Words For People

2012-02-06T16:45:00.002+04:00

Tongue turned cat-like in the course of the night,

Rasping against the backs of wine-dark teeth,

I am terrified of saying something wrong

And getting kicked out of your garden,

Where the avocado tree in your window-sill

And the grass at my feet fulfill the need of

Blocking out all the concrete world around us.

There is a fear of betrayal, here; I was taught

how gardens work.

So I sit, in the quiet moment and with wine,

Waiting to see what your flaming sword

Will become.

Errantry

2012-02-01T01:39:00.000+04:00

Twice a week & sometimes thrice
We go a-hunting for the grail;
Some nights, we clean up nice,
And other knights, we fail.

The thing cures ills and memory,
This is said about the grail,
But it smacks of ephemery,
Sung by beggars, old and frail.

This we know: the thing's a cup,
When we go hunting for the grail;
So we go and drink things up,
Water, whiskey, and bitter ale.

2012-01-23T13:29:00.001+04:00

Empty bottles. My mouth is a pit.
Like rain I didn't know to expect,
Last night falls in pieces about me.
Rising from my bed in the noon light,
I step in a puddle of your words, mine,
And wind throws up the look of your face.

There is no shelter from this drowning,
No breath without water
And all the dry comfort in the world
Is knowing that somewhere you are
Also drenched.

A Wandering Song

2012-01-09T11:23:00.001+04:00

I went out to the darkened bar,

Because a hole was in my chest;

I drank till tongue and teeth were smooth,

Till wind and moonlight were the best.
And when the people flickered by
Some were snared by ether, by pin,

And we sang our own forgotten songs,

Songs that were made for drowning in.

When I awoke upon the floor,

Blasted, bloated, quite alone,

I tried and failed to sleep some more,

And pretend that I was home.

My breast was sated for a time,

While I was unsure of my name,

But by and by my thoughts grew whole,

And I was left an empty frame.

Though I'm tired now of going

With hollow folk, and sorrow folk,

Still I'll dance, & still I'll stumble,

Still I'll sing, & still I'll choke,

And with my hands that know the night

Refill the whole I have become

With all the things that bless the moon

And turn to nothing in the sun.

For Rose, and all the daughters.

2012-01-02T17:17:00.000+04:00

If the deeper waters are closed to me now,

If moonlight can only tell me of distance,

If even the easy rhymes crumble,

Let me have the oil-slick puddles

And muggy days, wine-bottles sun-warmed,

But free,

And walking before sprinting before escape velocities,

And before carriages,

So let us wade in the warm and salt,

Maybe there are tides here too.

Dear Sir or Ma'am:

2011-12-14T20:33:00.001+04:00

You are a better person than I,
By which I mean:
Better at being a person than I,
And I love you,
And you are always in my head,

And I think that
is how we came by god.

The problem with poets.

2011-10-22T16:26:00.005+04:00

The problem with poets
Is they think you're a vessel
To carry all their thoughts
And the things that they wrestle.

Not once does it occur,
As they wail & gnash & moan
And pour out all their words,
That you've got some of your own.

There are no empty cups;
We each hold something wet.
Some have begun to leak,
And the others haven't yet.

Dubious

2011-09-16T12:13:00.001+04:00

Some hot damned night and I'm a foreigner;
The familiar hotel glass sweats with me,
And the familiar muzak lies about my being here,
Away, away from that scorned reality

Where folks fuck up if they don't just fuck,
Where words that might matter are permitted,
Where I am close to the girl who is the crux
Of endless, bloodless, somehow limited

Amour, some nemesis she has become,
Living in a skin that has gone away
For the weekend. This glass, my muffled drum,
Will only let stare or let me pray.

I don't pray. And then the glass is empty,
And of the emptiness inside it I have plenty.

2011-09-12T13:36:00.000+04:00

I spill some blood behind the door,
Since it's good luck and I have more.
I spill my words within the church;
You could find them if you searched.
I spill my water at the grave,
And then it's easier to be brave.
I spill some rock salt at the gate,
The people at the grave to sate.
I spill my hours in the night,
As I rather thought I might;
And spill some seed before I'm home
Because it's hard to be alone.

Poem Imitating MacNeice

2011-08-04T21:31:00.000+04:00

And the earth conspires to
Set fire to the golden times,
When we were young, better
Unfettered to our bolder crimes,
The sirens chime,
And smoke rises higher.

2011-04-02T16:59:00.001+04:00

Memories stick like the stink of loves
Pale and hungover, spitefully thankful
For escape from a blackness that would shove
Solitude at them like a grim peddler.

And tonight there are no loves or showers
Or drink enough to disentangle me
From their stagnant embrace, nor are powers
That-be-not inclined to let time flow on,

Happy though they are to rob me of light
On the smokey days when it deigns to fall
Upon eyes and throat and pages that might
Otherwise cobweb between pendula.

Free of these, I might progress to better form -
But still they cling, and still they keep me warm.

Two Dreams

2011-03-29T21:30:00.002+04:00

I dreamt that Renard the fox sat at the foot of the stairs in a trenchcoat, thinking about The Man Who Ate Stories. Renard knew that he was just a bit player in a much bigger game, but he couldn't think of a way out of the snares of teeth and hair waiting from him outside. The grey mouse sat in a hole in the wall some feet from Renard; he had never known the fox to stop chasing him for long or to be so silent, and so he sat waiting like a wound for a knife.
Renard fumbled in his coat pocket for something to eat.
He took out a burnt, misshapen bit of pastry.
"Alright. You caught me. I'm the gingerbread man," it said.
"Someone fed you a line, pal," said Renard, popping him into his mouth.

I dreamt again, and I was a young man in a coffee shop, watching as a princess took a lighter to her older sister's dream, which her sister loved, just to see if it would work. Crushed, her older sister ran out of the shop and dissolved to witchery, bending me into the shape of a cat as she did. Her younger sister watched her go, but did not look at me; she was the heir apparent now, and while it did not make her any happier, she was not disappointed either.

Egg Lips

2011-02-13T15:12:00.001+04:00

The moon is hard and full
and tasteless
at the back of my throat.
I can breathe, just, but the words
Are hard coming.

You carry the sun with you,
Like pocket change,

And the astronomers
Have people beating on their doors
In the dark.

Flatpack Fermeture

2011-02-13T15:10:00.001+04:00

"And what kind of good,"
he said,
"is an infinity of monkeys
& typewriters
If they didn't mean
A damned word?"

Albus

2011-02-08T22:53:00.001+04:00

Eyes closed on a crowded beach,
Drowning the Greek children's
laughter in the rising
tide, I wonder what all this talk
of we is for,
And whether or not I could write
You a less jagged world,
Or if it wouldn't still hurt.

Sestina, Fixed & Finished

2010-12-18T02:20:00.002+04:00

Yesterday’s Sestina
The girl was a dark curve of honey,

Sharp and shapely, and too painful and clear,

Shivering like a glass fortress with lips

That burned you long after your mind was dead.

A solid, searing kiss to remember

Alone at night, drinking liquor like milk.

The world was her breath and life was her milk,

And amber now pools where she once gave honey,

When time was too young for anyone to remember

To look up if suddenly the sky grew clear

And revealed some hapless fool struck dead.

With her unfading warmth still red on his lips.

Grey men think of her and bite, hard, their lips

To stop the flow of tears from eyes milk-

White and listless, staring as the dead

Do, smelling of incense and old honey,

Shaking heads and singing bad songs to clear

Away hard past loves, and not have to remember

The days when life was short, nor remember

When they were as young as she, and rubbed lips

And hips, the oldest dance. The skies were clear,

Like love, and life was always theirs to milk-

But years came to them, like flies to honey,

And though she remained, their dance was long dead.

Eternal youth, like hers, was a sweet dead-

End, every night a night to remember,

Every day forgotten. Think of honeyed

Fingertips, sugared breath and marble lips,

As we utter soft lies like curdled milk,

Staining a love we once thought soft, or clear.

