Fire For These Bones

No earth do I desire
for my eternal cot;
I shall escape the pattering of stones
over crowed face by flame,
that same fire
which lit my spirit and rages,
my desires and thirsts
and made mighty
this tinder box frame.

Wither not my organs
from these bones
like moulded grapes
left forgotten on a vine.
Burn them all
until my brave kidneys
liver, lungs and pretty eyes
become cinders,
jewels amongst the smoke.
There I will rest
charred,
contented as ash...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

Steven Pretend (Birth & Death)

Skeletons sit around discussing Plato
like albino matches
quaking from the fire,
but my other half
(twisted drunken fiend he is)
looks forward to tasting mud,
gristle and laments,
and whistles from broken alley merchants.
The chink in my soul
gives reverence to grief,
while others run
I dare the hole to swallow.

Fall deep the dead
from shadows eve,
where all frail sorrow
ought end.
Nothing can split
the nails of sleep,
fertile bone
will never bend.

And there it is,
my scabbard rusting in a cemetery puddle
after the game is played
and I am but sand in a bell.
Ears cloth,
lips apart letting breath go,
eyes jagged
and heart in cusps of harmony.
From jelly skin to skinned soul,
from butter bones to tiger pattern liver,
from careless footsteps into trenches of tears.
A life amongst billions of lives
a sun within the thunder...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

The Death Chapter

Without invite or knock
like bullets on a doorstep
the prince returns from no return
to secure a grim flock
to his eternal rags.
Vertigo sleep
without dream or chapter.
No mortal pain or terror
for the flesh.

Beyond the valley of the gun
there lies no carrion,
harsh kennels do not stand
in the shadow of bombs.
The mighty freckled river
hides no lash from Keres.

Onward through motley vines
and starry webs.
Man of skin
lay curled as one skull
within jaws of tender malice.
Infant of the sands
giant in eternal seas.
Smooth viper scales
in the awakening,
the storm of black
washes out damnation in our colons.

Beyond the harbour of the drowned
there are no cadavers,
and sick beds do not line bare walls.
The genorous touch
of the hemlock eyed prince
turns Man from scar to feather...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

We Are Dead

We walk dead
we look dead -

to sequined eyes
and spinning circus brains
we are silver chains on doom.

We talk dead
we smoke dead -

young floweres wilt
at our whims,
we brazen killers
pureed in candy sauce.

We eat dead
we play dead -

simmering silence
at the news of the day,
cold to events
and cherry red love.

We happy dead
we happy dead
we happy
we...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

Scab Badges/Cancer

Out of blistered loins
it appears raw
like a slug
boiled in mucas,
sucking at pores
eager for destruction
and cowled plague.
Ruffian neoplasm
sending malignant overtures
to shining organs,
then delighting in watching them wither.
Death in abundance
tumour me.
Metastasis bulbs grow in haste
to ravage peach skin
with crops of dark patches
and sugared misery.
Shrinking paper bones
in its milky wake,
nothing fades spirits
like the peppered bruise
of this hand...

@Steven Francis poems 2009

I See Demons When I Wretch

Behind creased eyelids
deformity staggers
while I try to hurl my offensive guts
into clean air.
The rictus grinning ogres
balloon faced evil jesters
and horned babies
all lurk within my cortex
as I screw my intestines into curried knots.
They line the inside of my dome
in a miserable parade,
chittering in silence like wild chimps
while my tongue curdles toxins
and whisks bile.
Every cough brings corpses
to the haze,
little tufts of morbid delight
that hang on my internal canvas
like coal on lace.
I heave foam,
straining vocal chords
pulling muscles,
seeing terrible faces in the dark...

@ Steven Francis poems 2009

Welcome The Dear Ghouls

Beneath cream complexion
and tomato spiked lips
lurk the ghouls

and lurk is right
for we wait amongst disease
a deathly lounge,
and we is right
because I am ghoul.

The lure
of cobwebs and sulphur
of carcass and tomb,
it is a beautiful thing
bizarre and macabre

and beautiful is right
for we delight
in skewered eyelids.
Grand messy sloppy
death beds...

@Steven Francis poems 2009