c o n f o n t a t i o n * a n d * c o n s o l a t i o n (wolf part fourteen)

In a moment life can change

A million possibilities

Created by thought and leisured inaction

Are ripped away into but one furrow

And even the concept of possibility

Is made redundant by

The ever present certainty of

The ever present present

Its happening

Its happening now

Wolf wakes, scent-warning, nose-burning,

Fight or flight, this my mate,

You are carcass walking

You are the to-be-shredded

The under-pup who becomes food,

Carcass walking

Leave or Die

Now.

Ardent sees he must attack

Brandishes harpoon and ice axe

Crouches, focussed, makes advance

Knows he doesn’t stand a chance

Romantic fool, you chose to die

In foreign field, under grey sky ?

You think it right ? It is obscene

To die before your love, your Queen

You march to death O best of men ?

What use to any are you then ?

Heroic couplets are no use

Pissing in fear to fill your boots

All flashes before him

He makes a grab and

Picks up snow trodden pelt

In an instant it is done.

From torpor risen

Unexpected guest arrives

 

Unbidden, belov’d

Thinks of springs new buds

Perhaps a summer queen again

Still now, lust pauses

Sheer delight, then fear,

A dread finale opens

No time for straight thoughts

This is no true choice

Made on the wind with cast bones

Mind alert for signs

This is confusion

Witch’s hardness cuts through all

Her wand comes to hand

Ardent puts on pelt

She flinches at old magic

White wolf now gainst grey

A frozen moment of dagger time

Then its teeth against teeth

Throat to throat

Claw paws belly raking

Seeking to disembowel.

Their lover, aghast

Sees fountains of red

Roschach the surrounding snow

Into the direst runes.

No winners here

This is hel’s gate.

But woman’s hardness cuts through all

Wand raised as if to blast all

Such power

Unused for ages

Crackles into life

In an unpleasance of overfamilarity.

All is now doubt

Two wolves sense a seismic shift

And cease combat. And quail.

Wolf speaks first,

A more refined ferocity

Pack mother chose now so we may hunt

and eat the defeated.

Quite a speech for him

But Ardent wolf added no more

To this stark and feral eloquence

The agony of choice

No longer pure, overwhelmed

Wildfire burns in rage

We wait a lifetime

No choices suit one and all

Statues in the snow.

Wounds ache, heartstrings ache,

Elements of compromise ?

Ardent wolf growling

In ancient lands, still strange to me

Their exists a mystery

Orpheus and Eurydice.

She had two husbands

If I recall,

One for summer

One for fall

Wolf sits in on haunches

Hunting and mating here is good

Hunting and mating there is good

And, thinking the deal done,

Licks his wounds

And ignores the others

He is alive

That is ,at least, a result.

You two dare share me ?

Crows settle on palace roof

Hoping for mayhem.

 

She too considers

Reaches her own conclusion

Shows cunning and love

Wand burns with purpose

Old wilder hearts may quake now

 I make my own luck

Daring her wyrd skill

She combines two souls two skins

As one before her

Instinct and ferocity

Romance and politesse

A beast with a poet’s imagination

You tell me if she did wrong.

Shaken, and also deeply stirred

The Ardent Shackleton mark two

Adjusting instinctively,

to his role as spokesperson

asks of her , with clear blue eyes,

You saved us, my love,  why ?

And she whom he could now call again his Jenny

Smiled a summer’s smile

But with a few tears and said

I had many letters from your sister,

A little wild, but sweet ,precise

Saddened by our first defeat,

Asked after me, and my lands,

How things prospered here with me

My favourite dress, what I thought nice

Talked to me as a sister might

And I missed what I had not got

So Ardent Wolf, your Shackle’s gone

Will you now take me as a wife ?

No longer half the world away

And twice the man he’d ever been

Ardent Wolf as pirate prowls

And brings back treasures for his Queen.

w o l f * and *q u e e n (wolf part thirteen)

After a winter

Of endless loveless fucking

The queen had relaxed

Got her own measure

And like some alcoholic

In pure denial

Thought that just one more

Would still her bitter longings

And bring composure

And whilst thus engaged

A measure of balance was kept

But after, boredom.

Poetry :boredom ?

