Neruda knew the Just Is

Neruda knew the Just Is

how it hangs

between clavicles and vowels

and illuminates the half cut city skyline

how it howls

and caws

how it sits

on a dead poets hill

and looks out

like a sentry

or an angel made of bricks

canals like slit

veins bleed

through the buildings

the tallest i

I've ever seen

blooming buds the shape of

satellite dishes

wishes

of a new age where the page

is a punch card and a key fob

Richard rolls his rizla

Richard rolls

his rizla

carefully around the cut price duty free 50 gram

pouch

of Golden Virginia

£4.20 from his man he says

I ask about his Mrs

a sigh as he sinks

into the old

brickwork beneath the dying

hanging baskets

bone

cancer chemo blood

in her urine

"Marconi Rapier missiles"

falls from his

lips

in a rhythmic haze

a glimpse

of what he was

before

they haven't considered taxidermy

currents and

crosscurrents

in the maelstrom of this vivid morning

in it's restlessness stillness beating

on the door to come in

smuggled in the tips of pencils in

the spheres of ball

point pens

verbs

and nouns congregate

a quiet coalition of corridors

arrange themselves around you

some kind of

embrace takes place

some kind of grace

offers it's hand it's window it's desk

and rests

diodes composed in rows

of uniform current

electrons speak

terminal to terminal

language seeps from cables

from chairs and tables secret

conversations machinations

they

plot

amongst the rot

of our festering values to impart their

frustrations their

observations I wish they could

speak the teak

table top and it's compadres

their

eyewitness accounts

of our

tendency to dodge profundity

in favour of ease the trees fuck

they could talk

of the way we walk...by

they haven't considered taxidermy

death by needle clean and legal

sell the heads

of the dead

to oligarchs to basking sharks

eager

to hang their status on a wall

blind

to the blood spilling drip drip drop

onto mahogany furniture

the maid wipes it clean every morning before thawing

her heart

on a radiator her needs greater

numb must drum

her pulse from time to time

an anticrime

as some might say

I don't have words, do you?

commute

harbour lights anchoring transience
to train rails
shuttle swarm swell
swerve
the dying skyline viewed
from a perspex pew
an urban
congregation
compartmentalises

alphabet to alphabet

kinetic incantations
tattooed into the wind
embroidered with the fresh
zest of meeting arm
in arm, alphabet
to alphabet, cathodic ink
infusing circuitry with language
grease dripping from
well oiled vowels
forming like still
flames, like waves inlaid
with accidental hieroglyphs
raw myth
mixing
with electrons

articulate pavements

trying to trace the blood trail back

just ends in Jackson Pollock

suburbs no longer indelible

huddle together, shoulder

to shoulder

our transient resident status

rubber stamped, as articulate pavements

speak with more brilliance than any politician

of the carcasses of buildings

and the weight of feet

of burning bins

24hr courts use law

as a communal comfort blanket

poet laureates call us

to our knees

all the boroughs I’ve glimpsed

through the perspex of a double-decker bus

all the high streets

that have blurred into terraced matrixes

now leaning through my TV

a beginners guide

to citizenry

bookmark still

in the index

fine lines

in twists of paint
fat
on the canvas
in the carnage of crooked ideology
in the comfortless
gulf
of addiction
fine lines
Kings cry
in church pews
famine
perpetually
homogenized
fine lines
our cultural cortex imbued
by the mathematics
of constant
media
literate
and educated
spree killer bloodshed
torpedo speed of a shutter lens
pull focus! pull focus!
fine lines
CEO's send aides
to the dry cleaners
Cynthia
on her shoulder
Benefits
Supervisor
Sleeping
fine lines

18 across

walking through a four car train on an eight car run in an oblong full

of the suited and booted, the margins of their manners

slimmed and tenuous, I stitch my way through the carriages like a clumsy ballerina

like coarse twine trying to thread its way through silk

I dink the corner of a boutique paper bag

its owner clasps it to her shins

surreptitiously smoothing

its freshly formed creases 

I shuffle my feet around laptop bags and briefcases, I notice zip pocket pen holders

empty of pens, I press my work boots down

onto the toes of a woman staring studiously at her crossword

she turns her head

her grey flecked fringe sways

pen still pressing on the black and white squares

I touch her shoulder and say sorry, a muted sentence falls to the floor and flinching

she retreats 

back to 18 across

at the end of the fourth car, into the rear cab, I join a resting driver

he unfolds a seat from the wall, tapping it with a hand full of sovereign rings

I sit, looking out

of the widescreen window

watching track

roll away from me

as if I'm 

rewinding myself somehow

we talk about death at 90mph

about signals and fag breaks

the hegemony behind us

disappearing

cathedral

a cathedral builds itself
inside my body
stained glass windows break
into the bloodlight of my gut
my ribs a vaulted ceiling for whatever
I am
now
peace
 in this coagulating mutation
peace
in the simplicity of time
moving on
 

tessellating time

Photograph by Neil Alexander

 

 

tessellating time
dissipating movement
twisting through the hues
of breathing in
and breathing out
eyes parked perched
in their sultry 

sentry sockets
in the stillness 

of  liquid
in the hush 

of the flow

offered as part of the penultimate One Shot Sunday over at One Stop Poetry   

 

discreetly

she does this discreetly

it goes to the core of coping

your inside yourself

your stone blue spinal column

not able to look out

to challenge the status quo of

being

to change from theories into a formula for breathing 

Artwork by Bonnie of Original Art Studio

lights hung high like
nervous bystanders
shape of the room
confused
the whitewashed
plaster board
finds it's hinges
and swings
in
where people
stand hands sunk
into pockets
staring at the
vortex
on the wall
clandestine hypnotists
hiding
in the pigments

