All work copyright Alex Williams

 ALEX WILLIAMS

Distance

My distant cousin
lived in Japan as a Samurai princess
for a while, learning the black arts
of silence and aesthetics
until you would swear if you saw her
that she was no longer a girl
but maybe a new moon
or a shining facet of glass.

She loved a man who went to war
thinking himself a child of the sun.
But if so he was a lesser star
to be plucked by the fingers of a woken giant
and doused in the ocean,
where he did not sizzle, or scream.

She told me once that every breath
was in us already;
so, with the right tools
we could measure the distance of death
from the living.

Then she laughed and said
"you know that's nonsense, of course,
but what's the truth ever done for me?"

Now she walks in winter on a frozen lake;
and, reflecting the stillness of her loss,
the world spins under her for miles.
Her feet refuse to touch the surface
that has hardened over her flame.

 

Kat-o-nine-tails

I am not yet good at shaping the clay;
cold lava slithers on the wheel
merging knots of startled serpents.
With no tongues to hiss, neither can they plead.

Our leader does not like me. She says
"that work's a Katastrophe", "a Kataclysm"
"I should crack the Kat-o-nine-tails".
I am not my name. My nails
are sharp for her heart
but I do not spring.

After pottery class, I hide behind
in my silence. The art room flickers
in the shadow of fan blades. The walls
are covered in pictures: none are good,
some are nearlies, not quites, slips still
to be captured: a net snares one tusk
and tears. A cat glimpses the corner
of a dark cavern; I know that next
she will swallow the firefly.

I squint at the collage
of a steam train hurtling towards me. It is moving
under a mushroom cloud, or a hot air balloon.
I remember when they took me; my mother's lips
were quivering. I cannot remember what changed
in me. Here is the cleaved torso

of Adonis. He is stuck too
but they have made him golden. Here
he is as ubiquitous as an artist's mask,
or an amputated Venus in a cartoon museum.

My gaze lingers on the downs
of his chest. Through white bars
the moon is a silver smile in the sky
under star eyes. My fingers trace a path of light
across his breast. I feel them on his nipple;
mine stiffen. I spin around
but there is no one here.

 

Bradgate Park, England

These hills are the tip
of a dragon's tail; the coiled
stone scales of the Pennines
nest vipers that hiss under bracken.
Oak trees gnarl up at me like fists

as air washes green into a sky
of rags and split berries. I inhale rage
with a gentle breath, scent pine needles,
the sweet decay of oak leaves,
like the smell of skin glazed
over warming blood.

We will know each other
in the dark. Trust's root is slow
to slither into the cunt of earth.
It is not a wound, but knowing flesh;

night smoothes its grip as the snow owl
lifts like a shroud. There is moon
in the water. Was this forest the first
to feel a king's hand tense the nape

of the neck? An old drum
thrums echo on the skin under my feet.
She will receive me. There
is no need to push.

We are not in Kansas

Our masks wear us. Galaxies tango
as we clasp the hem of a whirling skirt.
Like garlands, my roles are gaudy trimmings

for a sacrifice. We cannot die,
we are always dying: even wallflowers
must arch through samsara like tricks of the light.

I blow-kiss pink clouds as we bow;
an upturned bowl of sun

spills from the edge of the stage
into a fat god's mouth. This place
is made of what isn't, what could be.

My inner Judy knows better than I,
she sighs each part away. Applause
fills with a hole. The serpent eyes its tail.

 

Flood

Why do you frown at two men
kissing? They are breaking god's laws
spoke in god's shrill voice that lisps
through crooked teeth.

 If I do not do her will
she'll whisper me to that place
with the must smell and the welts
on my legs too dark to comfort. Ah, I too

have a hell. In my dream there is nothing on the table
or in the cupboards. My neighbour laughs
through cigar smoke, my beehived wife
smiles at me too quickly.

Let men kiss, you old fool;
there is nothing in our heads
but lines of lies, tangled wires
and the sparking flesh of the dead.

