SHAVINGS FROM GOOD WOOD

my eyes and mind

are colour blind

images of the past,

seen in black and white photographs

coming back to me

when the world was grey on tv.

the print in some of my books,

is a secret spectrum

of heroines and male fuck-ups

whose fatal flaws, sent them

out to be destroyed

by codes of conduct gibbetting joys.

Tess, the dairy maid,

refused to have her sex enslaved,

so men executed her free will

and persecute their women still.

even Jude,

became my long interlude-

but Arabella has gone,

so I must move on

repossessed

and get dressed.

a bad tooth,

filling falling out

in the cavity of youth,

and hanging about

on Elizabeth through autumn weather

in our long hair and cracked leather

as she sucked my cock on Kersal Moor

and said: "fuck me on the floor!"

filching movie posters from cinema halls

and pinning them to our bedroom walls,

then sitting on bare floorboards

listening to Led Zeppelin and The Doors-

after swapping Sabbath's Paranoia

for the colours of Matisse and Goya.

we can't go back to that neighbourhood:

it's gone,

from the air, but not from the blood,

these things we understood

like shavings from good wood.

Copyright Strider Marcus Jones from his book WOODED WINDOWS. 2011. All Rights Reserved.