Ne'er-be-lickit 

Ne'er-be-lickit

I’m a wreck-fish first and firstmost, ne’er-be-lickit, happy as a sandboy with a crop-eared velvet-runner. I dodge them witters and blubbring brother-brutes alike. The besomclean junk-wad is bedded amid the daughterlings of the yeast-bitten salt-wine. It knows none of sky’s blashy, flisky giddiheads of storm, down here where the fan-nerved earthflies bear their fear-babes. The enchanter’s-nightshades have the tidal fidgets while their weedy cradle-clothes gather to garnish the pricker-roach and the girt, besmottered hog’s-lard of a glibbery funk-willie.

I, once witling and muttonmonger, now flit-fold of the sea-shades, tittertotter through the giffgaffs and bugling sea-sounds. I strip the cradle-clothes from the pricker-roach and tongue it askingly, then edge towards the glibbery funk-willie, swallowish and gulpswollen as I drift with the weedy sea. The funk-willie escapes, blubbring and besnuffed; it flees my eager ne’er-be-lickit tongue; it’d rather face the blashy giddiheads of the real sky than the dangers of the sea’s shyfryngs and velvet runs...

To go peckish for another enchanter’s-nightshade of the deep sea, there’s only hog’s-lard and fucus for a fan-nerved wreck-fish such as I. Enough to make me swallow my own body with the head and tail left on.


(published ‘Psychopoetica’ 1992)

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