NaPoWriMo 2005 drafts

[Rik]

There's eyes in the mist: azurite eyes
so light in hue they could leach the ice
from the tombs of the dead. They duck and turn,
sidle and blink, silking the balls
with a briny juice. Jack is on the hunt
for a hint of food - ferreting the grass
for beetles or worms, the wine of a berry
lost in the dirt, the debris of an autumn
long disappeared. The patient search
is soon rewarded with a splintered nut:
he claws the seed cleanly from the sod
and chases it across the chalk, stops it
with his arctic snout and snatches his teeth
on the chipped prize, chews and swallows.

Satisfied, he sits, skirting a tail
to cover his paws with its plume of fur.
He cocks his short ears to catch any sounds
announcing activity, tastes the noises
with his moist nose. Nothing seems to move -
apart from a creeping apron of frost
that bleeds through the ground, grinding the earth
that surrounds the form of the fox in white.

The moan, when it comes, causes alarm.
This is a new sound, and needs researching.
Jack scans the hill for a hint of the source,
locates it beside the stick where the two-limbs
go to learn madness. Not good, but he's hungry.
He stands and shakes, the snow in his pelt
spraying the tussocks. Timidly he steps
towards the oracle, each step judged
for any sign of attack, of danger.
None comes, and soon he sees the child
huddled in a ball, the huffs of her creels
muffled in limbs. He moves closer,
eager to sniff her for signs of food,
but she jerks her head just as he inches
too close to escape! With their stares interlocked
he sneezes a crystal cloud in her face.

Status: Untouched, awaiting redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

Benedict's his name for now
and maybe he can show us how
a leopard gets to change its spots -
unless it wants the church to rot.
Will contraception take a stand
against the plagues that waste our lands?
Will women celebrate the mass
in bishop's robes, or must the lass
be turned away: a bride of christ
no more, no less. The crowds rejoiced
when white smoke curled across the roof
of God's sweet home, and then the truth
revealed itself: you shook your hands
in victory, now come to brand
your whip into the heads of poor
and rich alike: I smell your spoor!

Status: Abandoned

[Rik]

Anthony Artichoke loved to eat honey:
he said that it tasted so wholesome and funny.
He bought a whole season of pollen and wax
and sat in his wagon to try and attract
a woman of taste and decorum, who
aspired to become a honeyhead too!
When cops found his bones at the end of the year,
his mummified corpse had a bee in its ear.
You folks should take heed of the lesson that's due -
Some honey is nice, but bees like it too.

Status: Abandoned

[Rik]

Look at the skull: the ribbons that plat
down from the bone; the mane of a horse
now stuck on a pole, now part of an act
to teach the peasants the holy lore.
Look at the skull: its eyes restored
with painted balls; its black teeth stacked
around the jaw like shovels; its hat
a wreath of straw and weeds torn
from the banks of the harvest fields. See
the clacking skull of the Hobby Horse.

Look at the head of the Tallyman, sat
on his pelt of tiger stripes; the course
of millennia scratched on his face in tracts
of weals and folds circling his jaw.
Look at the head of the man who forced
the woman in white to kneel, then tracked
his knife across her throat, who cracked
her veins to feed a sun reborn
in the morning of the new year. See
the head of the Tallyman, set on his course.

Look at this face - a man of clay:
he moistens his lips with his muddy tongue
and whistles a tune, a seductive play
of strokes and frictions and tensions unstrung.
Look at this face, the eyes now stung
with pain, with a grief so deep it lays
a net of cracks in his cheeks, it splays
his nostrils. He dreads your touch: the young
will use him, shape him. Kill him. See
the face of a man with a muddy tongue.

Status: Untouched, awaiting redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

Rubies in the mist: he makes no effort
to howl, or prowl; his hunting is conducted
by other means. He measures the lay
of his hill by smell, each stone and dip
a known aroma reaching his nostrils:
the salty shells of settled chalk;
the dull edges of disposed flints
buried beside abandoned camps
so long ago – though gauging the years
is not his concern, the night and the moon
and the next meal measure his existance.