But always fiercely alive

When fully on heat

She liked variety

Wolf , within limits, obliged

But as afters ? Sleep.

Instinct kept him on

Desire for death kept her on:

Deathly couplings.

Neither dared mention

An old pelt, whitened with age

Used as doormat now.

 

Blood crack, tooth crack, tongue and gristle roll and loll, dragging in passion a recumbent rag doll to another utter ravishment and besmirching. Mate hard, sleep, all good. Stretch and kvetch, teeth nip and tease, you’d think the cold would kill my fleas, take large bits, is spurred on by choice words, and patterns of speech that went way above wolf’s head,. That felt good ,and that, pumping as if there is no tomorrow. sleeps. Wakes with paws bound, ridden by triumphal witch, shudders in prisoner’s ecstatic and whipped release. Good, sleeps, wakes free, Hunts. full belly. sleeps   , drags witch into the snow by her elflocked and matted hair. Does the nasty ,nastily  .Is that all you got, lover boy, she murmurs dreamily , stroking him afterwards. Wolf sulks and sleeps else-where. Wakes abound again with riding queen once again astride..this time, green eyes fixing his, ensuring he’s properly cowed. Waits till she finishes. A satisfied mate. Quite good. She still wants to own him. Pointless Pointless Pointless. Sleeps, wakes free. Hunts. Fucks, Sleeps. Hunts ,Ambushes and attacks..then fucks .Sleeps:  the perfect cycle. Perfect ferocity and no wasted time for idle talk: such a human pile of hhhoooowwwllll..no fuckinng word for it in your two legged abstract bastard language,,,come here and makefuck fuckmate with me…fuck with me now, good and first fuckmate… now. Good. Howlll..gooderer….howlll… goodest .Strange wind smell. Strange faint-footfall  ALERT.

a r d e n t * r e t u n s (wolf part twelve)

Sleak lines low against the water

Cutting through the waves by sheer impatient velocity

Rather than waste precious seconds

ascending and descending each feathered crest in safety,

Black Sheep the second

Smuggler and Pirate cutter

(our protagonist’s guilty secret

watch this space

he may have more)

Raced icewards as if the devil drove

Which in a sense, she did.

This ship of iron will and hopeless chance

Cut through the leagues

As does a perfect butcher’s knife

Through the flesh of the formerly alive.

Spend your hiring fee now

The fur clad captain had cried

 

To a flint faced and desperadoed crew,

We may not make port here again.

This lifetime.

No one flinched or fled

Respecting fatal flaws

In others and their fellows

All Conspired in one last act

this final bloody heartfelt pact

Balloon spinnaker in a gale ?

Soon ripped away,

Foretopsails too,

Crew all too crazed

To mourn good Bristol canvas

He’s bloody mad .

They laughed as the Black Sheep

Bucked and tore and spat her scorn

At the mere elements

Who tried to slow her down.

And before the seaweeded sea priest

Cider soaked Cyclops of a ship’s Chaplain

had finished reading them all the book of Genesis,

aloud on deck in midst of storm

in desert prophet madness

(Pointless but utterly au fait)

Ragged sails had dropped, sea anchors had rattled down

And a rowlock creaking rowboat

With one aboard

Headed for

What had been called

In time before

Ardent’s landing

In hearts-cease sound.

Forced march where once had welcomes been

Iced knives instead of soft snow drifts

On and on in barren land

Ardent trudges sees the shifts

Furious at frost felled forests

Rages as no reindeer range

Thinks she’s left, now he’s the poorest

Person in this icy place.

Comes to where she had her dwelling

Thinks suicide may be a plan

But then a wind blown vocal fragment

Catches him and holds his hand

Opens gates, from misuse idle

Walks in as hopeful penitent

His heart’s now contract free, no riders

But pauses by her fear frosted tent

What sounds within, what sounds indeed

Some other servicing her needs ?

Some other lover from the snows ?

Full on despair, and turns and goes

I’ve come so far, crossed half a world

Lets give the dice just one more whirl

And with no one to guard his back

Ardent walks in to attack

w o l f * r e t u r n s (wolf part eleven)

Skin still scarred and flecked

Oblivious to all else

He stands before her

Unbedraggled

Foul and unrepentant

Steaming in the cold

Yellow eyes raven

Glaciers and tundra disappear,

Only two pairs of eyes.

