Light Of Nails

Its time to pack and say goodbye
to fold these limbs and stop to die.
No more blinks or lardy coughs
the time has come to sleep with moths.
You'll miss me but not I you
a crystal eye as sharp as dew.
Hang the coats and burn the shoes
no more jokes, no more news.
Pain and trouble now myths to me
bodies wilt but souls go free.
A sash of light around the earth
sells this head and marks my birth.
Goodbye all, it is time to leave
the heavy shell of a bard called Steve...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Vokal

The last chord from a red lane,
grinded away by tooth
and mortal air.
Two of us
granted no stay of death;
end words
as parched as desert stones.

Hear no more of me
and this clicking tongue.
Only in hearts and memories
are stages set
for a round of heavy sighs and prophecy.

Press "Play"
when lips will play no more,
and eventhough this soul has gone to roost
the vocals survive in mechanics.
No true end of words afterall,
no end no more in a televised century...

©Steven Francis poems 2012

On Blogging

Dead To Worlds

Tongue strained to overtures
and sand;
eyes closed yet alive to clocks
and inches,
rolling to tea and shop fronts
where stockings rise for chariots of ages,
the thellish strained overtures
and choirs of death.
I am death!
Eyes closed
and looking to the blind...


©Steven Francis 2012

Come Endless

Come end
come distant seas
where throes of man
live as idle fruit for kings
and mirrors send their spirits
keen as devil tongues
to viper morturies.
Amen
and say again amen!
Bring garden patches
to deserts of the deep,
the fractured paradise
a nylon pulse of man...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Lure Of Ladders

You take it from ages
and then pass away like stalling ice,
(sorry die,
where are our less than perfect manners?)
Ailing ranks, burnt smiles
weave grated dagger lines
as senseless time
lends a hand to forge saints in crafted ink.

And down beneath the lure of ladders
a ghost looking ghost
grows bolder than a clock face,
swapping wrists for hours.
Those sympathetic trails lead to lights
and morse code, happy ending routes
where gritted soldiers march to divide
electricty and horizons.

Oh by jaws of grace!
Those sons of thunder
will bait maggot cloth to dress a death
in bony sunset.
Stamp of destination, shy of eternity,
the barrel face of numbers
seeking madmen in stone of Man.

© Steven Francis poems 2012

On Movies...

Like Not Just the Title

It is vital that people support local talent from the start!

Dinosaur Nebraska

Thought id catch this green alley
to drink and suffocate
while gangs of Hebrew jaws
hang out under a ketchup firmament.
Let the cats out
to brew a few,
as I lose it all
from marrow to pigment.
Flesh crimes are firm favourite,
today, tomorrow, today again.

Harvest the bulb fish and bruise queens
before gallows lose a braided grip.
Gather teens in digital pods
to skin frosted, leukemia tans alive
and wear their fashion down to worms.
Cocaine and ham,
sour bag favourites of amphibian tribes
in sulphur caves where serrated edges
cradle hangovers at dawn.

And after each light fades
those candy garters slip during staircase romances;
arched spine
tails like commas,
rise momma to braille finger lust.
Watch show freaks grind
as merry weather stirs with fan-tailed erections...

©Steven Francis poems 2012

Don't Sleep

Don't sleep cariad fach,
the goodly sons and daughters
are racing to your whispers
even when darkness grips
the cold shard of night.
Yn disgwyl arno ti.

Do not sleep dear Wales,
fall not to despair and anger
and lift the light of Hope
to find our babe,
lead her home to Mami.
Peidiwch cysgy blodyn
mae pawb yn dod...

FOR APRIL JONES

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Teh Web

Ya evil f**king log of quizes
(I am not sane not at all)
you always stall in eulogies and RIPs.
Stone hearted faceless screen
interupting daydreams,
you get in the way of skies and seas,
you buffer of human skin of time,
a souless web of wires
waiting for grey haired minds to pass away.
Rest in peace
RIP...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Madam Abstract

You know who
you who the know and lie;
that wily throat
has a denser tongue
and betrays your fostered eyes.

And here ends forgery
of desperate, wounded cool;
pitter patter
back to crowds
a disarmed and tainted fool...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Nutwig's Big Writer Type

By the blessed grail of God (and the godless)
that final crack in a poet's wall
has surfaced like Moses from a sin club,
and now smiles a wormy grin
at conoiseurs who lost their minds to cigarettes
and starry starry nights.