Offered as part of Friday Poetically hosted by Brian Miller over at One Stop Poetry

you drip away baby (parts one,two and free)

you drip away baby

through the blues///new shoes

you slip away

along my shifting seams

the landscape re-arranging re-enraging

same old themes

you drip away baby

through the blues///new shoes

you slip away

along my shifting seams

the landscape re-arranging re-enraging

same old themes

was it

was it <> we-spent

was -it-<<>>-well-spent

was it mine at all?

shifting seams baby

same old themes

I'll fight not to give you that

tender hurts

I'll have to fight not to give you that

you drip away baby

cold blood on warm skin

just slip away baby

from underneath and in between

same old seams baby

shifting themes

tender hurts baby

you drip away

as you remember me

as I remind you

you rolled in it

your role in it

its role in me

complexity

for the heart unbroken anymore

for my hearts not broken anymore

still you haunt me almost flaunt me

stroking the back of my mind, now my mind is revolving

you drip away

through the blues///new shoes

you slip away

along my shifting seams

you slip away

a long day daze smoothed

out

into one big line of excitement

I'm all built

to explore further virtues

almost like the shadows stepped back

leaving one big white patch

and I froze

fingers allbent sharp not sure what to do stay

still

I'm thinking about staying still

got a little gap of serenity

my ears are gliding

on the thermals you create

my shields colliding

with the aliveness you awake

lots of thoughts i guess

its still tomorrow

i'm just re-watching re-peating the pattern

and singing in the background

your sweet voice surrounding

even if these thoughts run into others

its O.K

they can clash in the corridor

like two arch-enemies and still

find a way to continue walking

in the opposite direction

but maybe only for today

amongst all this generosity

that leaves me crooked, crick in my back

I'm surrounded by things to make and do

and the tools I need are all here too

so what am i waiting for

waiting for nothing

but its an endless comfortable place

not exactly a space

strange night

I dont remember the daylight

just the weight and the pressure

and the grace of the measure

deadline

straight line

she twists like I was me

walks past pouncing.

time

and your still there

still in my hair

long enough to catch you

strong enough to match you

look how

its wrong

these little tiny pieces

i wished

i'd payed attention

cared to mention

how sly the cut

how deep the wound

took a while to find to drip away baby

I wished

i'd saved the tension

through the blues///new shoes

you slip away

time falls sideways

slowly

she never really came back

first time she opened the door

she knew what it was for

and she kept walking

because she never had before

there were circles

kept on bringing you back round

but she never really came back

first time

she landed running

fast and straight

time falls sideways

slowly

through the blues///new shoes

you slip away

Mono no aware

Photograph taken by Adam Romanowicz

she is a promise in a transient grave
bursting into life from the cocoon
of her language,
hung in tufts of chalk dust alphabets
voiced 

through the letting go of time
and the cleaving of the wind
I wait to drag her death into my mouth
and for the bridge 

of her rolling tongue
to meet me in this burial ground
somei yoshino
somei yoshino watches
as Newtons two thumbs pull
her poetry towards me
Mono no aware

I wait
for her lexicon to take
its first and only breath

offered as part of One Stop Poetry’s Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge. 

Do you want to know a secret?

Even the foothills are poised to be

perfectly formed small wonders

(deep retreats) as if

mountains had been reborn

into lively districts

twisted fists, ancient rivets

Yew Tree, Dartington Gardens

Like fat matted
dreadlocks of time tumbling
down the shoulders
of history sat, slunk
into the wet earth
bulbous, serene
twisted fists, ancient rivets
covered
by my warm palms
forearms pulling
the weight
of me
up
boots scuffed, slipping
on the lichen
fingers hooked between
knots of old memories
a
sprawled
pause
as I centre my balance
wind persuading the leaves to pray
singing ambient arias
and I
in abstract awe
as the ballast of my body clings
to a thousand years of nature
sat, slunk
into the wet earth
bulbous, serene



offered as part of One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

James Rosenquist

 

 

she fell into the frame
her story clotting on the canvas
the passing
thoughts of strangers
clawed across her gauge
itching her id
raiding
her pantry abstract
archivists
re-arrange

offered as part of One Stop Poetry's Friday Poetically

driftwood ribs

When there is no confluence

When the dry

Riverbed of my mind

Cannot

Connect

I walk my thoughts

Into the ocean

I give my context

To the tide

I give

My driftwood ribs

Back to Adam

Until I am nothing

And everything

Connected

Inspired by Rob Hanson's photograph "Endless Pier Summer

Offered as part of One Shot Poetry's One Shoot Sunday

there, across the water

there

across the water

all the right angles

gathered

in a manufactured

miasma

numbers stacked

like buttresses

each window

a portrait

each

towerblock

a gallery

the way he drags his pen

across the paper

that zen like place

he floats to

in the copy room

listening

to the whir and churn

like a small engine

the warmth

of each

thick stack he carries

to the comb

binder

the boat

and the bridge

there to tease

to tussle

he pulls

on the anchor of his day

as if to say

lets go

lets

just

leave

across the water

offered as part of One Shot Sunday care of One Stop Poetry, photograph by Scott Wyden