Friday, 6 May 2016
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Rhymes about Signs
Signs of struggle, signs of life,
signs like their signings of husband and wife,
signs of destruction without intent,
signs of corruption in the government,
signs that you're tired, that you've been crying
signs that you don't see that they are lying.
signs that he loves me, signs that he's happy,
signs that he really hearing me.
signs of I'm sorry, signs of worry,
signs of being in a hurry,
signs that there's something you have to tell me.
signs of life's violence and it's rage,
signs that you may really look your age,
signs that he's infatuated, he doesn't read your signs
signs no longer tolerated, too many signs of crime
signs like their signings of husband and wife,
signs of destruction without intent,
signs of corruption in the government,
signs that you're tired, that you've been crying
signs that you don't see that they are lying.
signs that he loves me, signs that he's happy,
signs that he really hearing me.
signs of I'm sorry, signs of worry,
signs of being in a hurry,
signs that there's something you have to tell me.
signs of life's violence and it's rage,
signs that you may really look your age,
signs that he's infatuated, he doesn't read your signs
signs no longer tolerated, too many signs of crime
Signs you spell out with your hands
so that you don’t lose your voice
Signs that suggest your plans are wrecked
and you don't even have a choice.
Lights on roadside signs, or neon in the dark
Lights forming puddles where hobos lie in the park
Signs that you are getting better.
Signs that show you're beginning to forget her
Signs that he is over you, signs he's got under your skin
Signs that showed him the way in.
Signs that point you right ways, wrong ways
Signs that trust you’ll do what your mind says
Signs to follow, signs to ignore,
Signs to comfort the rich and antagonise the poor
Signs that there are pickpockets here ti operate
Signs that politely note and often irritate
Signs that go unnoticed, signs we just don't see
Signs in eyes that you'll be approached
Signs just subtle enough to be mistaken for friendly.
Signs tucked in your sleeves or between shaking knees.
Signs that you can't miss, like the first signs of disease.
There are signs that call you to attention, signs that
you're getting warmer, signs of apprehension.
Signs to keep your distance where men are digging holes
in the ground, signs to direct you home on the underground
and signs that group together on the top of poles,
all pointing to different places, your choice of destination.
But when you come across a warning sign of what's ahead
or a plain and simple 'stop', know not to ignore them.
Just like the signs of war, signs of destruction
shred by shred, signs that people once lived here
and signs that they're all dead. And then the signs
that we make, that we show, and your signs that show
how you feel without telling me what's on your mind.
No sign of me, for quite some time, while people waited
outside my door, no sign of me because I was
on my face in the bathroom, with nothing to report
from the floor. And the time he looked in my window
and saw me unconscious on the floor.
My signs must not catch eyes as much because
he went home and left me there, thinking
It's Daisy she's done this before. And I have
so does that mean the signs I want you to see
are not available, having used them up before?
Wednesday, 6 April 2016
Things that will happen tomorrow
the ordinary
He will spill yogurt on his tie before work.
He will be late for school, and will fumble with his bike lock before running inside.
She will spend another day fantasizing about being someone else she knows.
He will end the process of learning to read.
She will say her first, second up to fifth words.
He will complain of the state of his knee replacement.
She will buy a balloon for her son at the zoo.
He will be punished for not making his bed correctly or on time.
She will throw up her food, for the fourth time in her life.
She will walk barefoot to the only well where the water is clean is located.
She will go up into the attic and find hundreds of old family photographs.
He will wake up next to someone he can't even remember taking home.
He will remove the appendix of a five year old girl.
She will meditate for longer than usual.
He will get served.
She will learn the meaning of white lying.
She will get a kitten and call it Carousel
He will perform again and this time it won't bore him so much.
She will sleep the whole day through,
She will scratch the mosquito bite too much
He will yawn more often than usual
She will burn her hand on a pan.
He will be carried into A&E by his friends after the fight.
She will be caught smoking on school grounds and her parents called.
He will wonder if he is a homosexual.
He will find some of his hair in the drain after showering.
She will delete lots of pictures of him from her computer,
He will wonder what sex is like.
She will have her hair cut and like the way it bounces on her walk home.
She will feel prettier than usual.
He will swallow more pills and spend the day behind a pane of glass.