Disheveled husks in greasy wards
stir in wax cocoons
while their limbs march on eggs to hit a novel
for million feathered quids
and messy pages.
Hoorah for fraud and the smacking sound of words!
Cross the corpses and dot the noose
as pale loquacious witches
comb their libra wombs
for sounds of the vivid blind...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Copyright and Crevices

Copyright,
that logo like a dog
pi$$ing on a post,
its neverending tail
flipping bird
to the honest zero.

And silent the heels
to glossy page threes,
burst water pipes in feline hip bombs,
Dark the mark
that exclamation crevice.

Bold and cheeky fonts all,
and like the big brother
smoldering of a happy TM trademark,
the chancers crease a page
with saturated grids...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

A Key Of Sorts, A Sort Of Key

The sad weeping of a discarded Allen key
trails through halls metallic as they are dim.
Oh to be heartless as steel
or as endless as offal,
to see a word spill from dying lips.
It would be harmony
a fit like talons in a shrew,
that bastard punch of combs through hair...

© Steven Francis poems 2012



@ Steven Francis 2011

Disillusioned Thoughts of a Vagabond

© Steven Francis 1991

I used to sketch a few images to accompany my poetry in the good old bad days. (Early 1990s.) Heres one little drawing I did to go with a forword I wrote to one of the poetry anthologies I appeared in. As you can see, I used to sign my stuff as 'Zombie', in an attempt to look as cool as 'Pushead', an artist who used to do artwork for bands like Metallica.

Longer Run of Lust in Games

F**k.
Or Kcuf;
for narrow eyes and slender ends
this bearded scorpion
wants to Kcuf the all in ALL.
The N
or P
the J,
the T
the H,
letters all,
maybe love in a cramped mind...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Footwork

We live
we play energetic crab lined beats
and tip our shadows to the puddles;
we drive and cook
we love,
think ourselves brave at music strokes
and we die.
There is no more to it,
no more thought or philosophies
we kiss we walk
we stroke the cat and die...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Poem To Lyric To Music

Tome Jangles
and merry sleight hands of crowds
followed ink slicks
across white sands to fret boards
where the devil lurked in muse shrouds.
Pages glowed in times of Man,
the sorrow, greed and joy
spread like harpies wings.

Prolific nightrain of a senseless breed
they sing and nail tales of death,
glory beds on foggy shores.
Strum bang jango!
Hail words and candy chorus
schemed bands from nettles in their wisdom
their joy bound lifts the hook.
A truth in streams
breath in hardcore lullabies,
trance to anaesthetise sombre hooded heads...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Brat News and the Abrasion of Life

Mad to bored inside peeling walls of four,
emotions which have me cornered
switch from knuckles to sky,
jabbing ripe solitude into this dusty, drunk again throat.
Terrestrial fields beyond sickle eyed vessels
amplify the bratty news which is less than mulch to me,
with its undercurrent sneering
on a born again electric never ending sheet.

Whistle boy and hide thy blessings
for in toy cities sincerity is seldom heard
and all there is are echoes from tourist hearts
who could never die for you.
Beast child and lizard-like
the first and last of blood
seeping from pendulum flowers...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Gretchen

What is in a name?
An adder or chameleon,
poised to mark the world,
earth a solid hand.
To pull a title from toybox
from idea to Gretchen.

A bad name,
an evil bad name of wasps and hemlock,
that G hatchet falls like owls on shrews,
fear the Gretchen
that boiling mad witch.
She seethes on lips
making demons proud,
oh Gretchen of the masks...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

August Wales

And as the loaded red beast dipped
to tag a sincere, sickl'd dawn,
there arose my hiraeth
and I was home in Wales
in Carmarthen chains...

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Gator Breath

Scrawl airless sonnets
to bounce like rubber into shiv'd arms
for those involved in minion trends.
Our ghetto brethren
from A to Z
have us frolicking
on shells
to skip a word or six.
The death bambinos
suckling from cruel iron rows
under broken skylights.
A queer uprising
failures on the captain ship....

© Steven Francis poems 2012

Blink

The fish scales have it all,
a camera roll on one.
From a downward swing in golf
to the never ending yawn of death
and a stretch of butter from a honey bird flight,
the lather from fish has it all.
A blink
a tear,
sterile gasps from drowning folk,
the theory blinks of man
are dying in hooked muscles...

©Steven Francis poems 2012

Idle Patterns

Wealth and happiness oft enemies,
seldom harmony exists between the two.
Dare slip the darkness inbetween them
and manservants will shoo away morning lights and dews
into comas where vomit skirted angels hang
in Bill Sykes shadows.,
Damn illusions of petty paper joys
forget the sons of mischief who decieve.
Its all,
all a stinking bone idle lie
that only grave hearted airheads would beLIEve...

