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29 June 2012

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

27 June 2012

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"

23 June 2012

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.

19 June 2012

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

14 June 2012

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

05 June 2012

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