SNIZ

Can you feel me?

My name is pain

and I sniz through your heart

making jigsaws

of every thought and memory

and place you feel or see.

Uncontent with breaking

I choose not to shatter

but to sniz,

to cut slowly,

sawing and turning,

winding out long, long distances.

Taking my time,

and yours,

inflicting.

And when you're finished,

I leave you all the pieces

to fit back together

in loneliness.

NOREEN BOYLE'S BEACH

So where are you now Noreen Boyle?

You wanted poetry but stayed away

from this Looking. On this beach

the pebbles are clacking like pool balls

under the waves' Hotpoint number four soap-sud wash.

The gulls are squadrons of squeaky flies

hanging around a light-bulb sun, yellow,

through a mad emulsion of grey clouds.

It's all old rope and scrubbing brushes.

Two Magpies fly by cruising like children;

there is nothing shining on the tan linoleum of sand,

nor hidden in the skirting boards of concrete and rock;

the sea will brillo pad these to dust

and the ropes will fray on wave frills

and the scrubbing brushes float away,

bristles upwards, trying to polish

the day to soap-powder blue

and the glossy night to stars

that one by one come in

and one by one go out..

SIESTA

An old man meanders by dressed

for a Scottish winter.

The sun glints off the wine bottle

he grasps with monkey fingers.

Loose - in his left hand - six eggs.

He comes back unchanged

two hours later except for

the empty wine bottle and

the breeze in the fingers of his left hand,

the shadow of his cap on his forehead

and the group on Cocuruzzo square

has changed position but the same talk

whistles over the top of the slow swing of the bottle.