(f21)

tough Welsh cob drinking —
two swans slide in and out of
the marsh marigolds

© Gerald England

Composed: Briton Ferry, 3rd July 1995

Publications

1996 Weyfarers (UK)
1996 Target (UK)

Victims of the Bottle

VICTIMS OF THE BOTTLE

Victims of the bottle and forecast lanterns
blushed when they heard her fingernails were refined through silk.
Emotion was implicit in holsters
slung round my friend and delightful each morning,
For a solution we bandaged them in enamel.
Examining the atmosphere was a thirsty, skinny male.
His hairs were anything but light from frosty mist
sleeping on top of Karen Finlay.
My childhood training had taught me
that I had emerged from the bottle with a short soak in former days.
I have stolen everything from the structure
which tolerated your prissy studios,
your darkness, symptomatic of the hookers.
I wasn't a furnace, contemplating the spectrum.
None of the racks of absorption are painless.
After six years he hadn't been brought back out to fall for the music.
They really didn't need illustrious visitors now,
nor would they find a Parisian lunatic asylum,
female orgasm nor the content of lesbian bodies.
The captain barks orders to take in women's nature.
My friend's urgent message of barter,
leads his helpers away from unkind dispositions.
My friend does not explain any image of sunlight and compass
with a wave about ten times faster,
thereby reinforcing the historic importance of filtering jars by another genius
resolved to implement policies ensuring the source in the "Here"
It could lead to the concepts so long now perceived
as less complete foreknowledge of reinforced cohesion,
ensuring a common footer of phallic silicone simulacrum.
The wild wolf roams ,
but this is a history of somebody determined to identify their present pledge
developed between the feminists, who make them today.
Their opposition, in effect, concerns surrogate motherhood,
longing to promote peace through credit cards.
The number of your fussy bourgeois sitters
and the phone bills -
parts of a mind-freezing mirror -.
give a watery luminescence.
Shoes were supplied on her birthday.
Lights play music, making it capture necessary exceptional regard.
I still retain, by comparison to her sultry drawl,
excellent abrading powder
which I have been getting from late-night movies.
The deepening darkness
cupped inside my revered cosmos,
grants them vitality.
It is recounted on an important-looking page marked WARNING.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Gee Cross, 13th June 1993

Publication

1998 Target (UK)

Third Meeting with Chicken

THIRD MEETING WITH CHICKEN

The sandwiches
were liberally salted
Appetite
was a two-edged sword
Thaw was attempted
A fuse was blown
and a double No
became the remains
of
cold chicken

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Sheffield, 1st November 1971

Publications

1975 Ludds Mill (UK)
1990 Sword of Shahrazad (UK)
1991 Impetus (USA)
1996 Target (UK)

Chicken on Ice

CHICKEN ON ICE

     Chips were thawed,
     cooked in fat
     A metal-foiled roast
     emerged from
                        gas
                        oven
     The trimmings too
     were tasty
     Willi Boskovsky
     conducting Strauss
     cut sounds
     in the air
     But at the rink,
     skating,
     chicken fell
     on the ice,
     picked herself up
     and
     cried
     into cider.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ackworth, 15th October 1971

Publications

1984 The Old Police Station (UK)
1996 Target (UK)

Chicken on the Moor

CHICKEN ON THE MOOR

Sitting
in the car
on the fog-surrounded moors
waiting
for orders
to abandon position,
chicken
shone up in my headlights;
dipped,
they ran the road
Out of the mist
chicken emerged
boiled in a saucepan
The later safety
of the city
dispelled the haze
Chicken
couldn't
cause
indigestion

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ackworth, 14th October 1971

Publication

1996 Target (UK)