©Steven Francis poems 2012


©Steven Francis 2012

Familiar Uknown (Force of Nature)

The pull of home brings footsteps back
to pad corridors that cannot tell email from teeth.
And as familiar as the public are
with voices and the tilt of necks,
bricks see nothing
while flowers spew their froth,
no lights in warren solitude.
That knuckled spook in gartered, cotton gown
may as well send its ghost to roam
amongst the propped up eyeless vinyl
on Ikea avenue.
Lost man out of style
in a Geronimo moment of masks and streets,
inbetween the grey and cold.

Tap
tap tip tap,
naked bones on keen heels.
One gone again to internet jars,
tap and then another,
famous names used like towels,
off to delirium beds at last...

@Steven Francis poems 2012

Coal Man (Relative of Death)

I am no fun
tick no mercy in your box of chances
as I leap around your shaggy frame
to shake it into putrid mulch.
When I am done (this no good fun)
no medicine or friend will recognise you,
or son or daughter find comfort in holding fathers hand
as it withers in a paper bed.
Disease tenants,
I love you to death...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Diana Dead

Satan grant the knock
Princess Diana's death,
the quiff
the quiff over sunglasses
swerved the wall into the car,
paparazzi smash!
Satan grants the knock
that kills Princess Diana,
Diana Princess
throne slippeth away,
the snow the blood
the blood the snow,
fingernails point
to lenses flash.
Diana dead
Satan knocks,
the car revolts
the walls revolt.
Diana dead...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Poet 666

Spit .com

Hate the world
that hateth me,
thy branded poison
and frigid ink
makes no mark
upon this worded throat...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

The Race For Glass

Celebrity smoking
crunching, fiddling
and raging.
Those wind up pigs
are here to stay.
The frittering, fingering
boiling and stuttering
wind up sows,
here to stay
and f**k the armies of slug footed
press ganged kids.

We labour nothing
only to seek a life beyond the vain;
a foul glitzy whirlwind
that terrorizes ambition
and gifts it to the sloth cameras.
Autographs and semi literate biographies
become bibles to the unbibled,
those decibel children who seek gold
before a soul...

Steven Francis poems 2012

Jack Scabbard

F**k that rat arsed punk.
The sheen of jellied spite from him
is scorched away by contempt for his peasant mind
and scarecrow'd eyeballs.
Hag of ages!
Super pauper of graffiti glass
flogged by razor pen and ill will,
get dead in silence cadaveronia!
The triumph of a mad Smirnoff prophet
on stars to high town...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

The Dislikers?

Crypt Of Lieberkuhn

Dig the rat men who sail with scissors and blood
a deeper grave than most.
Send them down to the crypt of Lieberkühn
to erase every foulest trace
and make their hateful lessons as mute as mud.
No monument for murder
should ever be,
so shovel and forget,
forget them in the crypt of Lieberkühn....

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Poetry: The Beginning

Kids Love Ponds

Fall to me father,
if only to call me son.
But no,
a starless sky simmers over a leather ocean
and hate nurtured in a wild chiselled youth
proves much too strong for turning back.
And down I fall alone....

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

This (For) Jellyfish

Like an invisible brain
floating in a murky ether,
this meshy monster
fingers the void with oily vines,
buzzing in salty crevices
that were not meant for man.

Jellyfish, more aloof than lobsters
and blind to sharks,
groping the flora of death black abysses
to unleash unparalelled stings
which show scorpions how its done.

Bitter list of many faces
while sullen arches fall.
The beggars knees
kings jewel,
Gods navel
gypsy strings
and will of Icarus,
all owe debt to the fatty grace of the headless fish...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

The Rats Are Loose

Dare not sleep tonight.
Care not for rest
with its morphine stabs and death wax.
Seek the Yanto men with glossy widowmakers
to engrave heretics with bullets
and pulverise each sermon to dust.
The sightless renegades are loose
to frame time in fires
as ham hock poetry from olive worded books
ladder down my gartered spine,
searching for the root of life
and its war fever...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

