Uncase providence,

this milky shell (vernix, nacre)

ate by mother wolves nourishes -

dictators born on borders

divide teeth in half, divide

braids from heads of little girls.

Don't say story, don't dance

to a tune.  Sad patriots

will be undone, will cling to

melting plastics of suburbia.

What blisters on soft hands.

Don't say soul, sacred, god,

don't say marriage, don't say love,

don't say unending happiness.

Walk in a straight line on broken ankles.

Complete the circle.

(c) 2007 JL Williams

Old man on the bus

hacks, coughs and

laughs at the baby's

chuckling glee -

what does he know

intimately

of this fresh view?

Diving in

to the sea again.

(c) 2007 JL Williams

He stands by the telephone.

The room large, empty, the floor marble.

Beyond an ornate door

a woman weeping for her youth, her lithe body.

A dog lying in the gravel of the long drive

bleeding.  His bright eyes going dull.

A wide lawn, a couple running out of the wood

laughing?  Calling?

Beyond them flecks of gold,

bells, darkness...

(c) 2007 JL Williams

An enemy of mine, his poem ended with his I Mussolini, this
not an unfamiliar image for a political poem.
We have seen this head before,
booted about, decapitated,
as vegetable poking from buried body's stem.

Had Hamlet said to be and not to...
Eliot said you are where you are,
my girl said (before she left)
I deserve to be loved,
my friend said, "Is this I you?
Are these your affairs?"
My priest said I have to stop lying
if I'm ever to get through confession.

That program about Sassoon, then
finding his book on Oxford Street,
even that boy's joke about the Circus
being a circus, I mean how beautiful
did he handle that one – he's more beautiful
than the original Finnegans Wake in the
Treasures Room of the British Library, his
lips as they described elephants, women
in sparkling bikinis on white horses, the
strong man and the tiny Chinese trapeze artists,
his crystal eyes that I could barely
stand for all their beauty – he said
it's because he's watched so many films the
films are in them.

Siegfried Sassoon the Soldier Poet, and
Betjeman with his ideas about Britain,
colonials' bitter in fire gutted pubs,
drowned men singing "Ashes" from the mines,
Scottish glut of distended mercantilism,
Oxbridge flunky spies moaning into
the pants of their discarded lovers,
"O Lawrence, o great green seething isle of
Pan's, Peter Pan's impossible youth,
impossible fame in this lifetime that
might extend, might never end (if we believe)..."

This surfeit of tragedy,
crevasse no brave captain's lunatic
shame can triumph,
white cliff onto which history
cannot get purchase,
that crumbles to dust in my hands,
that whitens damp skin.

And Sisson who said
"...there is neither slope nor sun can make
Amends for what I missed under your hands."
And Hughes who could not weep for all her tears,
and my broken hands,
and these amputated heads,
and death who all around me
offers no insight as to his
form or his face.

(c) 2007 JL Williams

Mother in a barrel of potatoes, small mother.

Against her staged horizon, Russia falls, old Wales.

Legions deteriorate as does film beneath acid tears,

the sun, time's magic erasing brush - dust

that she eats and breathes and prays with, mother.

Men approach from a branching ocean on horses.

Names, swords, coins - they cannot see as they

have shells on their eyes.  In their wake,

mines, wells, shadows.  Women braying and singing.

Children with naked bottoms and bottomless stomachs.

Teacher closes her mouth finally.

Mother catches the word that falls out,

plants it in Baby's ear.  Sea, sea...

(c) 2007 JL Williams

The flat sea,

chance encounter.

Glow on the horizon.

Here your call

can be heard from so far

I could never reach you.

I listen carefully

as the sun sets

the world on fire.

(c) 2007 JL Williams