#nonce form

These are the waters of the buccaneer– they live large lives and lounge around with liquor, floating on waters calm, gin-clear, their risks outrageous and their thinking thin, alert to bargain and to dicker and not averse to sin– a life erratic. The time of storms starts… ends… another year has gone by, always it seems quicker– thoughts of a distant home fade, disappear– beard covers sunken…

She is polished and pernicious Her demeanor is delicious She will soften the suspicious      With her smile  She’ll abash you then disarm you She’ll harass and she’ll alarm you Then she’ll nonchalantly charm you       That’s her style  She’ll reject and then she’ll choose you She’ll respect and then she’ll use you She’ll protect and then she’ll bruise you      In a flash  She’ll dismiss you then…

He looked at me as if I ought to know just who he was but I did not. I looked away, then so did he. Alas I didn’t recognize the Great God Pan in human form. I simply thought he was another man. I felt a warm gaze inviting me once more. I turned to see him changed. A God again, hooves and furry legs, horns grew. He gestured “Hey?” I was too dumbstruck to do more than stare. He shook his curls and…

I am the scam you go in for, the diamonds in the pavement, ecstatic evenings caught on traffic cam, rare toilets and consensual enslavement. Scholars and brawlers are inside of me. What could I be? I am the new New Amsterdam. I am those glamhigh-rises and the derelicts’ despair,graffiti worthy of the Met, and shamVersace hawked to chumps in Union Square. Purists and tourists are inside of…

The Cardinal works into the night To realize his dream: To keep the nobles in their place, Make royalty supreme. He knows it’s time for government To grow and centralize, And when the nobles sober up They won’t believe their eyes. And at his feet The indiscreet Delightful pet he calls Gazette Provides his inspiration. He spreads the map of Europe out And studies its repair, Especially in ways…

John Beaton, ‘Wolves’

I’m wakened, drawn towards the ice-thin window, to witness scenes as faint and still as death. How bleak the moon; how bare the trees and meadows; sky’s pale maw overhangs Earth bleached beneath star fangs. Night’s curled lip sneers on shadows of mountains set like teeth. Two bow waves shear the median of the valley,iced hayfield yields as feral muscles glide–hoarfrost disturbed by wakes of live…

Poem: ‘Homage From British Expats’

Thou noble, purest British race! Thy children we, Inheriting thy every trace; From thy straight back, unmoving face, We learn the truest social grace, Pomposity. To thee the new is never good, ’Tis duty shirked. Thou’dst never think, and much less brood; Thou duty-bound eatst wooden food; Thou ever ramrod-straight hast stood, And never worked. Britain! Served on a silver tray Thine Empire’s tea…

Poem: ‘Ticking Away’

You have hopes. You don’t expect that they’ll ever come to pass but you drink, think and reflect as you look into the glass… And you wonder what will happen while your life just ticks away: Tick, tick, tick, tick… end of play. Science’s prognostications, things you’d pick up in a flash: soon they’ll start rejuvenations if you only had the cash… Cash cuts those who’d live forever from the rest as…