Kirkstall Abbey.

I step around some feathers and stuff
Where a feral cat has scragged a bird-
One of those pigeons that roost up high
On the weeping walls of Kirkstall Abbey.

Damn, but when the summer comes
And the girls in shorts and halter tops
Walk through what is a public park
With their little babies in their strollers,

This place might be jolly. It isn't now
For the sky is an undifferentiated
Grey and the wrong that Harry the king did
Breathes from the stones. Along this cloister

The brothers filed with their rheumatiz
And their aching teeth and every three hours
Had paradise inflicted on them
In song. Really, I'm glad it's all over-

The rule of churchmen. I only regret
How it happened and how their treasure went
On sweeteners and guns. O, Juno Februa,
Goddess of fevers, including sex,

Turn my mind elsewhere. Your month hurts
But mainly from yearning, mainly with longing
For change. The crocus, your purple crocus,
Peeks like a clitoris from the rough.



Kirkstall Abbey is just outside Leeds in South Yorkshire. Like all the English monasteries it was shut down (and looted) by Henry VIII.

Sis

When hair first grew between my thighs
I'd tuck my genitals out of sight
And take a look in the full-length mirror
At Sis, my twin, her long hair wound up
In shawl or turban.

We'd not been apart
Till then.

She left home shortly after
For Egypt- where she lifts the dead
Gently out of their holes in the earth
And drinks expresso, molto expresso,
And lives on her nerves.

She takes less shit
Than I will and her messages
Are sharp and piney.

I haven't affected
The full-length mirror much since she split.

But when I do I notice how
The lines are softening. However priapic
Or cunnilingual we are, we tend
To the ending of sex. Old men and women:
Dress 'em in bed clothes, mix 'em together,
Then say which is which.

But there's this as well;
The older I get, the closer I get
To her shamelessness, to her spit-cat wit.
Polish the timber and shine up the handles-
My scapegrace sister is coming home.