************************************************************************

Spring, that siren, sang to me;

- or did she hum?  With her cool

baby’s breath chugging puffs on my feet

through the crease in that window

that never quite shuts. And her fierce,

hot eyes casting prim prison bars on the carpet

through the slats in the blind.

 

Sour from my bed, I drag my white body

down the stairs and then hang it

like laundry on the chair that waits

like a cat beside my front door – too

close to the wall for Google Earth to see.

 

And yes she did hum, for down here

she sings opera. ‘A proper Madam Callas,

I’m sure,’ say the beat-boxing bubbles in my

echoing belly, groaning their protest like

farts in the bath.

 

And if eyes could groan, wouldn’t mine?

First: they’re starch-ironed shut by the night

then held up to quiver like unsure clams before this

splendid hallelujah of light.

 

So scratch the Rice Krispies from each of four

corners and squint then at the dancing dandelion fuzz:

air-born and circling as though on flies’ wings.

See the radiant pink blossom clumped in corners

by the dustbins, like snow drift.

Looking harder they might notice the luminous

green jewel in the cobweb – neither spider’s lunch nor

next year’s sprout;  perhaps a project for an Art GCSE

by some sullen girl with a camera and a weight in her

chest;  a b minus in her future.

 

Note the same bud of green on your arm hair – fresh plant

blooming in the old blond forest. Let it set

root there, combine your DNA with its chlorophyll

so that next year, for want of a garden, you can mow

your own lawn across your chest with a petroleum

monster. But wait: you are not a salad bar, nor a nursery

that tired older couples frequent on a Sunday – so with

a flick of the finger,  knock it to the ground, erasing it

with your big grey toe.

 

See all of this with your sticky pink eyes or not. Feel it wash through your

body or let it pass somewhere over your shiny reptile suit, knitted together

from skins snakes have shed – for when you’re dead in the ground

all this will still circle, spew and carousel. Spidery trees will turn pink,

the next week glow green and bear thick spiny fruit.

And for every purple heap of jelly broken-necked

on the hop-scotch, skewered on a stick and poked teasingly

into the dirty girl’s hair, there’ll be four or five fledglings

bringing back the dried stalks of Autumn to the rafters of

this old house where you sit, just a seed now

in your arm hair.