Author: James Lindesay

A heart darkly become glass
as midnight out of the fire
fashions mirror snowflake blade

A black eye suddenly laid
on the face of all desire
shadow that no sun outlasts

A life as a running
away with from towards
the world and its wonders

Anything to keep up
and unafraid of this
our race to the bottom

His gnarly feedback was
a pilgrimage of grace
in the fast lane   at last

27.10.13

Tick toque an early start
this is where pastry
comes to be torte

creams to be beaten
and fruit perfected
and then eaten

Hell is a rich and varied habitat.
From its low-lying rivers, bogs, and leas
to the windswept hackles of the Great Orme,

its climate, landscape and geology
support a range of plant communities.
The human impact, while significant,

is managed well, although of late increasing
numbers of the damned have put some strain
upon the countryside. As a result,

on most estates the land is farmed for pain;
gorse anvils, shredders, and threshing-machines
crop thumbs and fingers in the bramble scrub,

and nettle beds are grown by the latrines
and slurry pits, where excrement collects
from deadstock grazing in the ragwort fields.

There are no trees. Deployments of insects
and cankers, die-backs, rusts, and needle drop
have cleared the woodland and removed the shade,

leaving new prairies of abandoned hope
– bracken and hemlock mostly – to flourish
in their place. They also burn well when dry.

Rape is quite common here; it nourishes
the ovens and furnaces that drive
much of the regional economy,

and quite a few signature species thrive
in its field margins: cleavers, horehound, docks
and agrimony, teasels, bittersweet.

In the following pages we shall look
at these and other plants that now depend
upon the nitrogen, organophosphates

and neglect that finally brought an end
to the needless diversity. Maps will show
their total domination and their spread

throughout the nine circles. Visitors to
these parts may find them useful as they walk
our extensive network of burning coals.

Your help in managing our rare outbreaks
of colour will be much appreciated,
as will the contributions of your waste.

I’m looking at a basket of dumbphones:
a tangle of handsets and base-units,
brackets and wires. Each was lighter, larger,
louder than the one before it, stations
on a road to silence as your senses
and strength all dwindled to their last nowhere.

Tunstall, Binatone, Friends & Family:
every evening you called, left messages
or spoke with nothing to say. That lifeline
is now dead air, lost amongst the rubbish
of a long illness: dressings and creams, pads
and spools of plaster. To the skip with them.

A second-class to nowhere
brings us here   quite out of love
with who we believed once   here
on a sleeper to the grave

Cinders   rat droppings   a botched war
know this for all we can leave

And so we stumble through the week
the sun forever on our back
forever doing the Lord’s work

As if the clarity we seek
were by the wayside as we take
the road to Paradise (or such like)

Previously published in The Warwick Review (2012)

​

This map on the wall
with Africa so small
and Asia so vast
and its infinite poles:
which truer, the fist
or the flat of the hand
in this lie of the land
this abstract of souls?

How to be a man
when there is no longer
work to be done
or scars to be won
down a pit in the field
no pain or gain
anymore no throne
or theatre for our
testosterone

We forge the armour
of a built body we grow
muscle and hair
to catch and keep our
last shrivels of respect
the point and power
of a caged honour
we wear a skin where blood
and bruises flower

The tap of a long-dead
long, dead finger

flickering from a not-
quite-human hand

as eyes of all sizes
grow in the dark

and go deeper deeper
into the trees

A low light across these emptied fields
last of the grasses, rubrication
and an inking-in as hedgerows yield
their harvest: the earth in rotation

The bramble in flower and fruit and thorn
the cyclamen and naked crocus
thick in the borders as a leaf turns
to be read: an opening of books

Sometimes, they don’t even leave the car park.
Waylaid by ruderals, the party stops
to hoist aloft their finer points; there’s talk
of Stace and variable phenotypes.
Sometimes, the flower hasn’t read the book
and foliage is pressed between the leaves
of Poland for a later, longer look;
stigmas are present, but the style deceives.
Always, there is difference and debate,
niceties to stimulate the knowing,
young, and necessary disbeliever;
so, heads down, with mysteries at their feet,
slowly they turn their keys upon this Kingdom,
green and growing, going on forever.

Previously published in BSBI News 122 (2013)

“Ask me no questions
I’ll tell you no lies”
a peep in the bag means
a ruined surprise

Out in the meadow
a circle of stones
is lying in wait for
the planet’s return

The hunter approaches
and raises the net
the windows are open
the traps are all set

Over the hedgerow
comes floating the moon
the village is sleeping
the stones have all gone

The girl he presumed on
is busy intently
tearing to pieces
the letter he sent

Time for a rest

Here we walk
the paths of desire

the woods at midnight
not alone

a Liebestod
too soon inspiring

sunlight moonlight
flesh and bone

We haven’t met yet, yet
you move in my mind; your
skin gear, your grubby socks
your cock in the private
pics, tattoos, the offer
of musky, scruffy sex

No distance away, no
limits; just click to say
yes to the predator
yes to your foxy grin
as you stalk in silence
the hungry, fearless flocks

Where to begin with such an ending?
Artful and sly, slowly pulling free
from us, watching the horizon curve
as blue becomes black, becomes the Earth,

A body of work retires, returns.
What’s it worth, such a back-catalogue
of airs and grace, of close encounters
of the heard kind, music of the spheres?

Much more than we can ever replay.
For myself, I own these memories:
Apollo, and the Eagle’s landing,
sex and rapture, and a world allowed.

Pretty thing, pretty flighty
number, thorn in my flesh;
where are you off to now, whore?

Who’d have you, you washed-up, sick
near-naked refugee?
Nothing is fun anymore.

Sometimes, it is hard to breathe
while the children are playing
these death-dances. Parody
for now beyond the reach of
their talent, the music stays
honest and true; their song says
yes the day is beautiful
enjoy life   abide with me

Here the element behaves.
Its trophies honour him; the noise
(sea-trumpets, bells beneath the waves)
is distant but clear. Sailor boys
are busy at the water’s edge
with sandcastles or something, and
idly the tide comes in to fetch
them back. Women walk hand in hand
behind him. It is rather warm.
A shell has opened at his foot.

Islands there are, and sirens, storms…
Here Neptune wears a three-piece suit.

Previously published in the British Medical Journal (1977)