Private heart quiet room trooped
from another world, a corridor, you see
the wailing pipes wood resin aerosol tremor.
Far off though now to tiptoe, trill, at last
an empty building summer’s distance
distinctly promise, boughs I sat to leave
young broken frame, his roots upturned,
delight and pulped to bruises
little cuts along the ribs,
with two whips, then another, little
punished face crowding quiet private heart
room trooped to his bed, to wake him dead.
We are always the feeling of the end
approaching steady as sunrise, you see
that's the mechanic, ever cresting wave
to your lost ones as we go into the air
to meet with what exactly and who you loved
are gone now do not blow them kisses.
In our new bodies the soul keeps single focus.
Meanwhile we rose, dusted ourselves
stared to the sky where vanishing charms
clouds grew thick and if this is the desert
plain forever we may no longer live
near to one another forced apart
in fearful rigour, but your features glowed to me.
You were completely beautiful, us both, more so
for twilight stormed down a harvest of colour
weak in our arms the sound of the flowers.
Hello. I wonder who's still here? I hope I've at least a few of the folks who offer speels to save my marriage.
Anyway, in bed with COVID.
Thought I'd use this weird moment hovering between waking and sleeping to put some more poems here. I've been writing a lot. Almost to the point where it feels as though I am letting myself get it all wrong. As always, it is some kind of sequence. I won't know quite what it is until it is finished, and even then...
I've been thinking about the aubade and the alba. What an incredible thing, really, that there is a type or genre of poetry that takes place at a specific time and speaks about such a particular event. Lovers parting at dawn. Being drive away by the light. If you have ever come across a scorpion (or scorpions) and interrupted them with the right kind of light you know pretty well how an aubade operates from the perspective of the "light bring" - God, or someone like that. Scorpions are amazing creatures. They get up to all kinds of things, and then on bangs the light and it is as though they're allergic to it. They may dive away into the nearest crack or dent or hole, or else just freeze completely still. Once I saw a pair (that I was keeping - playing God or someone like that) freeze in the light in the middle of some kind of tryst. It may have been love or war but they made it clear that it was none of my business by freezing completely still. Now, scorpions don't see ultra violet light, but they glow under it. Go and look this up. They glow an electric greeny blue. It is incredible to see. I switched the light off and switched on the UV light. They began to move. I could tell you, now, what they were up to. I won't. They didn't want to be seen, and turning the UV light on was the behaviour of the Calvinist God. The worst one. I am still ashamed about this. I've a good mind to seek out a scorpion (preferably Heterometrus spinifer - the same type I interrupted here, and one that luckily has a fairly weak sting) and ask it to sting me, as penance. Anyway, what am I talking about? Here's some poems.
This morning, this grand impossible morning
avenues of light passing through the barriers.
I wait for you. There’s annihilation
in this speaker, though when it comes, who knows.
Poison, and poison begins reflected
in the shadow, a dark door over
the left shoulder or just out of sight, before
you’re through it you are through it;
the world closes down and the entire soul
is sabotaged, institutions formed up to pattern
recognition out of sight, out of the head
and shame and unyielding attacks
on the imaginative faculties are its lifeblood
gorging on desiccated numbers, at large
mounting the insurgencies: Addiction and calm
this morning arrive here, learn its names,
depart without a kiss, pure blank severance
a light as light will form, forcing back the door.
For now we’ve to vanish
our thoughts are dispelled
I see no reason
it dogs our trail
our silence will lurch into
daylight as swarms do
hovering close and
removing our hands
out and into the perilous sunlight
birds hissing and are cracking in time
light away
distrusted day
for now we’re vanished
our silence our precinct
holy and heartless
religious and dead
hidden in my saviour stars
will fade and mountains
take us into scrutiny
and silence, out of time.
Precinct
i.
…and always in evening twilight
my choice to complete and fall again
from the light that never came, a song
loud on the lung, damped down
by corresponding silence
has me standing in cold, thin rain
where the question of giant time arrives.
Deep in the heart of its meaning
that night comes, long rest
outside the precinct
of a jealous love that captures,
noting down an index of credit,
something like that, see, I never knew him
or if he isn’t there, I did, too well.
Precinct
ii.
If this is where you are
burning out, should you not
burn harder, spectacular destruction
twilight is torrential, but the rain
is slow like this staggered quiet
stumble onto the crossing.
Long rest. No testament.
Fear leaves besieged bodies,
hungry. The map of the world
is this soaking pavement
slick of petrol.
Precinct
iii.
…for I have a great hope of glory
we would sing, but that great hope
we hid in our silent meetings, peaceful,
abstract and heading for dusk.
Our people hide ourselves, moving
without torches penned in
to specific types of work
your joy in destructive light.
One last try: The pavement outside is all
I can look at, seems to spread itself all over
the world. Time’s running out. Wanted
to be held, our pretty hair and ribbons,
summer ribbons.
Precinct
iv.
That felt okay. Now move along.
What’s the stretching sound
or impossible feeling
hairs standing up
you’re not alone
arrived here
night after night.
There’s a carpark nearby to where
I was sleeping. Seems right. There’s a change
in the air, cold and compelling. I refused
the clocks, began to unravel the seasons
so barefaced and cruel, in this warm world.
I can’t think. Daylight spills in and dreams
spread out over the sky, scattered to air.
Spit on the pillow. Counting the windows
at the hospital, over her shoulder as she cried
bitterly, strobing, indelicate and pure.
Casting a numb tattoo on her knuckles
with the tips of her fingers, fire persisting
east to west they stood still. Quiet now,
I hear the vehicle coming along. What is it
here the same time each early morning
terrifies and charges the night, so that
to imagine the whole precinct coming out
and closing into the hills, and for a moment
I knew what it was to taste a mighty
and wonderful sensation,
and to touch the highest pinnacle of joy I
have ever known. It lasted for less than a second,
and was gone;
Fat green mist. Day falls. Mute overhead. An coded end. Play of fields. Elect eyes. Impressioned. Have waist given to fear. Of prism. By light known. Fallen summer. Devil harp pretend noise. Made to prayer. Stutters still. Will not form lines in this quiet and heavy. How, of dawn. Was made. Was promised. Refused. Was spent. Was stilled. Was silent. Hurt. It end. Away goes. Of that who are you fell. Was stupid. Quiet now. Dangle the scissor. Eerie. Snubbed. For motions there. None came. Oh settle. Please list them. The floors? And only floors. A list of only floors: And if the flies do breathe. And if the legs, theirs, curl. Curl and burn. Spluttering fats of insect. But I am too unhollow. And I am also far too breathed. Goes into the basque. Our chewing deaths. What their feelings are. Renew. Dissuade the heat death of the kitchen. This mouldy it lived here in the long quiet nights spread out in the name of morning. It is why the prison sits. The case for refining tongues. Her mortician. Her faucet. Was knack. Buckled the wheels. And so, as you say, it hurts. Compels the monitors. Checks the drawer. The skinny toes too at the reframing word. I engaged the park with barking. Peeled my face down the legs. Took the toe in the hands. I have a head. But the arm the hand the foot the thumb the back. Far beyond possession. And there. Its speech on tabloid skins. Never fail in settlements. There is this thing of weakness. Who are the population. The course is rags to a sky. We are finically disproved. But, hello. For I have a head. I extrude emblems. My terror potential is powerlessness. A gaudy apple. She sees to shed the wound rope. It is a list of forty lives in there, horrid with moth skins.