At long last, now, the way ahead is clear;

Stop this love of the forgotten and undead,

Turn on the lights, pour a fresh glass of milk,

Forget all that you’d wish to remember,

Waste no more thoughts on her pink-silken lips,

And purge prayers to the smell of honey.

Milky thighs and clear heavens,
Honey when the bees are complacent, or dead;
Remember to keep simple things on your lips

2010-11-23T08:53:00.000+04:00

Porchside with tea-cup ensemble,
Seeing legs eclipse along the pavement,
Accompanied at times by a smile,
And sometimes not,
This could be star-gazing.

Scarves

2010-10-21T10:26:00.001+04:00

I liked it best in winter,
Hands too cold to betray the clamminess
That you inspired,
You wrapped up like some secret
Between me and you and the doctors.

Gilbert

2010-10-11T09:36:00.000+04:00

This is a mitigation,

A tawdry set of footnotes

Their asterisks the meagre gloam

Of an urban skyline; a quiet smoke

Between further excavations or

The distant sound of laughter.

Why is it that we should take notice

and say

I am happy now

as if we might forget what we

just wrote by turning the page?

Shanty

2010-10-01T08:38:00.001+04:00

My hands are strapped to the ship's wheel, and I'm having that dream again. It's supposed to make sailors steer better in high winds, but I'm just a drunk and my boat is a bottle and my first mate is passed out in the salted nuts. Froth hits me in the eye.
"Another round?" asks the god of the sea, and I throw coins at him in supplication until he leaves. Bad omen, that. We're headed for the happiest place on earth, and at fifteen knots we'll get there before the end of happy hour. Some dog screeches 'bottoms up,' and I beat him with my ship until he stops tempting fate like that. The sea god is back again, and he says he should cut me off, but I am captain of this ship. He tries to becalm us; just then the lurching of the floor tells me land is in sight, so I get on my knees and pray for just one more round of wind and I'll be good, I promise, put it on my tab Marty, it's a cold winter and he pours a life boat down my throat to get me to that dark and happy island where the sun doesn't rise till non, and it's so quiet here.

2010-09-24T17:56:00.000+04:00

Grass at my feet,
and I can tell I'm drunk again
by the way the moon winces at me.
It's getting too dark to tell the persons
from the shadows; I've whiled away
the time
by giving the mirror his
faces back,
And this is my last one.

Heliconditions.

2010-07-21T04:03:00.001+04:00

Resigned to the fact of growth

I've taken to wandering,

Greeting the more sinister memories

And tiptoeing around their pitfalls

In search of those honeyed moments

That I forgot almost immediately.

We woke to this ankle-deep,

Lurching and meeting eyes

In the hopes that our ignorance

Was not betrayed.

I am usually by the sea,

But there have been many seas

And shores.

How My Body Works

2010-07-10T23:51:00.001+04:00

Feet for walking,
Noses to smell,
Fingers to feel,
And smiles to do well.
Pockets for pens,
And hands for the wine;
Hair for the sunlight,
And wrists for the time.
Mouths for the wine again,
And for the speech,
For regret, for lies,
For what peaches taste like.
Eyes for you,
But remember what mouths are for.
Teeth for threats.
Bones for feelings,
Livers for idiocy,
Hearts for coffee,
Lips for other lips, on a good day,
Or an especially bad one.
Fingernails.
Palms for conversation,
Thumbs for approval,
Toes for curling,
Ears for ignoring,
Spine for cringing,
Blood for bleeding,
Scars for doing whatever you like,
Legs for tar,
Lungs for the same thing,
And the rest is for making it up.

2010-02-14T15:21:00.000+04:00

I learned the meaning of the word 'repose'

From a girl lying in her sky-blue dress,

Prone, on the back seat of the bus. I suppose,

Depending on what it is you're looking for,

This renders the girl and her bus somehow more -

And me, my books on the Romantics, somehow less.

Mayannaise

2010-02-14T15:19:00.000+04:00

My illusions don't shatter. If they shattered, they'd be like bits of glass, and I could pick over them and find a piece I liked and, squinting, look at the world through it, allowing the illusion to live on; that doesn't happen.
Instead, my illusions are like spoiled mondegreens, or tricks of the light - when taking one step forward or one step sideways alerts you to the fact that the smiling tourist isn't actually holding up the tower of Pisa, and that the rock formation isn't a face after all - and even once you move back into your previous spot, you can't quite trick yourself into buying it again.

Foxgloves.

2010-01-09T14:59:00.000+04:00

Mmm. A little derivative, but first thing of the year.

Fictional love scratches at my nape
As a Spanish cover band ruins a song
That some girl might once have liked.
The room's quiet; it won't last long,
But round noontime everybody thinks the same thing,
Just with different faces. Then we escape
To lucky hour - they had to toss the gin
Anyway, so we'll take it. Last round was spiked
With something or other, but nobody cares.
It's free, right? Bar phone rings,
And we all look up, our blood-clot shame shared
As our gazes sink back down to drinks grown thin.

We were bar-flies once, but someone tore off our wings.

With insincere apologies.

2009-12-13T00:09:00.001+04:00

Harlequin mannequins serve me house red
As screens compartmentalise the whistle
and the smell of grass, both going to my head
Like sex or idiots, birds who aren't so brittle
As I, as to be forced to pen down the moment
Of purgative hurt, and thrust it at these traffic-light faces
Repetitively, in the hopes that at some distant moment,
Someone might read it, and we might switch places.

Epilogue

2009-11-30T11:30:00.001+04:00

The green strip of dawn makes me think of airports, and of school
trips. Wrapped up in blankets, that out-of-place sadness of a rain-
soaked beach resort; I want to be leaning against the railing and
watching as the world ends, competing with you be the first to name
the last unmade thing, our laughter steaming the air around us as the
stars begin to wink out, without any great objection.

For Want Of

2009-11-24T15:39:00.000+04:00

A mulch-grey solitary morning
Bejewelled by coffee, jam,
Things that make me normal (boring)
Like the people across the street,
With their cars and children
And crying into their pillows,
And the dogs around their feet.

I chew at blackened bread,
Thinking of the dishes I will wash,
And of the things I will have said
To myself when I am done.
I would go walking but for the rain,
And crying into their pillows,
Things would be better in the sun.

2009-10-30T22:50:00.001+04:00

This stone man sits flaking in the chapel
Behind curtains drawn for the past two days,
Stale breath and discarded pamphlets
His carpeting. Some or other grease
Lines the stove-top, forming alphabets
With the coffee rings and steady distant
Drip of the plumber not being called.
Pumice eyelids scrape along bare
Walls, desperate for someone to
look at.

2009-10-22T12:10:00.001+04:00

Voice-box splintered, blocking the escape

Of whatever dark-haired thing this bottle held,

Whose brittle words would grasp you by the nape

In breathless skin-red, enough to weld

Your disparate bones together and pound

The necessary new shapes from your waste.

Gone now, though, perhaps to offer her mound

To some thirsty fuck as yet unspoiled by taste,

While you squat bristle-tongued and disappointing,

Picking at rouged cigarette ends

To reconstruct that shambling faceless thing

She was, to motivate your leeching pen.

Though muscle mends and days keep on,

No-one will rebuild Helicon.

Defenestrated

2009-10-10T15:50:00.000+04:00

Rustwater and walls stained by nicotine tides;

Baby screams next door, in time with sirens.

Searching for a moment away, a second to hide

From the filth and the fingernails -

But this crusted portal fails

To offer any respite. Sigh, returning

To the squalor that will not be still -

But a burst of colour stops it dead.

Strawberries in the windowsill,

Green fading to red.

2009-10-09T22:51:00.000+04:00

A tongue sour like metal and a torn up mattress;

I can't look at you anymore.

The same car-lights circle the block,

Filtered through a window coated in frost or icing-sugar

Or dusted dreams.

