surprised by a mermaid

if you were to touch me now

without warning

and while I am unprepared

if you were to slip up beneath me

submerged

and make unexpected contact

I would shiver

and recoil

and shake your hand from my clammy shoulder

and offer some guttural rejection

caught in a throat full of sea

and

I would shudder under your grey fingers

I who did not see you approach

and am unused to the approach

of any other

and especially of a one such as you

at this time of day

alone

and naked

and unaware

caught in the anger of the sea

fretting in this mighty undertow

if you were to touch me now

without warning

while I am unprepared

but

if you were to touch me

now

having given me this moment‘s pause

and now knowing what I now know

of this dry earth and its dead dust

I would gracefully

sink into the ocean of your arms

float on the soft spume of your briny breath

swim into the abyss of your wide-eyed words

hide under the swell of your limpid breasts

moor myself to the holdfast strands

of your sargasso hair

Chris reading Surprised By A Mermaid

Surprised By A Mermaid now appears in The Wrting Garden - Issue 8

Dragon in the City

She looks to nest

in the trees above the park

and waits till sunrise gilds

her scaly breast
then spreads her wings

to catch the dewy air –

her gulping flight to

breakfast on the green.

But there is flummox in the folk

that stare below

they bring stones and sticks

and washing props and rakes

and fling them high to

break her from the sky

reckless of her safety

and their own.

But sweeping all their

brutish jibes aside

she saddles once again

the florid air

and rides the gathering thermals to the sky

until these ants below have slaked their fear.

And she, now

grey with age,

flees once more

to the lonely

place where she can live in peace

the mists of myth.

Other Urban Faeries...

Mysterious Stark

The Pigeon Whisperer

Mysterious Stark

Another imagined urban faerie...

Behind the

cold, grey

concrete stairs

in the corner of the lowest of ground floors

in this

multi-storey

car park,

is a dark

and mouldy

den.

In the den,

so dark and mouldy,

that lies behind

the cold, grey

concrete

stairs,

is a gathering together

of leaves

and crisp packets

flattened cans

and sweet wrappers

and the cellophane from boxes of cigarettes

half a page of a newspaper

and some more

dry

dead

leaves.

This is the treasure

of

Mysterious Stark.

This is the home

of

Mysterious Stark.

He makes

no sound except

the sound that he catches

from the feet of the people

walking

up and

down

and up

the concrete steps

and across the

car park floors.

He grabs those sounds,

wraps them up in city mumbles

and rolls them up the stairs again.

He catches the clicks

of opening doors

and

slamming doors

and he

sharpens them

and spears them back onto Level Three.

He sucks up the noise of engines starting,

and he drinks them down

then belches them out into the grey

afternoon.

On special, windy Saturdays –

he waits for people coming out

of the supermarket,

their hands tied down

heavy

with carrier bags full of baked beans.

Then

he picks up a mighty

mittful of grit

and throws it in their faces,

right in their eyes

and he laughs at them

as they blink and cry.

But he’s not always so grouchy

sometimes just for fun –

in his mouldy dark den –

he catches

the smallest corner of the wind

and ties it by its tail

to the hand rail

so that it can’t escape.

Then

he stirs the loose end

of the wind

into his pile of treasure

and chuckles to himself

as

round and round

the leaves chase the crisp packets and

the sweet wrappers chase

the cellophane

and

the half a page

of newspaper

covers itself with wind glue

and

blows itself

right around the shoe

of a man named

Ken.