And sometimes others exist for him.
The spread of the frost refreshes a memory
of a cold fox, too cunning to fear
his rushing charge, changing the air
to a wall of ice that even his glare
failed to shatter. He shakes his head,
a fret of drool dropping from his fang
and continues his search, testing each snout
of air for intruders trapped in the mists.

Status: Untouched, awaiting redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

Within the workshop:
Spring cleans the strophes, buffs the rhymes -
Sweat births the new poem.

A poet reviews:
The rush of the seasons cuts
Dialogue to mulch.

On the garden bench
A reader: precious as rain,
His lips barely move.

Status: Redrafting complete
Final version:

[Rik]

A hook on a line, a temptation, a bean
to lure the unwary. Go fishing, my bean!

This gift you have brought me - a jewel, a rose:
she'll dance in the moonlight to passionate dreams!

The greatest of mercies, my thumb on your cheek;
Your scent cuts my sinews, a potion unseen.

My old hands are cursed with the blood of bright hearts.
The old sun is dead: I must fashion it clean.

A knife has no purpose - it sits in the hand.
This Tallyman weeps at the gushing red stream.

Status: Untouched, awaiting redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

Your angularities are pinned
with cloth woven
in mauve. Plastic
tops and tails your limits,
my confinement. There
is no door: numbers
in sequences bar
my exit. In the distance
an oblong of budding leaves
tease me - look how we break
from our wood; look
how we swing in air,
each puff fresh! I hate
them. I hate the dry square
of hard silk patterns
that observes me,
the clicking blocks
that magic letter
after letter after
letter into my head;
the screaming ghost
beside me that whispers
when I cuddle it. They scare
me, and payday is another
sentence away.

Status: Undergoing redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

Rubies in the mist: he makes no effort
to howl, or prowl; his hunting is conducted
by other means. He measures the lay
of his hill by smell, each stone and dip
a known aroma reaching his nostrils:
the salty shells of settled chalk;
the dull edges of disposed flints
buried beside abandoned camps
so long ago - though gauging the years
is not his concern, the night and the moon
and the next meal measure his existence.

And sometimes others exist for him.
The spread of the frost refreshes a memory
of a cold fox, too cunning to fear
his rushing charge, changing the air
to a wall of ice that even his glare
failed to shatter. He shakes his head,
a fret of drool dropping from his fang
and continues his search, testing each snout
of air for intruders trapped in the mists.

When the fox sneezes, he freezes, stares
at the kaliedoscope ice enclosing a form.
A stick of a limb slapping the cloud
triggers his charge down the chalk path,
silent apart from the pounding thumps
of his pads on the track, his tail cracking
on the brittle arches of briar. He smiles,
exposing incisors, streaks of saliva
frothing his jaws, his fur. He jumps
and bounds closer, clattering rocks
adding their clinks to the aural chorus.
Now the prey screams, knocking the scales
of frost from the air with her flaying arms
and feet that can't grip the ground beneath her.
She rolls downhill, raking the grass
for a grip, a hold. He gallops to catch her,
his coal-dark coat no camoflage now
She can see the Grattack! Somehow she regains
her footing, and runs; flees down the hill
trusting her heels to hold her upright.
He leaps - and meets the lance midair!
It clatters his flank, furrowing his pelt
before falling away. He flips, his legs
paddling, gyrating, pulling him broadside
to land and face this unlooked for danger.



And wisdom leaches away. Knowledge
disappears, drained by the dance of words
that enter his ears and echo his skull:
he howls! He howls like a hoard of suns
dragged to the edge of abyssal holes
and ripped of their fires. He roars, baying
to escape the lip of the oubliette.

The rubies retreat, turn and dissolve.

Status: Untouched, awaiting redraft
Current version:

[Rik]

It's: finished; done; completed; closed.
The culmination stops. Demise
determines endings, last words
resolve and pass from issue: quit!

For NaPoWriMo is NoMo.

Status: Abandoned