There are some animal sounds in the distance

That turn the lights red,

So I guess they won the game.

Overused Imagery

2009-10-09T03:03:00.001+04:00

The spool must whirl,
Though we lean back to muse
On finer threads -
Those long since snapped
And only tangled
Here,
Inside our heads

Soliterror

2009-10-05T03:51:00.003+04:00

Inordinately pleased with the title, at least.

The house creaks like old teeth.

Daylight's invasions seem welcome now,

Its steady curtain-crawling all too brief

Now that cold tiles & distant traffic

Listen to remote breath

And an unblessed sneeze.

Fireplay 1

2009-09-28T01:54:00.008+04:00

Riffing shamelessly on an old, geeky theme. Sorry, having fun. Hi.

And so, Prometheus the Titan who had helped Zeus win the war against the Titans, the grinning dark-eyed child of Oceanis, came to walk the earth, which was still being formed.

The gods, the new gods, who were younger than he, and far more naive, yes, but finer-crafted things too, were uneasy around him. He, the walking reminder of a war that they had been fighting since the day they were born, and now had to try and shunt behind them as they took up the task of land-building and life-making. Hades was alright - he was too stunned to be rude, stunned at having been assigned to rule the still-empty underworld, the concept of death more remote even than the peaks of Olympus he had been obliged to abandon - but the rest didn't know what to say to him. Didn't really want to have anything to say to him. Prometheus, too, was on unfamiliar footing with these upstart divinities. His brothers and sisters had had no thunderbolts to hurl, nor chariots made of the sun; they had been content to fight or fuck or feast or just doze, drifting in the cosmos - what need for tools or palaces?

But it was a new place, and Prometheus was adaptable. This was why he still lived, unfettered - this and because Zeus was still a young god-king, who had not yet discovered treachery; indeed, Prometheus had not yet invented treachery for Zeus to discover it. But that would come.

In this time, when things were still taking shape - like construction lines in a drawing - far, far more so than ever after, names were important; they gave things shape, they gave things purpose. They put things in the place that they would come to fill. And Prometheus, being even older than Zeus, than Poseidon, had a particularly important name. Some thought it to be derived from 'pro-manthano'; before-learning, or forethought. One who looks before he leaps. Of course, because Prometheus was such a mysterious character, and one who had lived as long as he had, with many stories to his name, conflicting theories emerged. One such was that his name came from a phrase in another language; 'pra math', which means "to steal." Prometheus was both forward-thinking and a thief; back then, there was enough space for things and people to contain contradictions.

There was, perhaps, one goddess who did not make excuses to leave his presence quite so quickly as the others, nor work quite so hard to avoid his eyes - eyes that had watched stars pull together from the infinite maw of nothingness and neither blinked nor glazed, but had merely watched, and laughed. She was Juno, Zeus' bride. Before, back during the wars, she had been a whir of blood and teeth and nails, many-armed and many-mouthed - but things had cooled and settled since then, and she had become paler, more ivory and matronly, though she had yet to birth her first godling. With nothing to kill and nothing to mother, she was growing bored - and Prometheus was interesting. He did not divvy up the land, greedily and wet-fisted like her brothers - nor did he steep himself in the blood and granite that the other dead Titans seemed beholden to.

He played with clay, and sang to make the flowers. He grinned at shadows.

Back then, every goddess was a fertility goddess.

You Can't Be Sirius

2009-09-26T14:53:00.001+04:00

Pink skin wraps around the
Mustard eyes of the liminal
Runt,
Which glance with disdain
At your passing shins
and return to their sewer-
grate.

2009-09-02T00:31:00.001+04:00

We drink until we forget the world,

And someone else's fingertips are inside ours,

Like gloves.

The sorts of mornings we've been having.

2009-08-28T01:00:00.001+04:00

Madness sit on a bus with a hole in the middle

Devouring his segment of the horizon

While the threshold dog looks on

Smoke-eyed and disquieted.

Hand or Eye

2009-08-18T23:04:00.001+04:00

Pen in hand and shorn of company,
I grunt cave-wards, in the hopes
Of stabbing some distant thought
And trapping it in ink or blood,

Skinning it and wearing the tiger,
That friends might mistake me
For some deeper jackal,
While the beast remains

Unfettered by my bars,
Still stalking and chewing
On stray hearts, no less free
For my four-letter efforts

To change things.

Dangle Angle

2009-08-09T23:05:00.000+04:00

Brothers,

Sharing the moon is not enough.

I drench this straining leash with wine,

With song, with dark and furtive love,

With whatever blood there is,

And still I feel the tug, the distant line

Of teeth that grinned with me

And laughter shared

And where is all that now?

Come, or stay where you are,

And let me follow your puppetry.

Feet

2009-08-09T01:18:00.002+04:00

There's an intersection near my parent's place in Dubai that I run past six or seven times a year, and every time I pass it I think about a guy I barely know from my childhood. Every time.

If I cross a certain bridge in the town of my upbringing, I will reflect on a certain kind of man's tendency to talk about his job whenever possible.

There is a stretch of road in Rome that I've associated inextricably with a couple of bars in a Weird Al Yankovic parody.

I'm not saying these links I'm not saying these links need to go any deeper than hearing a song in a certain place or thinking a certain thought near a relevant landmark, but they are uncanny.

I find this with running, in particular - running a particular route will direct my thoughts into a particular direction. There are routes for thinking about nothing; there are routes for being melancholy; there are routes for quiet contentment. Obviously weather and company has a huge role here, but all the same - I always think about writing and the return on investment in writing when I mount a particular part of the pavement while running the quiet contentment route in Cape Town. I find myself running a particular 'route' in my mind.

Bruce Chatwin, in his book The Songlines, talks about - among other things - the theory that the songs/poems of aboriginal Australian tribes are road-maps describing the landscape of their nomadic territories; in some cases he even goes so far as to suggest that every metrical 'foot' describes a step in the journey. The belief, ostensibly, is that these places had been 'sung' into belief by various totemic deities, and that by singing these same songs while on walkabout, native Australians would not only be able to find their way, but ensure the existence of their destination. The song and the place are intrinsically linked.

There's a parking lot in Manila that, when seen from the right angle, makes me think about the relationship between memory and location. Actually it's been so long since I've seen that parking lot (it may have been demolished, or rebuilt) that the reverse is true - thinking about the relationship between memory and location makes me think about the seeing the parking lot in Manila, from the right angle.

This is what I think about shortly after I've considered the return on investment in writing on my quiet contentment route, barring company, or poor weather.

Cave Paintings

2009-08-06T19:59:00.001+04:00

Gloom, the chill of the looking-glass
Creeps dark-eyed and trailing naught
But stifling silence - and will not pass
Or leave or speak, squatting tersely in these thoughts.

2009-07-27T23:57:00.001+04:00

The 24-hour point hurt the most. The hours before that hadn't been
much less pleasant, but realising I'd been gone for a full day, a full
rotation of the earth - that felt somehow like some invisible thread
had just been snapped, like throwing out the sheets you'd made love in
for the last time. The other arbitrary fringes of time - the first
week, month, year - stabbed in turn, each one slightly duller than the
last, another spool in the mechanism of distance being wound out.
Laundry was difficult too; having to concede to the washing away of
the dust, grit and sweat of a happier time seemed cruel punishment.
Drying and ironing, at least, were better; losing myself in the
monotony of movement, I could've been anywhere and anyone. The zen of
oblivion allowed me to rationalise distance and separation and hurt by
stoutly not thinking about them. Of course, my bag of wrinkled clothes
had to end eventually, but I emerged slightly better for the
experience.

