9 x 9

she	breathes	through	the	pulsing	cracks	of	her	mouth
breathes	deep	the	dark	honour	of	her	aching	calm
through	the	light	she	follows	time	unstuck	and	motionless
the	dark	she	soothes	quietly	telling	fearless	tiny	lies
pulsing	honour	follows	quietly	hiding	untold	secrets	fading	effortlessly
cracks	of	time	telling	untold	truths	find	form	effigies
of	her	unstuck	fearless	secrets	find	her	helplessly	unravelling
her	aching	and	tiny	fading	form	helplessly	surrenders	her
mouth	calm	motionless	lies	effortlessly	effigies	unravelling	her	sadness

For all the Annie's and Arthur's

a worker

strides across the room

the backs of sculptures

"lime-wood" she tells me

bronze afterglow a dirty gold

chiselled dents

that look like fish scales

she is skin

and trees and love

what the mother

means to us

each "I" an abstracted

perspective like the Lichtenstein

that made you smile

what the mother

means to us

arms wrapped around a baby

looking at old ladies wishing

we were old ladies

content and curious

content and curious as she

pulls

her fender apart until the strings

curl into magnetic fields

magnificent

like Descartes

duality of light

in a dark sweaty room saying

"sorry" to the stage

and the cables on the floor

that thick ripped sky

split and bled

by bombs that turned

Rimbaud's words

into dust so he could

dance

in the margins of this room as she smiles

spits waves screams sings begs our

broken throats to bellow

unravelling in cascades

of "be free" "be free"  "be free"

Memphis Toffee Bees

in the twist

he is

one ragged curl

rare

unclogged

bitten through despairing time

ten troughs air an aged tongue

blackened stone a gnomon's trick

lacked a monk

a no mans lick

Faustus you have flimmed the tale

turned it on it's broken head

a careful sway

an upturned pulse

your vulgar ache has dulled to bliss 

 

 

This is offered as part of dverse poets Logophilia 1. There's plenty of playing with words, in the twist he is. Mephistopheles becomes Memphis Toffee Bees,  ten trough air an aged tongue is an anagram of the line before it. There's a made up word in there, another anagram and some general tom foolery with words.

Sisyphus and cinquains

her knot of skin fell loose

writhing in a holy lump
ground that stroked her face 

held my feet

an introduction 
between trembling

my name and hers

flaws 
refine our permanence

here on this grass

shit on my shoe

blood on her lip

Oh Massachusetts

what is it I'm without

into the curled embrace of dissonance

wrists outstretched

a permanence in this wind

tattooed into my secret tongue

eternity 

into time

when I talk about 

what I don't believe in

my disloyalty 

I am not tied

to Sisyphus and cinquains
Browning's edge
and mine
our syllables gleaming

we are not a thesis

I sit here in the drift of jaws

mouths without mouths

jobs immune to the blue note bottleneck of slump

silhouettes in suits

twinges and

crag hearts 

totem poles

our fading compasses

our typewriters in the brilliant light of dawn

hemmed into a line a stuttering army of consciousness

arising like the wet dew meets my feet

incense 

it's staccato breath a strange calligraphy

cocooned in a trance like serpentine song

twisting into the room

DNA dog ends of dignity disappearing into the

warm air of night

monogrammed skin

pleated into splintering cloth

names cast into the light

Helios and Apollo in a brothel of calm 

are we tender

brutal illuminations 

a thesis a carcass craving for a calling

hover like doves 

amongst the fog of many

many if's

this family of forged forbearing

pressure

pressure pressure

valves that stimulate forgiveness

the lampshade knows

to stay perfectly still

and the towels still dry 

and

my heart still beats and 

this language wraps around the throat of this word 

this word

(spaces between)

it was never one voice

a cacophony of splintered charcoal on his back

the constant shadow of rain an endless beat 

compassion 

is a lexis 

only limited by diffraction

obstacles and microscopes

an ashtray full of sand

in a time before machines

nan madol

(spaces between)

he's my 1966 Judas

the night barks 

it really does

sound hollowed out of the silence of quiet lives

feet on pavements 

cracking the ground with sharp heels

punctuating concrete with lens flare clarity

how we blur

melt meld

still wanting definition

we are ink

soaking into paper compassion 

is a lexis the guts of a poem

nan madol

an endless beat

blue

morpheus butterfly

or the monarchs that migrate

from August till the first frost

a perforated cycle 
of generations

seed and spore

we are ink

soaking into paper

hierarchy of space

I hail a bus

my hand 

cupping the air sideways leans two 

confident fingers into the road

my body semaphore

I am metope 

daughter of Doric 

and because Nelson beat Bonaparte

I am pulled from the Parthenon

this dirty street it's

bank holiday blues

wet from the pockmarked rain

stuttering on the tarmac

orphaned white marble

1821

these colonnades so lonely

I hail a bus

my hand 

cupping the air sideways leans two 

confident fingers into the road

Elgin

his hungry eyes and disappearing

nose knows

Byron billows his contempt

both

Harrow boys

I hail a bus 
a Harrow girl

my hand 

cupping the air sideways leans two 

confident fingers into the road