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

bare bones



Photo Copyright: James Rainsford. Used with Permission.



receipt roll messiah

steam punk chimera

God of catalogues

and credit checks

hollowed be my name

your strip mall come

your bill be won

in parliament

as it is in tax havens

give us this day our 10% percent off

forgive us our store points

lead us not to customer services

for thine is the system

the power and the profit

take my skin

in lieu of payment

see me as I am

with an armful of appliances

spine curved to the longing 

for emptiness and overdrafts

hatch me from the bones of your boardrooms

forever

and ever

amen

his loneliness my heartbeat

Atenolol his heart his heart
morning moves
in chinos and hem lines
multi storey car park
new brick slick economy of
virtue
pencil skirt smirk
hush now inbetweeners
spirit level schizophrenics
tip the bar
zip lipped sleeping bag
his home his home
Graham you have my fathers name
Tegretol he drinks he drinks
sinks into the lowest of his murmurs
cider by the litre thick with love
no needles
dual carriageway
Hemmingway without the Dakari's
he calls me a good girl, a lezzy
a sweetheart, his M4
assault rifle memories
numbed by the gasp of death he chose to take
intake
and take again
wrists scarred by the fat belly of our
indifference
how we hope
with rope with rope
he lives
she is my love,
cupped in corporate hands, I do not own her, rent her or expect her to love but she does this perpetual agreement a peace a slice amongst a maelstrom of lengthening
bullshit hits me like a skin stripped revelation of grace laced with a kiss so sweet you'd beg me to share it she loves she loves no tide no pull no shitstorm a calm autumn late summer grew our quiet bones stitched me open the horizon of a city car park watermarked pages pure porous pull me in and in
I think thick through this hope
I think thick
through this hope billowing
blue stars and my
throat

my cannibal

dust me into the soft dawn
fingers like lathes
we are all
carpenters
I flick
cigarette ash
onto the concrete pavement it falls
like a paintbrush
an old man fresh from the temple
blends it into a canvas
of earth and sky with his worn
down sandal, his slight stoop
the way
he limps
a sore hip or
just age giving shape to my detritus
this morning the bins
shook their fists as their throats
emptied into the dislocated
jaw of a machine
held for a moment
in metallic arms
then swiftly gulped, crushed
my street cannibalising itself and
me regurgitating
me

June 1961

I remember steam leaving
I was present in the particles
a guttural coo of air
draining from the bleed holes
side rods, valve gears, pistons
abstracted by the cautious hand
of post war capitol
June 1961
cut from the dying lungs
of the lower don valley
voltage
advancing down the branch lines
eager electrons
perpetuated
by circuitry and the unravelling cocoon of suburbia
metro-land
stitched to the machine of pinstriped pay checks
magnetic north of square mile sailors
everything
atomised around it
a complex
cobweb of commuters
neatly packaged in
8 car parades of necessity
weight of a man
leaning on a dead mans handle

pizzicato punks

anvil marriages
in flux bebop polemics
poli tick tick ticks
I'll demean it Charlie
you, me and Kansas City
boroughs borders bowed
to medieval guilds
privilege smuggled
beneath parliamentary prowess
high res spec
ulation
even Atlee sighed
but we
are vectors
walking bass lines
complex
syncopation straying
from cathedral steps
beyond that one square mile
ricocheting splinters
above the heads of aldermen and mayors
altered incubators
fingers curled around the neck
pizzicato punks
scroll to endpin
four quarter notes
to the bar

make your own mantra

A 9th century Nagaraja Guardstone from Sri Lanka on display at the V&A

catacomb womb

a 

plutonic self creation

an igneous

anatomy

hip thrust

atibanga

beatnik

naga raja

candlestick

purna ghata

teardrop in an upturned denture

Allen Ginsberg’s bowels

cat a comb

womb


a
plu
tonic self creation

an
igneous
anatomy

hip thrust

atibanga

beatnik

naga raja

candlestick

purna ghata

teardrop in an upturned denture

Allen Ginsberg’s bowels

fell fall fell

how the unsure wind

widens

just studs

the bare embankment

mottled

past tense pageantry

the parallels

parallels find no friction

just the smooth slow

slide of a manufactured

curve

clean you see clean

tidy

today the clouds

look like callouses

bruised by the skin

of the sky

and when that sun sets sets

sets split ends

whisper it

split ends copper strands

cross linked polyethylene

insulated orators

we are

insulated orators

What to call it?