Sunset And The Hawk

She was like a heart attack the minute I saw her again after all these years. Immediate in striking beauty, gentle in tongue. That rare piece of beauty that possessed none of the acid words usually borne of pretty things. The camera, without the modern trickery, is a good judge of style because it never lies and will mirror you as you really are the moment the lens snaps shut. And it never took a bad photograph of her that I could see. In pictures, whether she was expecting them or not, this woman was always posed perfectly and as glamourous as any Hollywood dame you could care to mention. She oozed style in the clicks and I fell for her as any man with a beating heart would.
Her name? Sunset. And there is no second name, cheaply tacked on like jewelery on goldfish. Sunset is all. And she is all too. Her face like a glorious beam of light, with a look of confidence but not quite. A shade of doubt plays around those high cheek bones but it all adds to the allure of Sunset.
I have known her almost all of my life because she lives in my hometown, a little fishing village in West Wales. We were never big friends when I lived there, though we knew who each other was of course. One cannot fail not to know everyone in Croes Y Ceiliog because streets are as packed as tins in supermarkets and there is always one or two spare earholes like radars, waiting to catch any juicy nugget of gossip for the lips to flap and air in the line for fresh cod at the chippy.
A few years younger than me, Sunset in her teenage years was nothing remarkable. I remember her as a fuzzy haired, skinny kid who always seemed to be with her best friend, either on the swings in the park or strolling along the shop fronts on the main street of Croes Y Ceiliog. Her friend possessed the looks in those days. Long dark hair, with an ashy complexion and a smile that revealed big, glossy white teeth. But for all the teenage hormones and the naive, hippy heart songs those bring, I never got her name. In the big picture, immediate pleasures and happinesses are forgotten to make way for the inevitable waves of years, countless months and memories, that will reveal their intended and final truth near times end. She was not the One. Her friend Sunset was. Or is. If religion preaches Love, then I have religion. I am filled to the soul with it. Those perfect eyes, my altar where I kneel and let myself drift to planes of romantic ecstacy laced with dirt and unforgiving pleasures.. Conjuring up scenes where we, no WE in bold letters, are king and queen on an island where nothing but each other roams in an abundance of erotica.
How is it that I ever forgot about Sunset in the first place? So curious it is that I never once thought of her in the years we missed together. She floated down the route of her elders, while I took on a flight of madness and soared with angels (and devils). One of us banging the nails, the other trying to prise them and let free a new, undiscovered chapter no eyes had previously read. A Sunset behaving like sunset, gently making babies and sending them to sleep each night. And what was I? A shadow collecting bat skulls and inebriated bones for stories of the illicit and macarbe, abondoning the sun for grim petals that fell off the dead like clipped fingernails. But I want Sunset now. Even if its only in fleeting kiss catches over the internet, and stubbing my fingertips on her electric photographs. I want Sunset to be all over me. Every day.

Sunset Behind Glass...

So now that the introduction is out of the way (however clinical that may sound), and in hope I haven't sugar crushed you dear reader with hints at blossoms and bosoms, and shady spewy kisses down dark alleys, I shall continue on the road to Sunset. There might be a few twitches along the way but ignore them, they are merely pangs of temptation (and a little frustration) being for the most part ignored by the devil on my shoulder. Temptation does so hate to be ignored. I will never look upon Sunsets honey skin whilst in honest company, nor shall my spirit be swallowed by her Californian blue eyes but we can still have our intimate moments via the crystal horns of technology. Or to be accurate, I can because this is a solo flight of carnal pleasures where brief specks of madness turn the computer screen into a picture frame that holds my distant beloved safe until I, the Hawk crashes home onto her glittery cleavage or those plum smashed lips where for five or six minutes I dissolve into an endorphin glossed wilderness and am plagued by disfigured love and naked lust for Sunset.
A quilted debauchery, a bird of prey making Sunset his own to caress and kiss. But it never gets obscene because swans, those dead poets returned to earth, save the Hawk with their grace, like angels rescuing innocence from the gallows. I will not allow dirt to be tipped upon the fresh polish of the casket for that would sully the by and large sweet love. A love through eyes and great imagination.
She is online now, talking the dailies with her graffiti speaking friends. Its a language I barely recognise these days, the internet and mobile telephones having ripped it to shreds and laziness turned perfect words mutant .
BratNews™ is where I go to see the Sunset. The digital meadows where bouquets of pictures grow in number every day and gossip abounds with specks of news and whereabouts. She was in Tref Y Ceiliog yesterday, sunning herself in a rare bout of good weather and it was good to see because a natural tan suits her. She positively glows from the screen and I have to catch my breath at times. Especially when I imagine her poolside, bronze legs stretched and flexing her toes, inviting my tongue to roll on up, put the drinks down and taste her warm skin. Just us two, no cars or queues, kids or responsibilites. Sunset and the Hawk, and nothing else to prise us from our golden cocoon. Occasionally a misplaced word would cause me to wince like a thorn in my finger pad but its always excused and swiftly forgotten. On paper as in life, we are a million times apart but she usually has a way of turning the show around and I might jump and jolt at ill used words and sentences (even misplaced judgements), but she usually brings me back into her earthly arms. She has that kind of strength, the down to earth muscles, the kind that never lets a husband (or lover) let go and is able to spin vulgarities from giblet to petal.
These unbounded, sugary paragraphs will no doubt put the dogs to sleep but stay the shift for all will out and I will keep repeating my thirst, my insatiable want for the darling Sunset until the drums beat their heart velvet steeds into the corner of my merry libido. I shouldn't really be in here, rummaging through the folds of Sunset's cotton toweled towels but here I am, mesmerised by a chipped beauty that I find uncouth when the 'text speak' is trotted out and yet still find the author incredibly hard to resist.

