Dandelions and Darkness
I
Piss-a-beds, the kids' curse chanted, seven years
bound in its ball. Of rhyme. That someone hurled,
anonymous, hard at me bouncing on chalk-mapped gravel.
Dark unstoppable ball. Backyard weed. With burdock,
that I guzzled at, sticky lipped forefigure
of brown bitter, gripped tight in adult hands.
Grey-white puffball heads, indeterminate clouds
choking an English sky, that startled in ink-swarms
like static. That buzzed, my thoughts, globe-headed
tally-sticks posed in the hands of the BBC.
II
With a little breath's help, as spores climb, dip,
broad-beams crawl on North Atlantic swells.
With a little breath broadcast on new-settled land,
rigging networks of soil-filament while mugweed
and shepherd's purse and couchgrass stock supplant
the herd-plains of indigenes. Meat-factors multiply
on four feet: pig, cow, sheep. A little breath,
natural, random lore, ignites at the speed of fear,
as a ball caught off-balance leans me over
back into my skull and darkness and histories.
III
For seven years, a perfect number, to irrigate
irritant cold rubber. For what cause? For seven years,
nurtured on unnatural terms, sentenced, stinging
like urine, to adult bitter preserves, fears.
That come down now, easy as the rain plays,
random as words of law.
Ball of darkness gathered,
fuzzed electron cloud, and a thin stalk, some cause,
pushed from earth-mother, a forcing on small seed,
bristle weighted, cargoed with curses and years.
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
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