those disparate streams David 
they ribbon into twisted hums
of soliloquies made of barns
and watching barns
geometric lines
the curve of the horizon
like the cusp of something culpably 
sublime and mathematical 
I want to feel that sweat, that salt
that tornado that bent your face to it's grid
I want to logically determine the wind
your loneliness
lyrically alive in those 
carefully 
chosen
words and diatribes 
stitched between the leanness of 
narrative
meta- narrative
mid west Mecca 
meta of autonomy
the smell of burning corn
co-ordinates of culpa 
crawling through the ligaments 
of is and is
the inner worlds we knit
and knot into a hubris of longing
how we fantasize and fetishize the high of the high we wish for 
let me crack that ball
cleanly 
knowing the bend of the breeze
the pock marked tarmac
let me not know 
of straight lines
let me breathe
in the depth 
of what
is broken
imperfect 

xy

she feeds her own fiction

firm thoughts loosen their roots

disowning the dirt

the debris of change

chapters chiselled out of undertow and myth

her mind tilled

and spilled into a scar filled river

Styx, her corridors

collide in your water

she's your daughter

dancing on the welds

and bolt holes of balance

tear those womblike walls

let her break

the banks of her own self loathing

drained

by the demolishing of love

a stray

earth

current

conducts the wake

of her imagination

time

on it’s tip toes

tired of belonging

if we were profits

shapes bend

and buck stuck

to the skin of our thin

our thinnest meaning

gleaming teeth

unsheathe

echo chambers

mouths

that crowd

around the parables

of pity by committee

we pull apart

our start

and hand it to the wind

pinned

to the politics of purpose

I ache

I ache to awake

from the gloss of our loss

of our losses

she crosses

on the ballot next to

ambivalence

antipathy and rye

caustic shrugging

drugging hope

with a cautious poison

tighten your belt

accept the hand

you were dealt

by the crooked

croupier

like platelets

a soft accumulation

of stars

the obsolete sky

abundant

spitting colour

it's an odd scar

the years end

scissors snip the stitches

not knowing

how it will heal

a half smile on my skin

a rubicon

I'm unmoved

all that seems different

is the sky

trying to find it's voice

it's tongue made of Jupiter

lips poised

clinging

to an imagined shape

as each word arises

it pops

and fizzles

stuttering into a shower of sparks

a bark

of frustration

a small

pear shaped puddle

beneath the canopy

of the station entrance

the warm

orange glow of a street lamp

reflected

a flame without a candle

amongst the yellow grid

of a parking space

and suddenly i'm

thinking about Bukowski

specifically his bare feet

his one pair of shoes

his floppy laces

have I ever seen

the Edge of myself?



*last line ripped straight outta "see here, you" by charles bukowski - his line goes "you have never seen the Edge of yourself"

my paper autumn

is it fitful

the way that pleat

of peace

that corrugated hope

form canyons in your mind?

and all that growing

growing inside growing

spring inside of winter

vowels inside of nouns

your sinuous

shape

even words

undulate

they wail

silhouette and outline

what it is

and it is

it is

somehow

in this accordion fold

in this leaf

a radial spectrum

my

paper

autumn

walking into sound

Rain Dance by Tera Zajack

toward polaroid doorways

the gasping mouths

of windows

washboard walls

and yes

the rain

it's

leaning

I don't need stairs

I take the slow

slope

over cobbles that are really

stepping stones gathering to roost

I am inside the instrument

walking into sound

that mouthpiece arch

the closed

lips of memory

 

 

Offered as part of a poetics prompt challenge over at Dverse Poets inspired by the art of Tera Zajack with thanks to Brian Miller