She will sit at her window with her hair pulled up using bobby pins.
He will eat sashimi on his lunch break.
He will light up his 16th cigarette at a bus stop, waiting to go home from work.
She will make a very small sandcastle.
He will have another surfing lesson.
He will tell his friend that he's talking nonsense and there's no empirical evidence.
She will write a song about life as a symphony.
She will open her piggy bank and count copper and silver coins.
He will cash out at the shop and count three times over because of self-doubt.
She will be too scared to get in the water.
He will try using wax in is hair.
He will die.
She will go to the rodeo.
He will hear knocking at the door and go white.
She will bite her nails to half moons.
He will spend two hours practicing the trombone.
She will write an apology to a neighbour.
He will mount his diploma on te wall.
She will bake some cookies using sweetener instead o sugar.
He will be born.
He will think about her without clothes on.
She will spill the sake at the dinner table.
He will go to another meeting.
He will tell her that he'll do it tomorrow.
the not-so-ordinary
She will roll a cigarette with potpourri instead of tobacco and burn her lungs.
She will stick bobby pins in her hair to pin it back from her view of the neighbourhood rooftops.
He will tell his friend, with tears in his eyes, that life is a symphony.
She will befriend someone she will despise in three months' time
She will decorate the conservatory beautifully for a party, but the only attendee is her.
She will step intentionally on a snail.
He will hear another disembodied voice narrating his life.
He will be arrested because he's been framed.
She will pass the point of no return
He will dig his own grave.
He will spill yogurt on his tie before work.
He will be late for school, and will fumble with his bike lock before running inside.
She will spend another day fantasizing about being someone else she knows.
He will end the process of learning to read.
She will say her first, second up to fifth words.
He will complain of the state of his knee replacement.
She will buy a balloon for her son at the zoo.
He will be punished for not making his bed correctly or on time.
She will throw up her food, for the fourth time in her life.
She will walk barefoot to the only well where the water is clean is located.
She will go up into the attic and find hundreds of old family photographs.
He will wake up next to someone he can't even remember taking home.
He will remove the appendix of a five year old girl.
She will meditate for longer than usual.
He will get served.
She will learn the meaning of white lying.
She will get a kitten and call it Carousel
He will perform again and this time it won't bore him so much.
She will sleep the whole day through,
She will scratch the mosquito bite too much
He will yawn more often than usual
She will burn her hand on a pan.
He will be carried into A&E by his friends after the fight.
She will be caught smoking on school grounds and her parents called.
He will wonder if he is a homosexual.
He will find some of his hair in the drain after showering.
She will delete lots of pictures of him from her computer,
He will wonder what sex is like.
She will have her hair cut and like the way it bounces on her walk home.
She will feel prettier than usual.
He will swallow more pills and spend the day behind a pane of glass.
She will sit at her window with her hair pulled up using bobby pins.
He will eat sashimi on his lunch break.
He will light up his 16th cigarette at a bus stop, waiting to go home from work.
She will make a very small sandcastle.
He will have another surfing lesson.
He will tell his friend that he's talking nonsense and there's no empirical evidence.
She will write a song about life as a symphony.
She will open her piggy bank and count copper and silver coins.
He will cash out at the shop and count three times over because of self-doubt.
She will be too scared to get in the water.
He will try using wax in is hair.
He will die.
She will go to the rodeo.
He will hear knocking at the door and go white.
She will bite her nails to half moons.
He will spend two hours practicing the trombone.
She will write an apology to a neighbour.
He will mount his diploma on te wall.
She will bake some cookies using sweetener instead o sugar.
He will be born.
He will think about her without clothes on.
She will spill the sake at the dinner table.
He will go to another meeting.
He will tell her that he'll do it tomorrow.
the not-so-ordinary
She will roll a cigarette with potpourri instead of tobacco and burn her lungs.
She will stick bobby pins in her hair to pin it back from her view of the neighbourhood rooftops.
He will tell his friend, with tears in his eyes, that life is a symphony.
She will befriend someone she will despise in three months' time
She will decorate the conservatory beautifully for a party, but the only attendee is her.
She will step intentionally on a snail.
He will hear another disembodied voice narrating his life.
He will be arrested because he's been framed.