2009-07-21T14:46:00.000+04:00

Slender fingers.
He'd be lying if he said that was the first thing that had struck him about his companion - but he was a good liar, and besides, it was close enough to the truth to be irrelevant.
Again, he swirled his untouched drink, diluted now by the sad expiry of ignored ice. Fumbling, some of the stuff slopped it onto his thumb and forefinger. It smelled cheap over the ice and clung to his nostrils, stuck to the roof of his mouth.
He waded through uncomfortably new emotion - uncharted territory. He was lonely.
Slender fingers, like an aristocrat's. Or a pianist. Had he played...? Doubtful. Elegant though they had appeared, they were dull, often clumsy - like their maker had been an artist, rather than a mechanic. Which, he reflected, had suited the owner just fine; all the appearance of a role without having to perform it.

Lacunita

2009-07-19T03:32:00.001+04:00

I probe my chest for her silhouette,
For some hidden well of steel or stone;
Here are the hooks I'll last forget,
Before, save photographs, I wake alone.

Farewell, miss.

Guh.

2009-07-18T01:00:00.004+04:00

Nebulous, these pins of youth

Snag like passing fingernails

Swimming in soup. Tooth-

less, I can only wade, wail,

Fumbling at distant locks,

Knocked aside by stones and skin.

Lips of wood and eyes of rocks,

You know only where you've been.

Looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places.

2009-07-14T20:55:00.000+04:00

Hideous, backed up against a
Menagerie of gentle lies
We shake loose twigs of laughter
That don't reach our eyes,
And their shades of sorrow.

Drip

2009-06-21T13:08:00.001+04:00

The joyful splatter of the storm's first raindrops
Erupt against the concrete at the girl's shoe,
Like too many first kisses. She breathes, then stops
To open her umbrella, and find something dry to do.

Djinn

2009-06-13T00:26:00.001+04:00

Wine-jug of old words and significant scents,
I can only be grateful.

That's All

2009-06-09T18:14:00.002+04:00

Yellow-eyed strangers won't release your gaze,
Sliding breathless into their blue nights.

In this land you're out of place,
Pale man, with nothing left but fright.

Shameless Doggerel

2009-06-08T21:38:00.000+04:00

As the alcohol outwards slowly drips
By sunken eyelids and by fingertips
We think of lovers, and we think of flaws;
We think the tender thoughts that give us pause.

We look at distant shapes and yellow moons,
At the loves and laughter that end too soon,
At the lips and eyes that give way to rhyme;
The flourish of pen that erodes with time.

We write the one-eyed god, nailed to a tree,
And the young men who don’t know what to be;
We write the stories, stolen from past ages,
To fill the bulk of dissatisfying pages.

05/30

2009-06-05T19:14:00.001+04:00

Walking along a stream which usually trickles soundlessly, but has been sped up to the point of rushing by the recent rains, I hear the sound of a duck close by. It echoes. It's loud, and I stop walking, intrigued by the thought of a duck in this neck of suburbia, and scan the housing complexes for it. Eventually I catch a movement in time with the quacking sounds; on top of a six-story block of flats, dull and yellow-bricked, it perches, calling like some comical gargoyle. It's mottled, a mallard or something - I don't know, I've never stopped to learn the names of ducks. On reflection, perhaps I ought to. After calling - let's face it, after quacking, it's a word I'm loathe to write down, but that's what it's doing. Quacking. After some minute or two of quacking - and remember, I'm standing across the road, in the light rain and lighter wind, staring at it - another joins it, flying out from nowhere like some avenging angel, landing with an audible thump next to its silenced partner. The two retreat towards the centre of the building, to conduct their duck business in private, leaving me unenlightened.

Quack.

Not really poetry, but fun to write.

2009-05-25T06:53:00.001+04:00

There'll be an army of poets.
A phalanx, in fact; marching in
Flawed tetrameter.

Ah, well. None will know to know it,
Till it's too late, when they're within,
All rhyming at her.

Or not rhyming. They do that too,
Poets. They can do whatever they want,
So long as they don't

Repeat someone by accident.
Then off come the gloves, out the pens-
(No-one knows what happens then).
Bollocks, someone's broken meter -

Harder to herd than clouds, these chaps.
And a bit wetter.
Anyway, what were we here for?
Some golden fleece, or – oh, no right,
To get into her

Head. (Nice enjambment there, by the by)
(Always raise eyebrows, says I)
I'd have aimed lower,
The better to know her,
But this isn't some cheap limerick.

13.5%

2009-05-19T03:20:00.000+04:00

Our time was the disappointment
Of a drunk pouring out an empty wine bottle
Turned emerald by his endeavours.

That is to say;
Our time was beautiful,
Once everything was gone.

Polyphemus' Lament

2009-05-19T01:05:00.001+04:00

Ah, girls, my distant lullabyes;
How much sounder is my sleep,
Now I've forgot your eyes.

brb

2009-05-19T00:58:00.000+04:00

I worry that my children's generation will write suicide notes with
emoticons.

Blue Sheets

2009-05-18T01:28:00.000+04:00

Shaking between breathless thoughts
That call your eyes their home,
What fear is there, if it is not
That you are still alone?

Reef Rain

2009-05-17T02:45:00.000+04:00

Rain, dropping like distant applause,
Falls on bitter men in bitter guise;
Only one of them is moved to pause,
And regard the mourning sky.

Rain, fat and salty-slick,
Torn from ceiling shrouds of grey -
They will not look up past the sticks
And regard the mourning sky.

Bloc

2009-05-16T20:02:00.000+04:00

> Temperamental
> inkwell,
> Who can track your tides?

Who could shrug at this?

2009-05-14T12:19:00.000+04:00

They run,
Not playing at being aeroplanes, or bears,
Or anything in particular.
Just a daughter perched on her father's shoulders,
Leaving a wake of silver laughter
Hanging in the chill air.

He, Atlas,
She, his world.

2009-05-12T18:25:00.000+04:00

Sometimes - today, anyway - I wonder if the Santa Clause thing is done to prepare us for the other times when we find out we've built our reality under a misconception.

Red Light, Green Thumb

2009-05-08T10:41:00.001+04:00

I watch the garden disrobe, quietly
And expertly, an old lover with time.
Wind plays with the dropped garments like a child,
Scattering the smell of apples and wine.

No sugar, either.

2009-05-08T10:40:00.000+04:00

Love unloads itself from my tongue,
Like some grim marble or foul tooth.
It cracks on the table and you, stunned,
Pick it up like a dropped finger,
Leaving your black coffee untouched.

All I Could Do To Keep The Speaker From Taking A Drag (From A Cigarette)

2009-04-29T22:26:00.000+04:00

"I had the usual thoughts that you're supposed to have if you think
you're enlightened. The sound of one hand clapping, whether my blue is
the same as your blue, and all that. And one that I'd thought was
particularly original, and powerful, was that one where you wonder if
you're really living your life, or if you're still in some stranger's
womb, dreaming about what your life will be.
I liked that thought. It was nice to think that this was all a dream.
And then I met you, and now what was once my greatest comfort keeps me
awake at night, wondering. Funny thing, love."

Reign In Your Parade

2009-04-29T16:17:00.000+04:00

Melancholy pleasure leaves spiders on the spine;
Like the quiet wails between a trumpet's breath
Like cooling flesh clutched tight beneath stars and darkness
Like watching the sun rise over the sea, together
Like rain and coffee and a barred window, alone.

Idle Worship

2009-04-23T22:48:00.000+04:00

Dog damned in abandoned seasides, thinking

Of the invisible dreamloves, and how

They felt in arms, beds and mouths not my own.

Pomegranates, all, but no Hades I

To convince them of their plight. This eclipsed

Space in the folds of her skirt had no chance

To track their crawling sun. Sit in this room

of words and sniff the citrus on my skin.

(Tell me where your heart has been)

Seconds To Go

2009-04-21T19:45:00.000+04:00

The second prince.

