old and new

I found this while looking through old diaries

I wrote another poemx4 today. It can be read in 4 ways. Left to right and down line by line, or down the three separate columns. 

vibrance and translucence of stuff

we lay horizon-angle along aisles of the city,
its veneers bore the clouds as they idle awhile
in copper-bordered cobweb bundles

and rain is language, language is rain,
loosened from the tips of wine-stain tongues,
knuckle being blown or kissed by lip
lines; we trip over them all the time
or shoe-laces of feillemort-freckled boys,
never an umbrella, washed-out old news.

listen to the not-words we aren't speaking in a
shake of salt, a game of conkers, or get out of the city
and to the woodlands where, in a haze of petrichor,
you'll hear it all around on bark and leaf and then
the tinnitus of every caravan or shed.
A tin home with an iron lid to live in,
corrugated skin,

city life is wilderness but I know there is more
and wilder such, but I only half-dream of trees
carrying curses, stolen idols or heirlooms arising in
the anatomy of snakes wearing war-hoods
purely for the purpose of poetry/.

the storms that come can rattle the trees
round the courtyard into an epilepsy unflagging
and then sometimes

in my mind, flowers spit out embers petal-tooth
and lava spills onto tarmac streets.
the night knocks on the closely matched
blocks of paving stones. fireflies are out
but it looks like they'll die, their translucent wings
bring to mind an undressed volcano.

the cathartic outbreak of spiders that
that spread into a multiplication of landmines.

https://tablo.io/daisy-christabel/in-admurmuration

cat's cradle

We were playing cat’s cradle and my fingers were more entangled than I’d thought possible, and meanwhile the mornings of midwinter pass in smudges of light, and meanwhile the elevator in your building malfunctions and three people are stuck for an hour, and meanwhile he is counting how many cigarettes he gets through in a day, and meanwhile I am trying and failing to make sense of myself and coming across only the seeds of stories, and meanwhile the apartments next door have a powercut, and meanwhile she nods to sleep with a joint in her hand and the bedroom burns down, and meanwhile my hands seize up with perpetual frostbite, and meanwhile delusions are only exacerbated in this suspended reality, and meanwhile the nearby church shuts down and Sunday mass is another bus ride away, and meanwhile God is clipping his fingernails, and meanwhile no one is there to kiss you goodnight, and meanwhile words are used like keys to unlock the unsettling feelings of whomever hears them, and meanwhile the dictionaries are gathering dust, and meanwhile someone makes a joke because it’s brave and nobody laughs, and meanwhile someone writes a note that reads dear daddy, i’m sorry i had to do it this way… and meanwhile another person votes to invade a foreign country, and meanwhile a boy is raised for war and only war, and meanwhile a girl has lost her voice somewhere among the city streets and she’ll never find it, and meanwhile the birds chatter in empty trees and then somewhere, gunshots leave ripples in the air. The birdsong ceases and now there’s the sound of dead bodies hitting the ground. In the meantime, we are playing cat’s cradle still, and it’s comforting.

apocalyptic

In the shadow of the meteorite, we blink and we breathe
cradling our anxieties, humming what we believe
It doesn't look like it will happen today
but believe me, it's coming, the astral and angry,
the planet included then cast away.

The doctor says that the smoke is still there
and what he means really is that there's fire
ongoing, steadily it burns, somewhere.
Herr Doctor, Herr Professor, Herr To Whom it concerns,
I'm asking where I should search for the cinders
when there are flames everywhere.

Four men who had never ridden horses before
gather outside their headquarters in silence
and their lips are sore. One of them flicks
a cigarette butt to the floor, 'So let's end it then'
he says. Four clumsy riders out to tell the world
that it is no more, there will be no more.