She will pass the point of no return
He will dig his own grave.
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
Friday, 18 March 2016
Remember when I broke all the plates?
You said I'd put you back together.
I wasn't a pile of broken bits on the floor
but that was their impressions of me,
and I think it might last forever
but you have a mind that's always open
and so the world changes all the time
right before your eyes.
You are so far from them, you can see
so much further. Distance can surprise
when it is less being cast out to sea
and more a feeling of something like free.
I said I'd never give up on you,
Until you, I hadn't been giving
but when I drop words with that weight
they're as true as they can be absolutely.
You said I'd put you back together.
I wasn't a pile of broken bits on the floor
but that was their impressions of me,
and I think it might last forever
but you have a mind that's always open
and so the world changes all the time
right before your eyes.
You are so far from them, you can see
so much further. Distance can surprise
when it is less being cast out to sea
and more a feeling of something like free.
I said I'd never give up on you,
Until you, I hadn't been giving
but when I drop words with that weight
they're as true as they can be absolutely.
Sunday, 13 March 2016
My friend
My friend came into my life by accident, it shouldn't have happened. But it did because accidents happen and because I open my door to strangers. We have known one another through several seasons,several disasters, and through to survival. I've known him through several unnatural disasters. I didn't know him through most of his lifetime and so many disasters. He came with long hair, with his sleeves full of tricks, and with no one to love. He was a very good criminal. His arms were camouflaged with tattoos, hiding a knife wound and showing the face of the Green Man god of paganism, He came full of untold stories and unspoken wreckage, ghosts from his past haunting his days and opiate-eyed nights. He was magnetic and missing teeth, scarred, and he didn't trust anything or anyone. He'd nearly died so many times I sometimes wonder if he really exists. He talks of a span of months during which his three friends- closest friends, without closeness- died one after the other. How many times could he come so close before he would become just another ghost? But I began calling him miracle man at the beginning when we waved our hands and signs and he a big painted daisy in the direction of one another's windows, when we both lived in the same block, and I suppose that's just what it is. Small miracles and unexplained things and what you'd never expect to happen- they all happen around him, He is a catalyst but the reactions he causes are not always miraculous or inspiring. He'd be the first to admit he's a catalyst for lost teeth and bloodshed. I wouldn't say it but by more than one I've been likened to chaos. We are both messy and we both like it. His abnormal mind began to grow out of him and stretch to places that can't be conceived of yet, and yet even more abnormal became obvious his evolving awareness of the changes. Many of those changes came about as a coin flips from one side to the other. Not too long ago, his whole life was critically altered. He escaped from an abusive alcoholic, a woman he'd lived with for fifteen years, and because of his absent parents and cruel foster families, she must have been his primary attachment figure. He didn't know about how other people lived, he didn't know a comfortable relationship, or a form of love that hadn't been twisted into something nefarious and destructive. He escaped and bought a boat. He was free for the first time, and his mind stretched out for more, beyond imagination. Before his escape, everything was making wreckage around him. I had grown so close with him, we spent time together just to while away the hours he needed to talk about what he had seen and done and how he managed to live on in bewilderment. The night before he had to move every trace of himself out of the place he'd been at a window's glance distance, we painted the walls all night and day. He painted enormous colourful, turbulent maelstroms in one corner. I painted on the wall the words; there are no words for moments like these. It was a warm-weather time, when wax melted in the trees and light t in through the blinds and seemed to move like sharks, carrying drifts of powders and pollen and the residue of paint on walls. Dust is invisible unless there is sunlight
I wasn't always there to help pull him out or give him shelter. I was brittle then, fresh from being mind-fractured, still healing. I now hold myself together and it makes him proud. I said 'forgiveness' to him one day and innumerable black echoes ceased, and everything was peaceful then. He forgave his birth mother and I managed to get her online, had the privilege of being there for their first conversation since he was put into foster care. He is not a criminal anymore. He is a one-man circus, a 5 star performance. He's also the standing ovation that you never expected you'd be so relieved to hear in all it's thunder. The roof beams raise high and the ground is shaking because you are getting stronger and your life is changing. He tells me that letting him into my life saved his. Knowing I had done something like that changed mine.
He keeps a scrapbook now, as I do. He let me photograph some pages.
I wasn't always there to help pull him out or give him shelter. I was brittle then, fresh from being mind-fractured, still healing. I now hold myself together and it makes him proud. I said 'forgiveness' to him one day and innumerable black echoes ceased, and everything was peaceful then. He forgave his birth mother and I managed to get her online, had the privilege of being there for their first conversation since he was put into foster care. He is not a criminal anymore. He is a one-man circus, a 5 star performance. He's also the standing ovation that you never expected you'd be so relieved to hear in all it's thunder. The roof beams raise high and the ground is shaking because you are getting stronger and your life is changing. He tells me that letting him into my life saved his. Knowing I had done something like that changed mine.
He keeps a scrapbook now, as I do. He let me photograph some pages.
Thursday, 10 March 2016
Unsure
Sometimes it's black marble, igneous rockets into endless dark and space.
and then sometimes it's an echo, resonating shades of black,
the frown on a clock's face, or the absent moon,
the illusory balloon, the ball that you chip away, also black,
while following the garden paths,
which don't meet but collide,
and the dice that are rolled ricochet,
echoing back the old days-
what could have been, what might have been?
the answers stand either side of the street,
face to face, but neither seen.
The clouds circle round you, windows blink in sunlight,
glaring, the obvious that hits you loud and with spite
and then the ground beneath you shakes,
the crowd are all staring when everything breaks,
you're a pile of glass, the same way everyone else is debris
of earthquakes: a fist of lost teeth, the split in twine after the fray,
the twist in time, and mistakes made by the billion everyday
on each lifetime's path, and every path at some point meets.
They may, for a time, treat you like hot sheets,
like what makes up their headaches. Be brave-
you may, for a time, forget all reasons to laugh.
Love knows no boundaries, they say. All of which I'm sure is
that it doesn't know how to say please, or any painless ways to go,
to find the exit sign, yet on the contrary, it enters with ease.
When you walk alongside it you cross every line.
It’s not the task that’s small as they tell us it will be.
You feel little and funny until you find yourself
more times than twice on the edge of a line
drawing rainbows that people saw from the ground,
like the light-shows of lightnings and applauding
rumbling sound, like bones and rocks and the
walls of Pompeii crumbling down all around.
you find yourself more than twice on edge of a line that drew
the rainbows you saw above the war,
you want to go elsewhere for more,
go back to before you forgot what love poems were about,
before the cats all got out, no need to lock the door.
and then sometimes it's an echo, resonating shades of black,
the frown on a clock's face, or the absent moon,
the illusory balloon, the ball that you chip away, also black,
while following the garden paths,
which don't meet but collide,
and the dice that are rolled ricochet,
echoing back the old days-
what could have been, what might have been?
the answers stand either side of the street,
face to face, but neither seen.
The clouds circle round you, windows blink in sunlight,
glaring, the obvious that hits you loud and with spite
and then the ground beneath you shakes,
the crowd are all staring when everything breaks,
you're a pile of glass, the same way everyone else is debris
of earthquakes: a fist of lost teeth, the split in twine after the fray,
the twist in time, and mistakes made by the billion everyday
on each lifetime's path, and every path at some point meets.
They may, for a time, treat you like hot sheets,
like what makes up their headaches. Be brave-
you may, for a time, forget all reasons to laugh.
Love knows no boundaries, they say. All of which I'm sure is
that it doesn't know how to say please, or any painless ways to go,
to find the exit sign, yet on the contrary, it enters with ease.
When you walk alongside it you cross every line.
It’s not the task that’s small as they tell us it will be.
You feel little and funny until you find yourself
more times than twice on the edge of a line
drawing rainbows that people saw from the ground,
like the light-shows of lightnings and applauding
rumbling sound, like bones and rocks and the
walls of Pompeii crumbling down all around.
you find yourself more than twice on edge of a line that drew
the rainbows you saw above the war,
you want to go elsewhere for more,
go back to before you forgot what love poems were about,
before the cats all got out, no need to lock the door.
Hitched a wagon to a star and fell off
Cabin fever, feverish dreamer, saw the northern lights
on one of those nights, or had they only seen her?