Our mothers and fathers
were no better. But this blood
has been bled. Let men kiss
let them hug. Let there be a flood.

 

A young man deifies his first lover

I have seen too much to remember you
only as yourself, love. I picture you
as Plath asking Daddy, why did they murder
all those Jews? since you have always said
there's no gold without fire.

He orders you to wash your mouth, but soon
suggests you bleach your tongue and red hair
Aryan, although you never dare tell him (as I told
you) that a hungry flame scared your lips wide,
left your insides kettle black and charred
beyond scouring. Later we dare whisper

that early last century we cast our dice
from a mountain. They turned to stone
and gathered no moss. This mess is your doing:
now slip down snakes and think about what you've done,
and why towers are falling like bitten pricks, why the spring
of man rots into autumn, windfalls maggotty

as my jealousy. Did he come inside you?
Did he slide your seam loose and dip his furred heart
in the pit of a fountain? Why can I not love
you raped? Why are we so sharp and intimate?
And why do Christian children always say
we must never play at vampires?

Outside, cats are smashing each other like guitars
but there's no glamour in it these days. They keen their claws
on old rules. Now my Goddess is a thin smile,
the smell of disinfectant, and the kindness

of whores. For love, we plead. We did it all
for love, and will keep doing, just
as you did. We offer blood on the mountain
but forget to let you stay our hands. Respect for you

will dissolve into tenderness, though under rainbows
floodgates once closed like a sneer to passion.
The water will come again gently,
corn will bulge to be slaughtered, sun
will split itself endlessly red on our snow.

 

Forced conformity

He became one of them
for a while. Years later, dying,
he would walk on the beach under sun
and glare at the sea, saving shells
for their distinctness, this one mottled
like a freckle stirred into an iris.
It only hurts when you struggle

she would laugh, rubbing oil
into his sunburn. With your skin
you should stay in the shade.
She took him to meetings;
he was only curious
till her kiss sucked

and silenced his doubts for a while.
Seduction is a method used by agents
in the field. After he left,
the others would spit on him in the street.
He squints up sideways at heaven
now, but kindly, as if to say 'never
give yourself away'.

Selkie

With day submerged she drowns in gin
to wash away a sea sore man;
she sounds beneath the wake of past,
but brine can't quench a whalebone thirst.
She flees his mast

to float back home in song on dunes;
a lantern fish arcs through the gloom
and sheens skin silver, licks red strands:
anemone in flowing wind
on hourglass sands.

There's something moving on the sea,
by wave; numb eyed, salt whiff of bream
harpooned on whiskers testing air;
he shrugs by shore his selkie fur
and sleeks his hair.

His gaze is urchin, squid ink wet.
He finds his nets, relearning breath.
In star shoaled pool he seeks a lure,
and finds he is as fair as hooks -
his aims impure.

Her scent tugs his immortal line.
He fishes with a curved rod, smiles,
and trawls her tune, a frothy dirge -
her shining scales reflect the moon.
his hungers merge.

She scrys his surface: mammal grace.
The current draws her eyes to trace
his shape, sea walls brace tidal blood;
he whispers to her, strokes her depth,
a gentle flood.

She drifts with him, though once they taught her
in her school that underwater
love's white ray can sink in trenches,
angelfish may fall in traps
then gut on benches.

He drips in her body like a liquid clock,
her heart a dolphin's warning click;
chimera dives beneath the air;
in whirlpool climax live catch squirms.
Electric hair

will eel around his palace dome,
where hundreds more well picked wishbones
remind him now of sealed desires
as warm as meat, but these thoughts dim
like sinking fires.

Fair

I aim carefully and slapped tin pings in my ears like a bell.
The clouds are as pink as sin. I pay one dollar bill

so a shadow will spin them sweetly on a stick for me to kiss.
These fairs in the park are bumper cars that clash, then calm;

as stars fall in candyfloss they fizz. 

 

Recipe

Take the frozen tears of a plague angel
and melt them slowly into chocolate.
Taking care not to let the mixture curdle
you must stir gently but firmly
with the tail of a winged serpent
(here's one I stunned earlier).

