We roll in an encyclopaedia of grasses –
flicked by a wind/ Your off-white blouse
is ripped open to burns [but not a hand
or eye] – enough has been imbibed – by
both of us – we filled before we left for a
walk over Firle/ No social distancing – or
other protective measures were taken in
our day’s exploration/ Idiots toss reams
of litter – they strew word of McDonalds
across a seen-it-all tumuli/ I bend – help
you up/ My eyes ache from map reading
& staring at you/ We revert to hill walking
Tag: beauty
Going Native
For S.L.
I can see you on that island/
You’ve no eyed connections
to newscasts or family ires/
Besort as a neolithic settler/
Greater lightness in solitude
will mark your return to auld
ways – to pull you to undress
[& be stripped away]/ Let me
find you under lordly clouds/
It would be so worth crossing
crested water with grumbled
descants off a [breeze-burnt]
ferry-man… I see she’s gone a
wee bit odd.. Aye it’s isle-fever
& it’ll only go by frostbite’s nip
..Is she a close friend?.. You’ll
get close.. as a bawhair.. Aye!
[& other lewd remarks about
your naked ways are so cast]
as his rusted craft stammers
into slamming waves – I’ll not
respond – I’ll hold to my word
[borne in my light backpack]/
There’ll be only one question –
Is there enough space [in your
borrowed bothy] for me to set
out my now-removed clothes?
Also on Medium
Once More
There is such scant chance
of any long term escape
from your rusting suffixes
now all time is in a half-light
since your last offered dance
to your half-known songs
of romance –
you unstitched their looped lyrics
in your head
Love is not found in white lines
or knocked on hotel doors
or where an hour is charged
at exorbitant fuck-me rates
as underwear is slipped down
and another breath is felt hot
through a nipple-bitten-minute
of house rule-settings
before a stiff affirmation
of your being so beautiful –
that feckless gauge of worth
which has been set
by years of dressing downs
within your three-way coven –
they fucked you up
and left you to look – still looking –
for more than them
This Effect of You
To J.S.
It is now measurable –
this effect of you –
by improved
qualities across my skin
You are layer-healing
a soft fixer of
my ripped tiers
and light filler of erosions
You are still as radiant
when back-lit
by another day’s sun
as you run to me
Across you
my dared fingers scan
with ten eyes more
than first had looked
This is our skin tale
of with in and with on
Our time teases us
by obligated constraints
Record it in a diary of sorts –
typeset in italic recall
Dance for me
and my eyes will join in
Below Victoria
For J
A loosened thought
was unexpectedly set adrift
like a sea-wetted sandal
sucked into whisked white foam
off foolish seventh wave treaders –
those salt-splashed day trippers –
as my viewfinder caught you blown
and turning to me – iso-fixed
in my camera as it framed that
installation under which you stood
You as my suddenly important art
buffeted upright below an artist’s
weather-required turned response
My portrait of beauty in Brighton
Takeaways
How shall I study
your offered body?
With intimate sight
through my fingertips
I shall measure your
almost-bare prospect
as a blinded map maker
set to plotting contours
Such thoughts ease
into my half-dreams
Each stroke takes me
by pathways on dips
then up to almost-chalk
landscapes of Downs –
stretched before slept travel
Before sleep’s other sights
A Common Spotted Orchid
For JC
It is a highly successful
coloniser of wasteland
and not at all in danger
Both my Google Lens
and a quickie Wikipedia
yielded to your knowledge
Just an assurance of such –
there was no doubt in my mind
that you were right – none at all!
Seeing such beauty has an effect –
How can a thing so vivacious
be left – without being taken?
An uncommon allure
among easy rough grass –
there is more to this orchid
Such observations ran quick
as my eyes and mind
took you – assiduously –
from behind
Walking Out
I turned to see you stood on your
corner plot of weeds-not-grass –
kind people call it a sedum lawn –
with caresses of your bared skin
as mementoes to assay at home
My creased shirt was a banner
with two words – SLEPT OVER –
embossed in an uppercase font
No drugs required to lift my feet
from that drunken drag – my dance
down your road was pain-free
Summer Solstice
I can guarantee
that at three-AM
on our longest day
there was daylight
over your roofline
as if everything fixed
has now seen shift
by a few degrees
to turn my horizon
to a lambent view
First Notes
There is a cool stubbornness
about you – it is quite fanciable
Life is not getting in your way
or going to bring you down
No house of cards – no others’
disturbances will take you
There is a surety in your eyes
You hest me – you have my revere
Gaddy
Constance Mary Sad – Baker – Clark –
also known as Gaddy –
pranced
through Europe’s dared-to
decadence
finding her feet
in those wide-flared seventies
in every kind of ballroom competition
Come dance with me!
Len called –
a nine scored five times
by a sweet Devon girl
who once graced low tides on
Braunton Sands
In the Eye
Women slip from winsome
under their senescent faces –
their hands steal the looks
off youth’s eyed-embraces –
They pleasure in pastimes
of tease-tricks and flirts –
they command your heart –
their hard rules will subvert
I want to reach out
and trace your lined beauty –
of furrows and laugh lines
worn freely at forty
I will kiss your eyelids
of stitch-tightened skin –
because here is your beauty –
it is still within
Beautiful
She sat at our table
placemats squared
like her stubborn
kissed chin
with a darkened mole
on her stage-right cheek
she never meant to
say so very much
’bout maternal dis-possessions
which is our shared
inheritance
but the problem is halved.
Bikini
It was a photo
(they no longer
curl or crack,
these moments
captured, now
kept immaculate).
focus-wrong,
but I knew,
recognising your
bared bones,
and in that posture,
comport
from below,
I knew that moment,
which was yours,
chromatic.
Bikini
It was a photo
[they no longer
curl or crack,
these moments
captured – now
kept immaculate] –
focus-wrong –
but I knew –
recognising your
bared bones –
and in that posture
odd-comport
from below –
I knew that moment –
which was yours –
ugly – chromatic
Seconds
She was born to slight
ordinariness,
which was also pretty,
confusing attraction
in those seeing her:
quickly dismissed
with repeat regard
of her plain features,
tricking the eyes
which briefly admired her,
until seeing her.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 