Liam Ferney

Two poems

A Stolen Letter

you get this part right and pack all
your belongings into a battered brown suitcase
worming through the bathroom window
just before the clipboard agents show up to collect you
your best alphabet hovers over the hedge
like the smell of iconoclastic vegetables
composting underneath the kitchen window
the idealistic children of the first revolution
draw ledgers on their forefathers’ follies
uploading them to i-pods with declarative convictions
but dreams are as dreams are and just as suddenly
you’re on monday night nitro with the filthy animals
the necronomicon in the opposite corner
it’s time for its demons to say hello to my boomstick


Blonde on Blonde

enchanted by fisherman/ the sun
accelerates through the sky/ we dream
of villas & rearrange abandoned netting/
coarse cords/ trailed along the beach/
like human tissue/ boys throw frisbees
& footballs with doosra wrists/
seagulls ignore economies/ dive bombs
shattering jade panes/ nickel
& dime moments/ where you’re singing
for your supper/ or dancing to
amphetamine tunes/ psychosis takes over/
like a souvenir store novel/ grains of sand
wedged between the pages/ the big kahunas
who rule our waves/ the duke turns up
on our shores/ rough & ready/ like an auteur’s
first rape revenge video nasty / formulas can’t
advise it/ nine out of ten dentists don’t
recommend it/ the visionary writes/ his first novel
on postcards/ scratches haiku in taut sand/ motorcycles
chainsaw along the ridge/ rituals of holiday
& tide/ ain’t it hard to stumble/ when you’re
riffing like keith richards/ rejoice in the ocean/
when the junk blows across some driftwood/
or an errant seagull/ lifting on an updraught