Then mix the blood of a harpy
with flour made from pixie dust
till you have achieved the consistency
of manna - don't let it clot because
it will stiffen and crack
into fragments as black as

Azraels cloak, which should be used
to strain the chocolate tears
till you have a thin liquid
like negation ink, but sweet
as the mouth of Venus
(from which you will take saliva

for wine); now fashion the dough
into delicate shapes like
the sighs of autumn winds
when they whisper of their sufferings
through the fading colours of leaves.
Bake in love's oven,

then coat them with the sad
dark icing

and serve.

 

Song for those who now realise they are alone

Dripping on you
world of blood;

our lovers bones have turned to mud.
These crazy days your mother thinks,
sweet lemon pies lost cherry drinks.

 

My

home where angels curl their toes
and firelight is the sun's own glow -

choke it honey
a storm in your mouth
while mother cries
inside your house.

Everything shivers
you believe

the never never
joke made rage,

the furnace making
quick work of our page.

 

Millenium

Two hundred feet below the high rise, and soon,
the cars will loose their horns at everything.
Celine Dion offends the French with her Canadian accent -
she's there on the TV, in a dress like a mirror ball;
you are with me, sipping champagne.

We squeeze lemon juice onto oysters, who tremble
in their shells, pale by candle flame.
I am sipping flesh from a crescent moon.

The hours embrace, then expire without protest.
Your Italian blood sits in front of me, latte skinned
on tight North African curves,
gabbling syllables of aggressive harp music to your friends,
relieving me of silence and the need to speak
though sometimes I do, when you stop,
lean forwards on your elbows and explore
or we worry translations like meat caught in teeth.

Yesterday, Reims cathedral looked about to awaken -
encrusted with statues of the beatified
carved in stone the colour of dirty mustard,
their eyes watering with piety.
Now, at midnight, spirit blows through the walls

like a god cooling his food,
pulverising the shells around them.
Awakened, they must be sounding the horns,
or else it's city folks begging to be saved
from saint swords and angel tridents.

Our eyes flicker in time with the candle flame.
The door opens; metal reflects decor and digested skin.

The army of heaven can't believe that on this day, of all days,
we're having a dinner party, rather than praying,
or gouging out sin with a rusty apple corer.

I smile over my gateaux, tell them:
that's the trouble with the living,
but the living is good.

 

The surface will appear still

The tree is black wire
holding back a sky of infinite skin.
On an early autumn evening the streets are
glistening, like someone chewed up
a mirror, then licked glass dust outside the shadows
of the same route that takes me each day like a tide

I cannot pass the bridge without stopping,
and staring at the long, sharp funnel
that the stone banks make, like an artist's
example of perspective:

everything gets smaller
in the distance.

The swan moves like a shrinking torpedo,
a breeze ripples his growing wake
which I am lost in, remembering
when a friend asked me

'how would you describe
the ocean?' and I told him
that water closes over every wave,
so if you watch for long enough
the surface will appear still.

I have stared into the canal
for so long that I don't see the swans,
or rain on the street. No splashes or ripples,
just the tree, stronger and older than I,
and the sky bulging to rain

on the water that licks, smoothes us,
then chews us into motes
of dust and light.

 

Slip

Fragile seams
that bound spring seeds
have split.

Summer rose
whose bloom I chewed
still lingers with my spit

on thorn pricked lips,

so slick with blood
I let her slip.

 

Spider

Spider.

I am falling for a second as
it crosses the chasm between two old chairs,
as spare as skeletons under silk.

I study the bends, the strangling snaps
that hinge limbs. A pool of eyes.

There was a time
when I'd crush spiders
that strayed through my window,
leaving small mud stains
on maroon walls.

But reason is gossamer growing for years
in old corners, binding the cracks of my fear

of spindly legs tickling eyelids and lips
in my sleep, little prickling hands
quickly fingertipping to spin murder over my body
and in, and in, and in.

 

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