Mind tut-tuts, elsewhere

Here is the best distraction

Both Styx and Lethe.

If you behave I …

Words implode as wet snow melts

Wildfire burns again.

Loins, jaws, lips and tongue

Alert, as all their world goes rogue

All dials switch to ten

No pause to regret

Paws and hands grasp the instant

Wild consummation

Later, flesh sated

Her mind grapples with remorse

And is beaten down

Attempting to find

Dark poetry in their acts

She see just instinct

No tears are allowed

Just fill each passing moment

Healing may come yet.

w i t c h * a l o n e (wolf part ten)

By firelight now we tell the tales

Unsuited for the cheering sun

The flash and flicker of the flames

bring on the fey ,the mad, half done.

The half seen faces round the hearth

Half believe what I relate

The time when she forgot her path

And fought the fickle spear of fate.

She thought that solitude would cure

Her wild need for her chosen mate

Who had sung such sweet songs and lured

Her heart outside its frozen gate

He sung sweet songs, her hips he swayed,

And split soft smiles at her display

Saw through her sometimes, made her smile

And always went that extra mile

She damned soft fools from warmer lands

Thus, heated, cursed herself one too

For losing touch with ice cold plans

And letting love turn one to two.

A bitter harvest brought she in

Remorse, regret, unacted sin

Flayed mind and heart, an unfilled cleft

She misremembered why he’d left

Her power became her all once more

Spread ice born fear by blizzard’s roar

Damned Love has no place in my snow,

You dwell on hope ? she sneered, so go.

 

False pride she felt when all had gone,,

Fleeing her in search of sun

So sunless winter onward rolled

And her heart grew still and cold

Spruce saplings cracked, surrendered life

Moss froze hard ,so reindeer shunned

Her lands ,and left her in such splintered strife

Till in her palace, she was but one.

No dialogue escaped  this veil

To witness winter’s wicked gales

Alone and proud, erect unstained

Alone she sat, alone she reigned

Safe in her rage, beyond reproof

She stayed alone till…enter Wolf.

d i s t r a c t i o n s (wolf part nine)

Ardent again,

Bereft, alone,

yet still skilled,

He found some small part within

That kept despair at bay:

Called upon himself to occupy

These dark spaces with activity,

Hacking at his dead heartwood

with work’s numbing hatchett.

Became an actor first,

Then ran a troop,

 

Became happy in some odd state

Everyday a different place

No time to sit and cogitate

Roll up Roll up

Roll out roll down

One night here

Then another town

Telling himself he did not see

Her face in hay-bales, country lanes

In green of barley, fields or trees:

As summer heat fought icy pain.

Once in Awre, near Blakeney

( that place where the old Severn River

washed up bodies of the drowned:

salmon fishers, deceased

searchers for sturgeon,

Allis shad and grey mullet)

The river wind blew so cold

That a farmer’s wife took pity

Took all the actors to her kitchen,

And fed them all: (no mean feat),

Venison and pheasant stew,

home made cider poured from old oak,

and afters too, baked apples

Maisemore picked sweet pippins.

A wood fire blazed

With three year seasoned wood,

A dry heat that invited

Deeper thoughts than of mere pennies taken at the door.

Warm actors dozed at kitchen’s station

Wrapt in blissful cogitation.

After this moment of perfect time

Of flickering firelit frozen time

Perfect to all, the soubrette spoke

This is heaven , we’re cleansed of sins

All laughed, in hope ‘twas not a joke

But Ardent felt again that wind

Blown from half a world away

And thought

She is only half a world away,

Only half a world away.

f i r s t * s i g h t (wolf part eight and half)

Warming up mind and fingers

For another expedition

Into the dark woods

In search of Wolf

Makes lists of necessaries:

Chocolate, notebook and pens

(Pens plural, there’s always one that gets away

and leaves one’s inspiration as a fading memory,

there’s always one that gets away)

Map and compass

Fresh tea flasked

And most of all

Some clear time

I Started with a gentle stroll

Across some known ground:

The day so far,

Turning scrutiny in on itself

To recollect what I might have missed

Passing through at some speed.