To be Continued.

© Steven Francis 2012

Every Time I See Black Holes I Think Of Heart Attacks

Those mighty blossoms of feral space
the black hole seizes my fungus fused liver with dread,
paralyzing every tenor of my mortal lungs.
Oh deepest pit where nightmares roost!
Like the very depths of hell suspended in a solar garden
sucking life out of light
as you offer horizons to end all sight and sound.
Galactic supermonster,
hero to a neverending thirst,
wake the dead, stir the galant muse.
Starry cove to swallow wing and fortune...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

Exit Size O

Stood upon the morbid stage
footless dance, no more age.
Hempen rope driving sin from bones
to send them down to Davy Jones...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading:

Mowing With Pets Nearby

Risk shame to caution
while firebranded cyclones
swipe at feathered golems without hindrance,
not a care about satisying the endless hole.
A bedded breast, fast to sentiment
loses echoes which rebound off mourning stalls
and shatter like a thousand deaf tumours.
Oh faithful subtle joinery of bone!
Bond with muted names
as happy as ever lasting smiles
but beware the corpse beneath those matted tags,
those pretty bells to ring away birthdays....

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

Under A (Now) Hornless Crab

A nomad without siren
draws on a scallop'd imp to raise the pins
from charcoal screens and nickel ribbons;
and ideas in bright sick sun glassed waves
are hurled in spirals through forbidden realms
like a devil plucking goats for soup.
Then foul veins expand at dainty breath,
powerless at scenes of a barefoot doll,
her hands on foxglove hips,
twitching the water with salmon curtains
calling for murders of innocence.

And yet for all hopes of salamander dances,
the yearning for unholy pits,
a bare heel, simple like a boiled acorn
and an Oriental wink
holds the guillotine in place.
The awful drop that allows no backward glances
to fields of order is stayed;
as is the yellow colour of a ripe sun
and the gentle green of grass....

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

On Trails of Memoria

God, don't give me a 4a.m.
like yesterdays again;
let me slip the aching gallows
allow me sleep through sombre shadows,
as the ghosts that pinch my bones
find saner beds to sour.

No need for empty grates
to burn with morning hate,
filthy sandman home again
with mortal bells on each a.m.
Future flower, flower bruised
gallant dawn be gold...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

Use By...

Immortal
here and now
in the present
today,
ever after
this day and night
clock strikes, bang!
This second
not yesterday or tomorrow,
this minute
today.
Not past or future,
shillings roll in instant
immediate
on time.
Immortal shakes
never rest,
lose the grip
in split seconds.
Dawn breaks today
only today,
in the present,
the happy ever after
is a con job.

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

Reading

The Idea Behind 'The Heron Ponds'

Dame H With A Canvas Limb (to married women)

Behold the pinched eyelet!
That three eyed heart is woken,
as she is framed for me
on crooked toes from nylon hammocks,
to tune the mossy summer whipsnake.
Dame Hollywood on Yellowbrick glossies
sidles to the scaffold pole;
she swears by affairs and furious cocaine binges
and her hilt is target by my wily range,
a fibre gizzard of inertia.

Thou art not perfect
with that flapping, moustached barnacle
on your frilly hip;
but shy not from me glassy babe
and I will pose and dare
to throw homecooked colics onto marble cheeks
as our thighs twist in excelsis grinds
kinked in endorphin hernias.

Arrest these neon arms on Dwynwens night
to defy not deify the solemn vows
and make us stand like statuettes
on starless hills visited only by prey riders.
Tryst angels in secluded coils,
crash onto sequined crests
as mania draws exotic barley from salacious roots
until beaks are at the bells again.
A solid sleep beneath clouded fathoms
to ward off widows in their paper flames...

@ Steven Francis poems 2012

The reading: