4am 4:40

4am 4:40 I hear the hiss of
current coasting through the veins of
bullhead rails points aligning for the first trains Monday Monday morning unbolting the dark red double doors using a small stool to reach the drop bolts kicking the flush bolts up with my feet stacking leaflet racks with tube maps and registration forms listening to the metered steps of the first stoic commuters tapping tired oyster cards gates wheezing open the sound these small motors make not yet lost in a rush of thudding feet jackdaws gathering carefully on the fringes watching every crumb watching every crumb as branch lines and sidings awake oozing trains p.a announcements and platitudes I remind the gentleman in the plaid two button suit to stand behind the yellow line a glare a smile a glare a smile the first squeal of wheels as an eight car slinks out of 34 road slowly into the platform doors opening like a row of sleepy eyes awaking

momentum made of myth

diameter
circumference how
time post time
tears at the delicate
boundaries
laid with goodbyes
a broken mind
fierce in code collapses
forcefully feeding my eyes
with diatribe after diatribe after diatribe
diameter
circumference how
the shock has tuned to cruelty
personal attacks account
hacks
circuitry upon
circuitry
degenerative
consolation
diameter
circumference
death of love is not
like autumn
it is not synchronised
connected
two currents curl toward
two different corridors
and we listen to the walls
we
listen to the walls
circumference
diameter
radius
parameter
incline of an amateur
momentum made
of myth

lines

Photograph courtesy of Tracey Grumbach

how many geometries
without me in them reading
blank maps
with a clean mind
sediment of shadow in a delta
of lines
the
stillness of objects
withholding motion
these
gentle sentinels
calming the promise of momentum
spindles, bearings bow
to the kindness
of wood I
standing in the gateway
of a tertiary existence
catching zygotes of
philosophy on my chalk dust tongue

Hokkaido made me dream

patina
a safe distance
to contemplate the details
I learn that 32 kilometres deep
is relatively shallow
mud dark water
aching through a prefecture
Oregon, Port of Brookings harbour
swayed
by the name of its rivers
Pistol, Chetco
Curry Josephine county line swayed
I add an architrave
a ghost ship
listing
my hyperbole
minuscule
earth's axis
shifted
shortening the day by
1.8
micro
seconds
it was a school day

Thursday in April

parenthesis parenthesis
a blanket a blow torch
etching you into me as if
you were always there
in the stillness of skin
a long day
stretches into ruins ruins fused into roots the city's ink
spilt
into a delta of roads and red lights
Thursday
in April
her leopard spots like a
Picasso face peeling from the pigment
anarchic (holy)
broken (balm)

bold black italics

paper cracked tired
folded around words
under bold black italics
spirals
e
e
e
the loose
knot of that letter
in bold black italics
how I widen to pronounce
to let sound slip
around the inside of my cheeks
a balloon of vowels pregnant in my mouth
smoke stained pages how
many cigarettes
adhesive gum aged contoured calm
useless of less use
not holding together
held
these incoherent pages
full of bold black italics

symmetry, symmetry

our corridors, corridors

filled with libraries of hindsight

Escher knows, he knows

how many ways round are actually

up

chicaned by history

the fish hook in your flesh

yes yes

gills

she breathes between her ribs

she is mythical

because

she has to be

amongst the dead

threads of ivy

using stucco plastered walls

to sketch their thin

thoughts on leaving

she

spins a cue ball noun

into a pyramid of words

wishing ink

would take its shape

unassisted as the sky leaks

poems





a reading:

http://audioboo.fm/boos/740827