The gas that spirals into stars left a burn on my
elbow, when I was catching-what-I-can-before-I-go,
and I stretched for all I could reach but
I dropped back to earth, found a face full of sand
on the beach where I'd come to land with
an empty satchel. I tell myself, oh well, most days,
oh well, here's a bit of a green glass bottle,
and as well, here's a half broken shell, the same
colour as the one I only ever see when I dream.
Oh well, you never can tell with the northerners,
the lights, the stars. I had just been so sure
they were, for a long time, simply ours
for the taking. But it takes more effort than
one might suppose to visit the solar system
when most planets keep all doors closed.
I told my best friend I'd seen something or one
extraterrestrial, and she thought it was a story
I'd spun to be extra interesting. She was
right of course and I was faking, which I don't
do very well. Gut-full of anticipated remorse.
on one of those nights, or had they only seen her?
The gas that spirals into stars left a burn on my
elbow, when I was catching-what-I-can-before-I-go,
and I stretched for all I could reach but
I dropped back to earth, found a face full of sand
on the beach where I'd come to land with
an empty satchel. I tell myself, oh well, most days,
oh well, here's a bit of a green glass bottle,
and as well, here's a half broken shell, the same
colour as the one I only ever see when I dream.
Oh well, you never can tell with the northerners,
the lights, the stars. I had just been so sure
they were, for a long time, simply ours
for the taking. But it takes more effort than
one might suppose to visit the solar system
when most planets keep all doors closed.
I told my best friend I'd seen something or one
extraterrestrial, and she thought it was a story
I'd spun to be extra interesting. She was
right of course and I was faking, which I don't
do very well. Gut-full of anticipated remorse.
Sunday, 6 March 2016
The process of neologofactisation (a word I made up for the process of making up words)
disidioconscity - (n.) a state of being separated from self-knowledge, or the denial of it
glottowart - (n.) a protector or guardian of language
abschronoparamatic- (adj.) pertaining to the feeling that there is no time
mensequential- (adj.) threatening, continuous and ongoing in nature
omnibiothermic- (adj.) related to or pertaining to all-consuming bodily heat
autocryptious- (adj.) characterised by secrets regarding the self
malpathajection- (n.) the casting away or rejection of negative emotions
nosomnifactism- (n.) a doctrine of belief that one should go without sleeping
antipugnist- (n.) someone who is against fighting
belliform- (adj.) resembling war
aesthangelicaster- (n.) a person who feigns the feelings of an angel
necrophyllization- (n.) the dying process of a leaf
intraponoublient- (adj.) having the tendency for forgetting the contents of thoughts
pseudoxenotude- (n.) a falsely foreign state or conditions
metamemorise- (v,) changing or altering one's memory
cryptoconfuge- (n.) escape from the knowledge of secrets
perphonogratious- (adj.)thoroughly pleasing in sound
chronomatosophic- (adj.) having or relating to knowledge concerning time and motion
glottowart - (n.) a protector or guardian of language
abschronoparamatic- (adj.) pertaining to the feeling that there is no time
mensequential- (adj.) threatening, continuous and ongoing in nature
omnibiothermic- (adj.) related to or pertaining to all-consuming bodily heat
autocryptious- (adj.) characterised by secrets regarding the self
malpathajection- (n.) the casting away or rejection of negative emotions
nosomnifactism- (n.) a doctrine of belief that one should go without sleeping
antipugnist- (n.) someone who is against fighting
belliform- (adj.) resembling war
aesthangelicaster- (n.) a person who feigns the feelings of an angel
intraponoublient- (adj.) having the tendency for forgetting the contents of thoughts
pseudoxenotude- (n.) a falsely foreign state or conditions
metamemorise- (v,) changing or altering one's memory
cryptoconfuge- (n.) escape from the knowledge of secrets
perphonogratious- (adj.)thoroughly pleasing in sound
chronomatosophic- (adj.) having or relating to knowledge concerning time and motion
Friday, 26 February 2016
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
alliteration a-z
Apathetic, acataleptic, anthropomorphic abstractions aided an anorectic.
Biology and botany, both broad, but bellicose blossoms bring banality.
Considered communication can conceal certain capabilities- cruelty without causality.
Delirious dreams of divination dwindle during daytime's discontinuation.