The second prince had not been close to his younger brother – or, really, to his elder brother; but he had shared with Primus the skill and interest in hunting and jousting and revelry that Triplous had not, and so the two were often lumped together. If not in the same hunt, then in the same forest; if not in the same bout then the same tournament; if not in the same booth then in the same tavern. The two were cordial, and – at rare moments – entirely fraternal; the relationship was strained, however, by the knowledge that one would inherit a kingdom, and the other a room in a castle. They did not speak of it – nothing needed to be said – but the uncomfortable silence was marked when a mead-addled gambler would remind Primus why he could afford to bet in every game, long after Secundus had retired to a corner booth.
Secundus did not grudge his brother his sense of entitlement; he was, after all, entitled.

Nor was he overly concerned at Triplous’ quietness, or his habit of befriending beggars and soothsayers and storytellers; he was far younger than the other two, and the son of another woman – a tavern girl or attendant, Secundus did not know. He was glad for the boy’s good fortune in securing for himself royalty; he had been surprised at his father’s recognition of a son who could easily have been shrugged off as another bastard. There had been others.
But the two were not close, and Triplous did not risk anything with his idiosyncrasies; Secundus had no complaints against him, did not have any real thoughts about him, to be honest.
He thought of smaller things – of the upcoming joust, of the cooling Autumn, of the money in his coffers, and of Rosaline, at the Jack’s Inn, and the slight swelling in her belly.

So, when the king, his father, began to sicken in his old age, and Primus began to argue with him over matters of policy, of propriety, when his elder brother saw fit to lodge elsewhere for weeks at a time, when his father began to call in certain soothsayers and storytellers for advice behind closed doors, when the quiet younger brother grew quieter but smiled more, and rumours about the heir apparent danced around the court, Secundus, understandably, had other things on his mind.

They say that three arrows were shot at noon from the palace grounds, in the direction of the Kingdom’s three realms; that the elder two laughed, because the arrows had fallen in the woods, which they knew like the back of their hands, while Triplous had spent all of his time among the villagers; that Triplous won the kingdom by getting to his arrow first, guided by the trees and the animals, which he had never hunted or molested. They say he was a good king.

This, of course, folk-lore. Only one arrow was ever shot, in the night, and at the time Secundus was not there; he was ten fingers, ten toes and nine months away. Ever after.

Dreams

2009-04-07T19:23:00.000+04:00

They take turns to avoid looking at me, these future selves of mine. Some wear wedding rings, like scars; some vice versa.
I can't tell if their reluctant gazes are pleading me to do the things that made them, or to run, run from the futures they represent.
Some simply stare, hungrily at me. I, the nascence of their squandered potential, I who have wasted so much already.

Tide-y

2009-04-07T19:20:00.000+04:00

Tangled locks, sugar-brown,
trace contours since slicked
by saltier hands than mine.

The old beachfront couple
that still held hands did
not smile at us. They
knew ours
was not theirs.

But still, lemons and seagulls
preserve you
when they will be ash
and the photos deleted.

A Love Story

2009-04-03T00:55:00.003+04:00

He leaned on tiptoes, over the drip-dripping basin, to see his reflection's shoes. They seemed to adequately match his shirt. Satisfied, they nodded to each other grimly, and walked out of the ill-lit bathroom.

Waist-Lands

2009-03-16T01:37:00.002+04:00

Wake up at the church-bells in your head,

And find yourself alone;

Remember, aching, what was said,

And start the stumble home.

Purse (Phony)

2009-03-12T13:24:00.000+04:00

Cerberus, at least,
was never lonely -

Whose Persephone
are you,
that I must
watch you so,
Alone?

Low Fat Vanillanelle

2009-03-12T13:22:00.002+04:00

Twilight makes the shadows long,
The air like wine, flesh like milk;
Broken clocks aren’t always wrong.

Even fools must sing their songs -
Naked, clad in finest silk,
Twilight makes their shadows long.

We choose when to love – or long,
Broken clocks aren’t always wrong.

Earthbound angels don’t belong
Cut off, stone-faced from their ilk;
Broken clocks aren’t always wrong.
Twilight makes the shadows long.

1955

2009-03-12T10:20:00.001+04:00

Hullo.

They tell me this ought to be a love letter. It is February the 14th, 19__, and it is the day when I should send you a letter of love.
This is difficult for me, you understand. It is a challenge, a boundary that they say I must cross. After what happened with you and Jean-Luc, in particular, it is difficult to do what they call love and not do what they call atrocious rage.
I am being asked to feel and not feel.

Do you remember when we were young? I hate questions I am not a fan of questions like that. They are difficult, they are rhetorical, they are not real. They are statements hiding themselves as questions. ‘Would you like to come inside’, as you and I both know, Lois, means ‘I would like to take you to my bed and make love to you’. There are other hidden meanings, though. I thought of writing a book of translations, but it seems I’d just be writing it into my own language. No-one would read it – so why should I write it?
Maybe when I am old, I will want that book, to help me remember what people are saying when they pretend to be asking. But I do not think that I will be asked to come inside when I am old; already, I can feel my father’s paunch growing about me, and my grandfather’s stoop is making itself know about my shoulder blades. I will not age handsomely.

I remember, when we were young; we were practicing at being lovers. I was the astrophile, you my Stella – but no, perhaps not. I could touch you, and hold you. You could hold back, though. In both senses, I suppose, but what I mean is that you could grab hold of my neck, and my arms my shoulders and bite at me, which was fine, but you could look at me like no other, Lois. We were young, and the lights were golden, but you looked at me like my uncle would look at liquor. ‘You gobbled me up’. They have been making me read English stories to the others, they say I have a nice voice. I am not being paid for my nice voice, just like in church.
I didn’t like how you looked at me. You saw what was there – you saw the statement in my questions, always. You looked me in the eyes, the face, and didn’t let me look away.
I tried that in the mirror last night, but my eyes became unclear. I broke the mirror, and now my hands are all bandaged.

Ah, well.
Wishing you well, Lois. They tell me the service was beautiful, but that the coffin was closed? That is a pity – he was always a very beautiful boy.
If you would have me, I am

Yours,
Bernard

Remembering Dotty

2009-03-10T01:59:00.000+04:00

When there is no more to live,

You've given all there is to give,

Poured out in love, with painted smiles,

(Though you've been snarling all the while).

And when you've bought your own worst hurt,

They'll take it from you, dash't to the dirt,

Stamp the mud and kick the ashes,

Take a drag and bat their lashes,

Slap your shoulder, without a sound,

Put your coffin in the ground,

Smear the makeup, drink the toast,

("Whats-her-name gave up the most")

Tear down temples, raise a cheer-

But then, that's just ol' mankind, dear.

Writer's Block Buster

2009-03-10T00:15:00.003+04:00

Millions, nodding heads in time to music
To show the world they’re different – dull snow,
The image of a vast, off-white mosaic
Of man and his mandala, until now
The very heighth of fashion, of you-ness
Going out alone and seeking…and seeking?
What is there to find, beyond the vast blueness
Of a pretty girl’s eyes? The left one now leaking
At your retreating form within, fleeing guilt,
Avoiding death, not finding pleasure, or God.

Our memory graveyard, bottle-strewn and gilt-
edged like a shotgun wedding invite. Odd
men out avoided this thing, bedlam-men
And women, seeing their names in the stars,
Living on the edge of things. But what, then,
Is twilight, if not a border? It’s far
To go, to find tomorrow, and elude
Yesterday’s grasping limbs, which we once loved -
But those perfect pasts have become now crude,
Realized, fulfilled, glutted, measured and shoved

Into the boxes in our heads.

Shot In the Dark: Punchline

2009-03-07T17:32:00.000+04:00

"That's it, then? You'll take the case?"
She looks at me, eyes welling up all over again, and I'm somewhere between pouring her a drink or giving her a handkerchief. I don't have a handkerchief, though, and she doesn't seem the drinking type, so I do nothing instead. She recovers, and rises to leave.
"I'll see you at the post-mortem, then," she says. Businesslike again, back behind the professional face.
I smile like the ruggedly handsome devil I am, and say
"Baby, it's a date."

