Poem - Cromer Beach

Cromer beach

 

First the clack of the flint skulls then

the scratch of the gravel displaced

finally obedient sand

where we walked easily together.

Behind I watched your steps compress

sand, pushing the water aside

the earth lighting your step lifting

you just my hand tethering you.

 

There at a boundary of blue

we watched a metallic mist come

I knew then you would be taken;

Tides are a clock counting down, up.

Our hands entwined a godless joke.

Our clambering children grown, gone.

Do not look for solace in this;

Do not look, back, forth, do not look.

 

 

James A Bullion September 2014

Poem - Just make it stop

Just make it stop

 

I am lost

My focus gone

Held like a spade

Earth coated tongue

Concrete blocking the way

Veins of my arms stiff brush strokes

 

Gin loosed pen

Musical sevenths

What gives when she

(patient as a snake), speaks lovingly?

I want my eyes out (my inner eye to see)

If I could just make it stop, tell the world

evenly

 

James A Bullion, September 14

Poem - The Edge

The Edge

I went beyond my boundary

into territory edging mine.

I crept through to leave no trace

to feel present, be primed.

 

Midnight called my 49^th year.

The trigger clicked back, I

Waited for your arrival here.

Crouched, breathing, in the black.

 

I need to lift a fever now

Having lived with it too long.

Comfort, hands in my pants, my

thumb in my mouth, pen gone.

 

A creature nears pearl eyes

serene on the woodland mist

Edging into the night a white paw.

With stoic dread I feed it wishes.

 

I am ready for first grey light

 

 

James A Bullion, June 2014

Poem - Quarry

Quarry

 

There is concrete and coal moving

The yellow trucks you had as a child

The air, birdless is choked on it

The sound is a grind of gears, a shriek

Of suspension, a doublet of knocking

As the unstoppable trucks lumber by.

 

Nearby a woman lays offered to the sky

Every part of her exposed and open on

The fertile earth. Naked on the green and

Gravel land where people walk on her

Strolling the path of her arms, her legs

To her womb where the sit and shelter

 

And hold fast to reach her eyes by stairs

And to her head finally to comprehend the

World from her prone prison below the sky

Ears choked with sound, burnt orange to

her smell and her mouth pressed closed

with chalk and rubble and a wire muzzle.

 

There is a lull of eerie expectant quiet

Before a sharp crackle and thud in the pit

Explodes the rock, raining fresh stones

Smoke rising and dust offering even cover,

People and the endless trucks still

Waiting for the dust to settle.

 

James A Bullion, May 2014