No clear time today

All is fogged and cloaked,

A drab blanket wraps us all,

Not a spur for adventure,

But an enticement

To good books

Good coffee ( a recurring theme)

And chestnutted teacake roasting fires,

While low clouds hide the tops,

Stinchcombe hill, Uley Bury,

They vanish into their own wood’s mystery,

And all becomes possible again.

Will Hetty Pegler’s Tump

Spew forth her shades today ?

As ancient history,

Seeing the coast is clear of mortal walkers

Stretches old bones

And has a gentle moan and rattle.

Those of us who love the place

Feel a shiver of disgrace

As knowing what we missed today

We stay inside, forget to play.

I feel a witchwind was the cause,

must have blown all night

Then stopped, leaving us wrapped

In our own mysteries,

Closer to us now

Than in days of sunlight and clear skies

This is a day for ghost stories at noon

For visiting old curiousity shops

For sitting, owl still, in one’s loft

And bidding welcome to misty travellers

Who were blown here

Perhaps a century ago

And have need of conversation,

And the warmth from living bones.

Old brick and timbered farmhouse ?

Beyond Dave Bick’s chicken farm,

Up the lane ?

Not all can see it I’ve been told

But now I see it from the road

and yellow candlelight spills from windows

Even in today’s mid day

Especially on this misty day:

Earnest, in the parlour,

Writes seriously of polar bears and skull dimensions.

 

Ardent skulks and contemplates a verse

Or perhaps a lady he once knew,

Irritating the new help

By his lack of  improper attention.

I was told, she said, I was told he would

But he doesn’t, preoccupied

Alacrity, dutch cloaked against the fog

And sabotted against the ubiquitous mud,

Scurries up the slope behind the farm

On some mission,

Only known to herself

Hidden even from me,

Involving eggs and butter

And also perhaps a letter

To be posted out of sheer goodwill

And youthful brio

Addressed to

The Queen,

The Frozen wastes

Far far away

From Alacrity Shackleton, Miss, aged 9

Tell me about the trees and bears

Tell me about about the ice

Tell me of the your palace feasts

What is bad and what is nice

Tell me of your caribou,

Tell me all O please please do,

Tell me about the seals and whales

And what’s a fluke and what’s a tail

Tell me what its like to rule

And tell me all your good and bad

What icy fishes swim in your pools

And tell me why my brother’s sad ?

Dark woods approached

And an imagining achieves

Written proof of her existence..

I mark the farmhouse on the map  for future reference,

And , caught up again

In self referential reverie,

Bump into, at lane’s end

and nearly send flying

The hurrying  and scurrying

Alacrity Shackleton.

Picks her up ,apologises

And hearing her tale,

Solemnly agree

To post her letter in town.

Thus contracted by a child’s innocence,

She disappears back into her foggy keep

And I, bemused,

Hold in my hand

A concrete letter

From a dream’s bit player.

You now have read it too.

Unconscionable voyeurs ,we

To spy on a child’s curiousity

Mist still here

And the leaves fall

Thoughts wind back, and let me say

This is how Albion is today

c u b s (wolf part eight)

The law nowhere states

That mercy is a virtue

So these cubs break no law

But plenty of bones

Some instinct, fair or foul,

Keeps them as a pack,

And none of them

Get eaten

Or so they tell me

Fleeing parental difficulties

Taking on whichever form

Gave best protection

And access to food

They left the icelands

And come to human

Habitations

On the frontiers

Between wilderness

And civilisation

Between man and myth

 

They appeared

Agog and curious

These edgelands

Inhabited by

Pioneers, plucky whores,

Prospectors and gamblers,

Trappers and the already half-mad,

Welcomed these

Narrow eyed precise intruders

Recognised useful skills

To be used and shared:

Getting the odds in a fight

Even before it started,

Finding things

like buried bodies,

and game trails

in times of scarcity

and where a man might hide

The Ace of Spades or Hearts.

Or his quick and mean-minded

Spitter of death.

The musky smell passed unnoticed.

The girls stuck together

Went unmolested for a reason.

Miklosh the tanner, drunk

Grabbed Dana by the waist,

And was found the next day

With his legs all bloodied

And his privates missing

His poor bloodied throat,

A forensic jigsaw puzzle.

