Mark Heathcote Poems

Roadkill was a good grub when I was a kid.
Believe me; it beat baked beans on toast
or runny egg and chips. Generally, it'd
consist of a pheasant or two, or maybe
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I will unravel my soul like a straw hat
I will let my last thoughts set-seed
And fall into your lap.
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Loves a flame that can be doused to harden steel
But to remain nimble-and-soft, porous, permeable
As the land reaching out to the ocean is better
Then climbing insurmountable-mountains
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When these morning bars of light
Fell on your face, I fell in love
A prisoner beneath the waves in the shadows
Where the rain dripped through the clouds
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The pebbles on the beach look smooth and round.
Being swung around slowly upended, turned one way and then another. Lifeless but full of promise; some plain, others speckled with hairline fractures as if about to crack open. Giving-birth-to-an-ancient fossil still living in the past with wings neatly folded and derived to outlast every carbolic soap ball left in the bathtub. They bake in the crematorium of the sun, you know, but nothing living is ever sadly seen again. But they all contained as much joy and sorrow as all of us. Kicking them over, I'm wondering what rocks will form from my dust and who, if anyone, shall care to inform them they meant nothing in the scheme of things. All these rocks, these many ammonite shapes, are just infertile dreams never opened or revealed by a visiting palaeontologist or poet who couldn't be bothered to sing. Rejoice at all the meaningless eccentricity of all these unaccountable sparkling bodily things.
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I am not available for a broken love story
I am a wishbone you cannot break or discard
You can tear my heart out and reject it.
But this vessel always finds its buoyancy
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It's puzzling seeing her in a hotel lobby.
Is she our very own Mrs. Robinson, played
by Anne Bancroft frustratingly, waiting at
the entrance for Benjamin Braddock's return?
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Love is an olive branch
Bent and broken in two
By childish men who think
They know just what to do.
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Love embarks like a beast to visit its prey
But perfume captivates and turns hunter into game
And afterwards, needy of a guide to purvey,
He's lain in a ditch and complains he is lame.
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In the early hours, we hear radio music in ³/₄ time
It's in pace with the manor of the morning dew
Harmonizing with the sway of a washing line
To-the-mirth-of-blackbirds with adoration imbue.
...