From the look on her face, you'd think someone had died.

And there, I think, ends the experiment.

Shot In the Dark

2009-03-06T19:35:00.000+04:00

Alright, this is something blatantly self-indulgent, but I've been reading Raymond Chandler and was having fun with that, so I thought I'd play around with a

Shot In The Dark

I’m in my office, smoke floating so thick that my secretary’d need to be on her hands and knees if she wanted to find the filing cabinet. If I had a secretary. Or any files. I don’t smoke, either – traffic’s murder outside on 23^rd, backed up about three blocks back, and some shmuck’s engine overheated. I’d close the window’s, but it’s a hot day, y’know?
Anyway. I like hot days – my imaginary secretary can’t give me the eye for tossing highballs before noon.
There’s a shout from outside. I duck my head, at first, in case it’s someone from Jimmy’s, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m not sure which worry me more – Jimmy’s people break kneecaps like we break bread, but at least they stop bothering you once you’re dead, y’know?
The shouting doesn’t stop, though. I crawl along the floor to my window and stick a greasy little hand-mirror against the edge, trying to scope out without being scoped. Old flatfoot trick. It must’ve been a little too old, though, or else I’d had maybe a highball too many, what with it being such a hot day, because I fumble the thing and it drops out of the window. A second later, there’s a little crash. The shouting seems to stop, though.
It dawns on me that this could be client who called earlier in morning; briefly I worry that I’ve terminated our contract before it’s begun. I risk sticking my head out, and there’s a dame on my doorstep – she’s taken steps to hide the fact, obviously, with mannish pants and a bulky cloak, but her lips betrayed the soft pout of womanhood on seeing me. And anyway, the workman from across the road was whistling at her.
She waves franticly, and starts yelling again – not unsexy, but a little nasal, and too public in any case – so I head back to my desk and lean hard on the buzzer. I stay like that for a few seconds, because my room’s doing that thing where it spins around a little bit, and anyway the front door takes a while to open. Have to give a dame time.

She takes her sweet time coming upstairs, and I’m halfway to mixing another highball, case forgotten, when my office door opens. I can’t see her face at first, but then the smoke clears – and I still can’t see her face, because she’s wearing shades like tinted glass. I see myself freeze mid-mix in them; she says nothing, simply looks at me. I’m not sure if she’s trying to communicate desire or not, so I slowly curve my lips into something smile-shaped, and reach for my other, slightly less filthy glass. I stop, though, when she takes the shades off; she’s just giving me the eye.
“It’s a hot day,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says.
I’m about to offer her a seat, when she offers me her mannish coat. I think I got the raw end of the deal; I have to walk around the table to get it. She’s wearing a blouse underneath – nothing mannish there. A lawyer type, maybe? Moneyed, anyway.
“Grab a seat, sister”, I say, closing the door so I can hang her coat on the handle. I hear a click, which is odd, since I haven’t closed the door yet.
“Turn around, dick. Slowly.”
She’s talking more softly now, but still a little nasal. I mean, it’s still sexy, but I don’t really go in for that commanding stuff.
I turn, even though my name’s Seamus. Dame’s holding a tiny pea-shooter, and her hands are shaking a little – her voice is steady, though. A pro playing amateur, or an amateur playing pro?
“Sit down,” we say, together. Hey, I’m just trying to be polite. I say so, but she doesn’t think I’m particularly funny, as expressed by her shooting a hole in my ceiling. I don’t really care about the damage, there are Poles living upstairs, but I could do without the bills.
“You killed my Bill,” says the dame, and she’s crying a little now – eye shadow, runny from the heat already, is begin to flow in earnest.
“Wasn’t me, sister,” I say, genuinely sorry for the loss of her spouse/brother/lover, but slowly edging towards my filing cabinet – I’m looking for something under ‘G’.
She doesn’t seem to like it when I edge, so she fires off another, closer this time, shattering the Venus de Milo. A little souvenir from an earlier case, and better days. Her little excuse for a pistol can’t have more than four rounds left, but I’m pretty happy with the amount of holes I have in my head, so I stop edging. Anywhere else in town and I’d worry about the cops, but they know this is my part of town – they either don’t care, or don’t want to know. It’s that kind of place.
At the prospect of being done in by a shook-up heiress, I start talking smooth. I tell her she’s looking nice, and her eyes are hardening. I ask her if she’s into Chinese, and she’s practically snarling. I tell her about this great noodle place up on 25^th, practically can’t taste the dog, and I get a little snort out of her. By this point I’ve been guided into one of the cushioned seats in front of my desk, but she’s still standing. She looks tired.
“Why d’you think it was me, sister?”
“I’ve told you, stop calling me sister! And he had your card in his pocket on the day he…passed.”
I was about to say ‘got shot on a boat and dumped in the water’, but don’t want to sound insensitive.
I shrug, and pat my pockets for cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but everyone in my business lights up when they’re explaining something. It’s in the contract.
“Wasn’t me, sister. It’s a frame up.”
I gesture at the table.
“No business cards. I had an ad in the yellow pages, once, but they got my number wrong. Spelled my name wrong, too. And they said I was a pizza delivery guy.”

In The Graveyard, Near Where I Once Lived

2009-03-04T23:59:00.000+04:00

Where two shapes, furtive, duck and weave
In this mockery of twilight,
I once loved – or was so deceived –
Wept and rutted, to my pen’s delight.

That was my brief pale hand; shot out
From darkness’ shroud (for little deaths)
And that, love-drained laughter, let out
At last between our misted breaths.

Static-coated moonlight presides
Over this, tonight’s replay. Framed
By window-panes, they do not hide
Their reproduction, are not shamed

By the chorus of witless eyes,
That surely weep, as surely man must die.

Half-Done Dice

2009-03-03T01:33:00.001+04:00

No-one,
Rolls one;

It’s bad, too,
To roll two.

Stare at the three
That winks at me;

Ah me, it’s a four
(Eyes slide to the door)

Could do worse than strike five-
Aye, we could be alive.

Snake eyes now, two threes, a six,
Floating, like the gaze of Styx.

So it’s lucky, then, that seven
Sends you packing, up to heaven-

But if you would prefer to wait,
Luckier still is number eight.

Beads of Sweat Collect (Like A Torn Necklace)

2009-02-28T23:33:00.002+04:00

Things happen. I’ve got scars you wouldn’t believe,
Though, to be fair, only half of them are real.
It’s my thing, my favourite thing, to sit and grieve
Over ancient losses that, in weeks, were healed.

Ah, well. Bombs away, as the fox once said,
Though I think she meant that rather differently.

