In High Summer
when flies walk upon my forearm hairs proprietorial as landlords and the land is ripe with roadkill extreme weather scenarios play out in real time climate diplomats gather but the plenary is beached - delegates cloyed as wasps in coulis we sit around the water table with an ashen thirst everybody wants to make a move but no one does like watching the bleaching of coral the only thing agreed on is that all this is unprecedented unprecedented rainfall here unprecedented temperatures there unprecedented use of the word unprecedented everywhere in high summer the deluge the canicule the conflagration ants grow fat grow wings buzz my ears we pick at the brittle wishbone of consensus wait for crows locusts to draw down the dusk with a dry calling We Are Green One winter’s day through condensation windows I mistook a withered gunnera leaf for a heron’s wing. Imagined the bird coiled, primal, waiting at the water. Months later, in the veiled sphere under a summer gunnera plant, I imagined myself small, deep in zoological realms below explosions of virid strong-stemmed leaves as wide as the sky, blush flower spikes pushing up and through. Today in seasons of indeterminate grey when squirrels do not know which page of the nut calendar we are on, it is the verdure I return to. I daydream of a kinder world. Daylight and rainfall elect a parliament of plants. An upper house of trees. We are green, enfranchised. XY (No Means No) X. Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain. Fred and Rose they quit town but left a nasty stain. That’s Fred West - more than a sex pest. Did unspeakable things in his dirty vest. Y. Cycling past the rape seed fields brings it all back. The yellow so vivid, you lying on your back. The yellow, the horror, you want to be home, but find yourself involuntary, prone. He seemed ok at first, he said he’d drop you back. The stony ground remains no aphrodisiac. You shut your eyes your demon’s back, slow, stupid in the sack. And No Means No involuntary lying on your back. Choose Your Own Mother (for Rhianydd Daniel) I have heard it said the yet unborn can choose their parents. A strange idea, this. Although we live in times when nothing is beyond belief. If it is true.. If it is true, I ask myself the reason I chose you. Indecisive as I am, and daresay was before my birth, there is a scenario in which I am at peace. Wherein, unborn, I somehow hear your singing voice. And from that time I have no choice. sand in your blood I remember when you scraped your leg on coral.. a rose rust bloomed raw under your skin..the sea was a blister the moon was a bruise.. all night your fever rose and fell..lava tides licked feral flames..sand in your blood Ad Astra Zee I am waiting for my blood to clot. Broad beans block green veins, velvet furred. I am ripe for it. One day my feet will be corms, shoehorned in stony ground. My soles are up for it. Hey Astra Zee! I want my second dose already. I am weary of this solid flesh my veins so unimpeded. Bring on the levelling dark. I am ready, pale horse for your clip-clop. For blood clots. Bolt, beauteous breathlessness! Bolt, cramping throbbing pain stampeded! the paranoia shop sells mini cctv for the home or handbag sells cctv any size you need hard-sells hard knuckle dusters and knives all shapes and sizes beyond imagination for your perfect tribulation they say carrying a knife puts you more at risk of a stabbing but the stab-proof vests are on offer today see the cute hand guns to fit your hand just so the paranoia shop nestled between Gaultier and Kenzo I love to window shop there It makes me feel so safe worm haiku exit wounds out of apples, soldiers, the worm out of one the bullet Perfect Bed I dream I am at Bembom Brothers Dreamland funfair park with Tracey Emin. Hard by Margate sands. I know I shouldn’t drink that Vodka on the Helter Skelter. Apart from that, a Day as Perfect as the Lou Reed song. We Kiss with Fish and Chips Lips, Join Hips. A Turner Sunset Going Down. I guess it is the Golden Hour. Blair’s Babes and even some of his men MP’s are busy Changing a whole heap of things for the Better. Back in your room we remember that we even Changed the Bed this morning. The linen soft and cool next to our Optimistic skin. (This poem has previously appeared online in iamb-wave seven) Going back I went back, and it looked the same. I was not expecting that. Expected the usual rash of New Builds, creeping up the hill. I went back, thinking it would all look smaller, like when I came back from America aged 19, and it seemed like the train home had shrunk in a B movie. I went back looking for what? The muddy lane where we skidded our scooters? The neighbour’s garden gnome one of us pushed in his pond? The Fish Caves, where we played explorers? Journey to the Centre of the Earth, or at least some way in to that disused tin mine. I went back, not to look for my Dad, just some of the places he used to take us. Halfway between morbid and curious. I went back to the old conker trees and the scraped knees. To the broken fence on Bishop’s Wood Road, where it said No Trespassing but my Dad said we’d be alright. I went back to the old quarry with the pond we thought was a lake. I’m channeling a half- remembered sense of comfort, danger. Somewhere between Teddy Bears and Teddy Boys. I went back to stacking boxes of seaside rock at Woolworths. Each stick had writing all the way through, persistent as memory. From up on the hill you can see it all. The only thing different is wind turbines out at sea, turning like time. I remember a school master who left. All of a sudden. The smell of that old classroom at the end of the dark corridor. Scuffed floor wax. Thanks Sylvia for the Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton Challenge You married Ted, slapped cobweb faced British poetry, long overdue Bio: Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope, wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. He has poems forthcoming in After..., Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn Anthology (Halloween). . @IvorDaniel
Fevers of the Mind 
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