Echoing and eerie, ecclesiastical ecstasy eclipses eccentric ebullience in extroverts.
Face-to-face farewells facilitate friendships & fatigue families, familiar in fantasies.
Grace goes gardening, garnishing and ghostwriting, good god, glistening a glittery glaze over.
High, hovering, hallucinating helps habits' hardening and hiding in hazy harmony.
Introduced ideologies, indeed, illustrate ingenuity in idiosyncratic individuals I impersonate.
Jumbled and juiced juxtaposition of jitterbug and jazz justifies jovial jumpiness- jeez.
Karaoke on ketamine, a kettleful of kerosene, kindling kisses, knocking knees.
Last but not least, the lawless laying low are liberated, later learning large life lessons.
Mainly markedly meticulous, maids manage the meagerness of mess, mollifying mothers.
Namely narcotics, not either naivety nor narrow-mindedness, necessitates a nosedive.
Obligations to obtain n occupation only obfuscates obvious obstacles, and oftentimes objectivity.
Pervasive paradoxes parody people's past perceptions, predominantly persistent patterns.
Quick-witted quarrelers query quantifiable qualities, quotations never quivering or quiet
Rickety, raggedly radios ring with ragtime, rainbows remain a rarity.
Sick, staggering students suddenly spill, saucer-eyed, onto streets and scatter.
Thrown together, the tank top, the trousers, tempted and tongue-tied them, totally.
Underestimation ultimately undid the understanding of ubiquitous underachieving underdogs.
Variability in validity and value variance violates the valuer's viewpoint very vividly.
Wandering war-torn wastelands, wayfarers weaken, wait for water, wearily wonder at weather
Xenophobic xylophonist's x-ray wouldn't show his xanthopsia, xeroxed in the xanthic Xs of his eyes.
Your yawning and yelling is yellowing your youthful yearnings for yesterdays.
Zigzagging, zany zookeepers zestfully zone out with zoom lenses, to see from A-Z.
Biology and botany, both broad, but bellicose blossoms bring banality.
Considered communication can conceal certain capabilities- cruelty without causality.
Delirious dreams of divination dwindle during daytime's discontinuation.
Echoing and eerie, ecclesiastical ecstasy eclipses eccentric ebullience in extroverts.
Face-to-face farewells facilitate friendships & fatigue families, familiar in fantasies.
Grace goes gardening, garnishing and ghostwriting, good god, glistening a glittery glaze over.
High, hovering, hallucinating helps habits' hardening and hiding in hazy harmony.
Introduced ideologies, indeed, illustrate ingenuity in idiosyncratic individuals I impersonate.
Jumbled and juiced juxtaposition of jitterbug and jazz justifies jovial jumpiness- jeez.
Karaoke on ketamine, a kettleful of kerosene, kindling kisses, knocking knees.
Last but not least, the lawless laying low are liberated, later learning large life lessons.
Mainly markedly meticulous, maids manage the meagerness of mess, mollifying mothers.
Namely narcotics, not either naivety nor narrow-mindedness, necessitates a nosedive.
Obligations to obtain n occupation only obfuscates obvious obstacles, and oftentimes objectivity.
Pervasive paradoxes parody people's past perceptions, predominantly persistent patterns.
Quick-witted quarrelers query quantifiable qualities, quotations never quivering or quiet
Rickety, raggedly radios ring with ragtime, rainbows remain a rarity.
Sick, staggering students suddenly spill, saucer-eyed, onto streets and scatter.
Thrown together, the tank top, the trousers, tempted and tongue-tied them, totally.
Underestimation ultimately undid the understanding of ubiquitous underachieving underdogs.
Variability in validity and value variance violates the valuer's viewpoint very vividly.
Wandering war-torn wastelands, wayfarers weaken, wait for water, wearily wonder at weather
Xenophobic xylophonist's x-ray wouldn't show his xanthopsia, xeroxed in the xanthic Xs of his eyes.
Your yawning and yelling is yellowing your youthful yearnings for yesterdays.
Zigzagging, zany zookeepers zestfully zone out with zoom lenses, to see from A-Z.
Friday, 19 February 2016
Saturday, 30 January 2016
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.
Saturday, 16 January 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
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.
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
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.
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.
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