Wall

2009-02-28T23:31:00.000+04:00

“The story about Atlas always made me kind of nervous. Who’d feel safe in a world where they sky’s held up by an idiot?”
They sat on the ivy-coated wall, the four of them, looking down at the distant, meagre houses that seemed just beyond their toes, and the greying of the horizon that claimed to be the coast. The soles of their feet prickled with thoughts of vertigo.
The one who’d spoken was Rita, the girl – cute, if you go in for that sort of thing, but she threw the word ‘conformist’ around far too often to take seriously. To be fair, they were straddling that line between being children and being children with ties and jackets – they weren’t even sure how to take themselves seriously.
Jeff, who had a little sister, said nothing, but lit a cigarette. The air was still that night, and a smell of cloves lingered about him. If asked, or drunk, he’d tell you that he didn’t smoke because he was addicted, but because he needed something to do with his hands. That he felt uncomfortable otherwise. But one couldn’t help but notice that he got incredibly moody about midway through the last week of the month, when his allowance was running tight. One time, this had coincided rather unfortunately with Rita’s period – or at least, a period of seemingly evident frustration on her part. Jock (who we’ll come to shortly) had noticed, and made rather a large joke of it, laughing, as he did, loudly, and unselfconsciously. Edwin (who we shall also come to) had laughed too, because Jock was, to Edwin, as good a model as any for how to act appropriately in public. Only he’d regretted it when Rita began to cry, and run off to the bathrooms.
“You’re doing it again.”
That was Jock; he wore a t-shirt, a moustache, and a waistcoat. His legs kicked up and down against the greying mural behind his heels, and he leaned back as far as he could, tilting his chin upwards – to catch a glimpse of the nonexistent stars or strike an imposing silhouette against the humming streetlight, Jeff wasn’t sure.
“Doing what again?”
There was a hint of laughter in her voice; she’d been practicing that one. It was meant to be at once bemused and condescending. In later years, that voice would probably serve her well, but to those who knew her laugh, her real laugh – such as Edwin, for instance – the ruse was transparent. She was asking because she didn’t’ know.
Edwin had glasses, and somewhat high cheekbones. Edwin had a smattering of acne just slightly more prevalent than that of his friends, exacerbated by his nervous picking thereof. Edwin loved Rita, because he went in for that sort of thing, and because she was a girl just beyond his perceived reach. Allow me to separate that into two key factors:
Because she was a girl
And because she was just beyond his perceived reach.
Of course, if knew had known then how fragile she’d been, he later told himself, a big-shot executive in a no-name conglomerate, things would’ve been different. Whether he meant that he’d have fallen out of love with her the instant he realized how happy she’d have been to take him, in either sense of the word, or that he’d have swooped in and saved her from her miscellaneous demons, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. He sat with Jock between him and Rita.
“You’re trying to elevate the conversation.”
Jeff took another drag on his cigarette, remembering some or other Eastern calming technique that Mom the Yoga Instructor had condescended to teach him; visualize the clean air rushing into the body, and the bad air flowing out. He wondered if this was meant to be the opposite.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s clever, but how are we supposed to respond to that?”
Edwin cleaned his glasses, and thought of home.
“It’s like walking into one of those pubs and asking about the theory behind flushing a toilet. They’d know what you’re talking about, but it’s unwanted elevation of dialogue. They were perfectly happy talking about sports and, and women.”
Rita had put on perhaps too much eye-shadow, that evening; Jeff had said once, post-coital and talkative, that it was his favourite thing about her. He was still careless with his words, those days; he hadn’t known how much difference they made to the world.
“You were talking about her sex life, Jock. I’d want to change the subject.”
Edwin stopped cleaning his glasses. He hated this game they played, the uncaring hero and charismatic devil. He hadn’t come here for theatrics. Idly, he considered which bars would be empty enough to accept his patronage.
“And besides, everyone knows the sky stays up by itself. Atlas just wants something to keep his hands busy with.”
Jock didn’t reply. In the dark, Rita placed her lightly shaking hand on his.

Stop Playing Princess

2009-02-28T16:30:00.000+04:00

Today, I didn’t go out of the castle gates.
I didn’t cross the mote filled with the last giant’s only tear; I didn’t circumvent the fire-eyed bird that’s reborn every morning by hiding under my horse; I didn’t use the feather to see in the dark of the ghost courts; I didn’t answer the door’s riddle, that changes for everyone who would go through it; I did not bargain my life back from the Fates by plying them with wine; and I did not find your hidden room in the dead pirate’s castle.
I stayed at home and played with our son, instead.

Bathtard

2009-02-26T00:24:00.001+04:00

Lying in the bathtub that is my heart,
Considering steam, and how it obscures
The mirrored me, who prunes (mere tiles apart)
Avoiding my gaze like a whore playing demure.

I soak here in love-stuff, in my own dirt,
My knees, my gut, islands each, long since claimed,
Horizoned by walls ringed like trees by hurts
That seemed to matter, once; that seemed to maim.

Nothing a quick shower didn’t clear up.

Poetry on a Main Road

2009-02-14T00:53:00.002+04:00

Gears whirl screaming into one another,
Crunching at the pockmarked surface below,
Blitzing by like the youngest bolts of lightning,
Too slow to thunder properly, buzzing, vibrating
So to compensate – barely keeping it together.

The very air quivers, yanked apart at the last
Minute by some quivering behemoth - rushing
Past to an unknown, box-shaped errand -
Like a small boy reeled back at the arm
By a fishing mother.

And still, the gears, the air, the box-errands.

Somewhere, a single robot eye observes all this,
And,
Displeased, the gaze shifts dopplerwise,
And all who it surveys freeze.

The screaming stops, and here the city takes a breath.
Elsewhere, the asphalt shudders.

Okay. I don’t really like doing this, because actually talking to you, the readers (all three of you) makes me feel dangerously close to blawging, which in turn makes me feel dangerously close to diary-keeping, which is where I always feel self-conscious. But still, this is something I suppose I ought to share with those not ‘in the know’.

My original, and current, title for this thing is ‘Poetry on a Main Road’, because it’s suitably descriptive and unpoetic. My second thought for the title, though, was ‘Eye, Robot’ – which, to the untrained eye, is a fairly non sequitur play on Asimov book ‘I Robot’, but is in fact also a reference to the fact that, for bizarre and inexplicable reasons, South Africans refer to traffic lights as ‘robots’. Which makes asking for directions pretty tricky if you don’t know about it. And I didn’t want to create a pun-title that would’ve been impenetrable. In fairness, by this point most of my titles are largely afterthoughts, and I’m on the verge of just saying ‘Title’ for my next one, (and my password is password) but I digress. The author is dead, after all.

Oh, and hey, thanks for stopping by! I do appreciate it. Lots. Hope you’re all (both, because one of you has probably left by now) doing well!

Something Half-Hearted

2009-01-31T00:41:00.001+04:00

Stars lie above, watching us, disappointed.
Like they expected more than we had to give,
As I sit here, by your breath anointed,
And by your touch – and yours alone – I live.

In the wind-swept trees we find our applause,
Branches crashing, crying encore – encore,
For we who, at last, thought to break the laws,
Not once thinking what they were written for.

Tiles within Tiles in the kiln

2009-01-31T00:40:00.002+04:00

Old love you’re like a good wine
I can’t have
and I miss you.

The taste of potential is infinitely better than what was and I suppose for that I should be grateful. After all, then you were still a beautiful girl-shaped thing, hair over one eye, and I didn’t look like I’d been poured over-generously into my clothes.

I should stop going to this bar. All I ever do is look, I can’t buy anything.

Hola

2009-01-31T00:39:00.001+04:00

It’s the music
Spilling up from your guts
Heaving
At three in the morning

Like gargoyle bones
protecting some unnamed church
wind-bags empty for crying
‘Sanctuary’

there is no air
for you to breathe

I think you should go.

A Haiku

2009-01-25T19:52:00.000+04:00

Pretty summer girls
In pretty summer dresses
Thank you, Mister Sun.

Pretentious Allegory Composed While Head-Sore

2009-01-14T02:33:00.000+04:00

You aren’t worth it, cake.
2 x Eggs.
Procured from hens in a long line of hens, shelved like vegetation with enough space to breathe in, enough light to see in, enough food to produce eggs by. Their abortive births provide you with texture.
250ml Milk.
Low fat, pasteurized, drawn by the hungry mouths of loving metal tubes, biting at the sore udders of cows bred for nothing more than this. Milk factories. Enforced existentialism.
3 Cups flour, 1 Cup sugar.
Bought at trampled down rates from a third world farm struggling to survive as it is; a bad year of crops, another baby on the way, now this.
Some other things – no less rife with suffering in their acquisition. Secret recipes taste better, after all.

There’s aching in the baking, too. My arms feel like dropping off once I’ve kneaded you dough, and that’s even before we’ve started mixing. I burnt my hand putting you into the oven, too. See, I’ve still got the scar over here.

And after that? Some people still don’t like you. If you’re vanilla, they want chocolate, if you’re chocolate, they want marzipan. If you’ve got nuts in, they’re allergic and die.
And people have to share you, or else they get fat.

And you don’t even have the decency to last forever.

