Embedded Files
The Vagabond Age
The Vagabond Age
1
1
The smoking farmhouse disappears.
2
2
Once I return to the milky village,
my teeth will be dust.
3
3
I leave behind a litter of parts.
There are no clouds.
Only the sound of boots on grass.
4
4
Afternoon.
My new mouth waters
along the banks of the Stour.
I'll walk so long they'll remove a bone.
5
5
The demonic scream severed my lobe.
No more leftovers or slavery
with a drum. No more
she said he said she said.
I comb the cornfield for a key.
6
6
The Beggar's Arms inspects
my clothes. A coat repaired
with gaffer tape. Blood
on the pale shirt-sleeves.
Can I afford your sisters?
Life is my best worst enemy.
7
7
A night in the woods
with moon-spittle for rain.
His breath creaks the trees.
I administer Salvia under wet leaves.
The black forest pins my throat.
Our sun is nowhere. Dead
behind my bed.
8
8
After morning, comes evening
and after midnight,
the dripping.
Villagers with coal for eyes.
This is the bend of the world.
Over the hill's nape,
fate squats like a bullfrog,
tongue unrolled.
9
9
A deathly town grows
in the valley. I harbour faith
like a holy convict.
Shadows drip across my slum.
There is nothing so young
as an idea: Go, wade
to the gulf of sensation.
I am too ignorant to be found
guilty of anything.
10
10
Mist over the rookery fields
at dawn. From my crest of salt
I hold a finger to the feeble sun.
The university spires line up
in arms like a watery painting
of promises.
Visions of toothless girls,
peeling off their ruby socks
linger, until one brown leaf falls.
An inflamation of the eye.
11
11
I will smoke the bone of this city.
A lava-flow of vanity
erupts from the stony building.
The torrents and the bliss of life
without hope.
Inside the lounge's din I glimmer
a question to the lady's arm.
Lady like a sweating room.
I am the ego of the light.
She fawns over
my untouched hearth all night.
12
12
Liberty under a lampshade.
Pictures of contorted men
adorn her tiny body.
She browns me a round
of toast. We sit on yellow chairs
at a wooden table.
Two glasses. The poison works
miracles. I am inside her heart,
watching the pumps.
My head is a red helium balloon.
I knew this face would disappear,
the further I fell from home.
13
13
Money. Elusive as untroubled sleep.
On the rosy street, the wealthy
cobble among us riff-raff.
My feet are so light I could hunt
a hunter. Mr Whoever
wanders out of the gloom
into my blue beam.
The scene is heated by fire
beneath our soles. Violence.
I steal his powdery essence.
Under the growl of failing bulbs,
white assassins split me open.
Left for dead and such a pleasure.
14
14
Waves of thunder snarl
over the husk of my lip.
I horizontally seep salt and oil.
The doubting hotel bolts its door.
Seven stars in the glass.
Seven candles in the basement
with leaky floors.
God speaks. I have no seal
on my forehead, God.
*
Peace blossoms in a flood.
The safe tappings of the woodcut
knock like homely birds.
There will be a bed in the trees,
and all life will flow from me.
15
15
The longest day warns us
not to creep away.
Under my poultice, a continent
of pus bubbles.
We must not fall asleep.
She gives me head by the window.
Morning shuffles like a tramp
on the vague pavement,
paper bag in fist.
Quidless, I chew my inner cheek
until the cerise instinct
bursts like a grape
over her lips.
Hope drips across the river.
Where we are newborn.
16
16
Our godhead parts the waves'
hair. Sally, sally, sally.
On deck, we watch young
limbs gladly float
in the carnal sea.
A slender girl at the harbour
smokes with endless legs.
Ineffable lust. The hornet
maddens inside my web.
*
Burning up like ravagers,
with kinetic eyes
we turncoat to taste the rising
metropolis, mouths enlarged
by unholiness.
Words are fluid in this
eternity. Reinvented.
17
17
Only delusions of euphoria.
Delusions!
The lice are feeding
on overripe rapture,
crumpled at our feet.
I dangled a carrot over the hole
of hell, unable to focus,
ridiculing piety.
She's been silent for weeks.
The heaving city taped
her beak. One last ball;
no wordless peak.
Elysia, crawl with your perfumes,
with your raw fish, back
to the lowlands. The riots
we birthed are almost fed.
Our waspish alchemy, lead.
18
18
This is the cold.
The last gasp of bohemia,
desperate to smother
reality with vowels.
My clang to arms wept
like a dulling beauty,
wolfed by thin air.
Arrogant as a killer,
I insist on more than blood,
more than gutteral prayer,
more than sedentary life
in the virgin's thimble.
Quaint as a fallen preacher
in the honeyed sun I melt,
all insolence burnt away.
One filthy joke lingers:
the saline century will tilt
after my trailing hands.
Benjamin Stainton was born in 1978. His poems have featured in Poetry Salzburg Review and The Journal and Carillon, amongst others. His debut collection, The Jealousies was published in 2008 by Bewrite Books. He currently lives in rural Suffolk.
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