Dana’s dog was blamed,

A few days passed

And her brother took over the tannery.

Time passed

Gossip said that Mary Turk

Who took money and rolled tricks

For all the drunkest and most violent of men,

(Which took talent and a certain inclination,

It was whispered in admiration)

Was smitten with one of this tribe.

She walked proud with bruises,

And red welts

Proudly wearing her love tokens:

Was hauled in by the sheriff

As a reluctant civic duty

And was slapped  full in the face.

He is savage, Mary screamed,

and you are a tin bucket of lukewarm pisswater.

Thrown in gaol for that,

She was freed in the small hours

When sweet savage lover boy

Had a chat with the sheriff,

And then chewed him out.

Took on the Sheriff’s job,

When the previous incumbent

Proved absent,

dead

and very chewed

No one crossed this tribe

And in time

Some brave folk even mated with them

And produced more cubs,

Risking daughters

Or sons

To stay on the winning team.

Some cubs switched

Some didn’t

Some were kept in kennels out back

And treated as one of the family

Which of course

They were.

Generations followed and still do

Beyond the timespan of this tale

A male alone or female pack

Is how they may appear to you.

All had a look that men and women ,

Not carrying the blood of Wolf and Queen,

 

Recognised instantly,

Though some ran a mile,

Or threw sharp and heavy objects,

Some uselessly blessed,

By holy men in dresses

Some ignored what others said

And took these creatures to their bed,

Some ignored what other’s said

And took these wolves to their sweet beds,

Always extreme, beyond mere fun,

So dear reader, have you had one ?

d i s a s t e r (wolf part seven)

All of this caught her unawares

To one who had learned lust from a wolf

This time of romance and verse

And studied clean living

Albeit with more than a soupcon

Of puckish mischief

Batted her headstrong heedlessness

Between heaven and heartache

Within seconds so it seemed

She was breathless and giddy

As if no one had ever doted before.

She learned that love

Lives in the heart

Not just the loins

And while one alone was good

The two together split her world

Into untold multitudes of snowflakes

Each one an infinite world

Each one a perfect world

Each a playground

Of possibilities

And pure delight.

When she walked on snow

No footprints made

And when she danced on ice

A blizzard of delight

Spun orbits

Of icy rainbows

Prismed

By love

And sealed

With tenderness

A week was this ? A month ?

Her heartrush headspeed

Wants to see this land

That spawned such a one

Who could ascend her glaciers

And melt them complety:

Rock hopping dryly over

Meltwater torrents

Then heart and headlonging down

New summery grassy slopes

Into a tumble of white silk

And loving storm black locks

Of storm black locks.

What she felt,

Shorthand adds

In vital footnotes to this enterprise,

Ardent felt too,

And though he seemed to lead the dance

Was prisoner of the measure too.

Asked for her hand in marriage,

Nonplussed for one brief moment

And , anthropologically and politically correct,

 

Explained the concept to his wild bride

Who listened, understood

And yessed him once again to bed

To England to the Parish Church he said

Hardwick, south of Gloucester

North of the Vale of Berkley

Green and lush

A different colour palate.

Departure day came

Preparations made,

Expectant of fruition

Matelots and stevedores

Clucked and fussed

Like hens over chicks

Around the fresh careened Black Sheep.

Joy apparent

Yet sudden apprehension

One queenly step into the longboat

And one small ripple

Make her whole world rock.

No ice to support her

Just devouring water

And magic slips away

The witch’s strength

Turns to nought

And she feels it

As a hot iron

On her palms.

She screams

The world stops.

My Power My World Where am I Now

Realisation comes

Her power is ice

She cannot leave

She loves oh how she loves

But this was not the bargain

Damn her heart and loins

This will not go

Go she screams

Regaining the shore

Confidence and Power return in a flash.

Tempter, Vile Betrayer ,Go

Take from me that which I hold most dear.

Believe me when I say

I want you gone

I have no manners as you know

I am wolf in land of snow

And you are now becoming prey

So listen carefully, Ardent as I say

Go no now before I break and die

I will not surrender to your soft sky

So leave , forget me while you  may

And no more words durst any speak

The Black sheep sails upon the deep