No, cake. Not a chance. You’re not worth it.

Despite this…people bake you. People sit down and savor you over coffee. They think of you, on the way home from work. People endure, even enjoy you, despite the effort put in, and the short-lived reward.

People don’t fear the transience of cake.

So why fear the transience of love?

Sweet Ullage

2009-01-13T01:54:00.001+04:00

Through blurry eyes and heated teeth
We find the monsters far beneath.
Are they the Truth, or made-up things?
I do not know. I have no wings.
With heads that throb and hurts to nurse,
We pray we aren't such beasts, or worse.

Mirrora Borealis

2009-01-12T12:46:00.000+04:00

We sit within a mirrored hall,
And only see ourselves;
We slump, despairing of it all,
Within some private hell.

We sit within a mirrored hall,
Alone, and overcrowded;
We trace our fingers on the wall,
Our last words fading, clouded.

Wicker

2009-01-11T23:44:00.001+04:00

The two of them (practically kids, but who can tell in this light?) stumble hand in hand along the beach, sand turned orange by the last fading wink of a collapsing sun. Out of breath, from the exertion, from the laughter, or anticipation, he can’t even remember anymore. She darted ahead, briefly, teasingly, a golden-haired silhouette in the fading light. Wrinkled hands tighten on plastic armrests as the memory is paused, repaired, and resumed. She was a brunette. His wife had had golden hair, before the silver; his daughter had golden hair, if she hadn’t been to one of those salons again, like at that senior prom. But not this girl. Dark, dark hair, like the gaps between the bashfully appearing stars, or the breaking ocean beneath them, or black coffee gone tepid while waiting for the bus to the mines- but that would come later. Just her, now; her and him and an expanse of sky that had them as alone as they could hope to be. Not completely alone, of course; later, walking back to their friends, faces fixed, faces flushed, knowing glances would be exchanged across the bonfire that he opted to ignore. The red light did what it could to hide their glow. But for that moment they were the center and edges of the universe, and everything in between. Heated breaths cooled on the white sand.

He couldn’t really remember what she looked like, though. The snippets that he jumped from, like some badly-arranged slideshow – drinks, running, falling, sitting, embracing, waking, light, night – were supplemented, at times, by more recent thoughts. Her forearms began to resemble the bleached white limbs of the high school girl that had spent a week here some weeks ago, convincing herself that she still wanted to be a caretaker. The smile he couldn’t place, but he knew it wasn’t the real girl’s.

Absently, his unshaven cheeks – the orderly would only be here to shave and bathe him again on Tuesday, or whenever it took his absent fancy – grew damp. Had he bothered to take notice, he would have been astonished; he hadn’t wasted time nor breath on tears in the old days, when he had a wife with a baby on the way and could barely afford the apartment, and couldn’t afford the mattress and curtains and crib. He managed to scrape together cash for whiskey, though, God knows how. When they’d had Winona’s baby shower, and ‘the girls’ – receptionists, typists with huge hair – had asked them what gifts they should get, he’d replied ‘cash’. She was embarrassed. He was halfway drunk, and thought it was funny. If they’d had a couch, she would’ve made him sleep on it. “Don’t get me wrong,” he’d slurred, “it’d just be the most help. Right now.”

Don’t get me wrong.
He’d loved his wife, and done his best to love his daughter, once she’d gotten old enough to talk back at him, to use words like ‘ignorant’, ‘oppressive’. ‘Alcoholic’.
But still. He didn’t like being in the city. You couldn’t see the stars, or the blackness between them. And they didn’t let him have coffee anymore.

Calendars

2009-01-08T14:54:00.003+04:00

Seasons ago,
Hearts were plucked from fresh, pink breasts
And bled, and bit, and kissed;
Wars were waged for hollow chests,
Those hearts were barely missed.

Moons ago,
Scars faded like the dawn on drum-tight skin,
Forgotten under new, more practiced cuts;
Misted breaths mingled as our light grew dim,
And morning saw our heartwounds heal, and shut.

Suns ago,
He scratched his four-chambered
Achilles
open, remembering
someone else's nails,
savouring it
like cold mirrors.

Sands ago
He saw a girl. She looked nice.

Won't Change a Thing

2008-12-12T15:15:00.000+04:00

We walk on, pausing to cut our feet.

Grainy afterimages stop and turn back,
Pulling away from us,
Tearing as we separate, and staring at
The rocky beach behind,
And all the blood washed away,
Forgotten, but for us -
Flimsy as we are.

Seconds pass, nonchalant,
And something fluid fills in the
Grains that once bore our footprint.
Ghastly, what was once a peninsula,
A path where one we played – and faltered -
Is now an island. Untouchable, forever
Immortal,
Ignoble.

The sea reinforces weak eye-juices,
And removes evidence,
Like amber and flies.

If you stand at the lighthouse on a good day,
You can see dark shapes beneath the water,
Searching for lost bloodstains,
Trying to fix things.

We can tear and rend,
But no spot comes out – sorry, Lady.

Red

2008-12-11T13:38:00.000+04:00

Oh shades from days or years ago,
My favourite drunken silhouettes;
Girls, it was my pleasure to know-
And my delight to forget.

Stuffy Rooms Removed from Moonlight

2008-12-11T13:16:00.001+04:00

(given that my options were between spinal and vaginal, i think repetition is forgivable here)

In the darkness, our silence is final.

We lie, breathing shadows and discontent,
Sighs like tides on a bed like firmament-
The gap between us is a border ill-drawn
By shaking hands, and heads. We wait for dawn
To resume engagement. Better we had
Been two strangers in a vast desert land,
Our brief shared nights footnotes in the other’s lives,
Than this, where mouths are teeth and skins are hides.
In the darkness, our silence is final.

There Is No Tercet (It Isn't Done Yet)

2008-11-17T12:32:00.001+04:00

Gosh, I'm witty.

The girl was a dark curve of honey,
Sharp and shapely, and too painful and clear,
Shivering like a glass fortress with lips
That burned you long after your mind was dead.
A solid, searing kiss to remember
Alone at night, drinking liquor like milk.

The world was her breath and life was her milk.
Fetid dirt in amber; old, hard honey
Coating the death-apple. Remember
Snow White? This girl wasn’t like that. A clear
Difference: Snow White, not forgotten, but dead.
The girl, lost to memory, still smacking lips.

Grey men think of her and bite, hard, their lips
To stop the flow of tears from eye like milk-
White and listless, staring as the dead
Do, smelling of incense and old honey,
Shaking heads and singing bad songs to clear
Away hard past loves, and not have to remember

The days when life was short, nor remember
When they were as young as she, and rubbed lips
And hips, the oldest dance. The skies were clear,
Like love, and life was always theirs to milk-
But years came to them, like flies to honey,
And though she remained, their dance was long dead.

Eternal youth, like hers, was a sweet dead-
End, every night a night to remember,
Every day forgotten. Think of honeyed
Fingertips, sugared breath and marble lips,
As we utter soft lies like curled milk,
Staining a love we once thought soft, or clear.

At long last, now, the way ahead is clear;
Stop this love of the forgotten and undead,
Turn on the lights, pour a fresh glass of milk,
Forget all that you’d wish to remember,
Waste no more thoughts on her pink-silken lips,
And purge prayers to the smell of honey.

Something Juvenile (To Tide You Over For A While)

2008-11-17T12:29:00.002+04:00

Words waste these innocent pages, once white,

Ransom against the tide of namelessness.
We were here, with weeping days and grinning nights;
Now we’re modesty, now we’re shamelessness.

We shriek at concrete horizons (meek),
That our fights mattered, our causes just,
That someone counted the tears on our cheeks,
That someone noticed when we fell to lust.

That beyond our islands of flesh and hair
Our foolish bloodsheds added to the sea,
That our hurt echoed, and that somewhere,
Someone heard, and will remember me.

Doggerel shames me not; words shame me not,
And now my blushing face betrays me not.