More Coronelles

Another little clutch of Coronelles. Again, not all of them. There are over a hundred now, and I'm picking through them trying to see what sticks. These are some from the last seven days. Picture form this time to avoid format slippage. No order particular.

Poems and Miscellany. June be upon us.

The shops are open! People are being forced to go back to work. Beijing is entering a second lockdown. Hello. Hello friends. Here are some more of the new poems that I am tentatively calling Coronelles. The poems included so far have mostly taken place 'at the break of the day' (see below). So, some new poems and below that a series of links. I've spent a lot of time listening to online poetry lectures, talks and readings. I thought I'd share some of them here because for all the horrors of this particular stage of the Internet it is still pretty wonderful that we can get to a lot of amazing educational resources for free. So yes, poems first, then links. Enjoy.

//

Throw the yo-yo down; it comes back up. 

Nothing is ulterior. Paradox is dead. 

I believed in pure Justice: The difference

as striking as the common. I cannot read Our Death:

That the pain realised themself

to struggle, the stammer of packaging. I have never cried. 

My whole life,  eyes sewn shut. They beg

to leak. The world rejects. Strength, head wound, the virus. 

This thing inside, it killed us: Fuck balconies. Fuck the world

reject. Reject. Reject.

You pushed away the malstrom.

You made us believe. Resistance 5 resistance 7 

resistance 6, that the eyes be allowed to spill themselves outside in 

                                                                                       deleting air...

//

We must go on. Through the sloping rain

and the new builds. Staring over my head

my eyes turn  up through aching bone. 

We climbed the lighthouse. 

A voice echoed blank, no face

in slate ahead

be careful as you go

oh, please take care. There is horror deep ahead

and nowhere else to step, 

it waits like a pit who circles you, take care where you will go. 

Amante è la musica che con noi non finisce.

Strapperò le ciglia con le mani, lascerò per sempre

il luogo dei miei maniaci pensieri. Yesterday once more whisper

please take care, my love, be careful where you tread.

//

It stops. Knock. Call out. No more aversion

therapy, to jump start new death 

rippling through the trees. Ladies at court

riven and chaste I will lie at your feet. 

Mocked in traction

bonded to air I am still breathing. Lucky

to be, hir ribbons at the wrist.

Knock. Stammer for reason, the chest heaves up we march again

voiceless young say their names, saints, purchased in blood

the destroyer went blind dusted off against the spoiling line. 

Bonum est confidere in Domino,

bonum sperare in Domino spite and malice knock three times

pushed away digging out the eyes.

//

Now’s our chance. I signalled with my lamp across the gap. 

Knock. A flicker of red in a torn up corner. How can it be

so long away I wrapped myself in the curtain to signal

over the air, you are not there. 

Knock, that now I am sleeping, the window is open. 

the ladder is propped against the scaffolding, you so far gone not across 

to air or sky gone so much,

silent of light no light in silence creaks away the forty four windows

stare. Way far back even then. Knock. It will not pass it simply doesn’t 

go, far enough to hear this light who shrieks across the firmament

plunged beneath that flood lose all 

their guilty stains hewed in the brand skin and atmosphere

to a little dimming tint, be careful where your light treads soft ahead.

////

Lectures / Readings

The Black Arts Movement in the Broader Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement: Carolyn Rodgers

John Wilkinson on the Poetry of Dylan Thomas, 10.30.14

Nathaniel Mackey - "Breath and Precarity"

William Rowe - 'Poems against death: Poetry as political struggle'

J.H. Prynne - Mental Ears

Poemtalk Podcast - on Sean Bonney's 'Happiness'

Eric Mottram talks with Erik Bauersfeld 1982 (Strange one, this. Eric Mottram and Admirl Ackbar!)

Fred Moten Talk: "Blackness and Poetry"

Keston Sutherland - Lecture on Sonnets (Worth listening to the other lectures on his channel too)

Isobel Armstrong - Victorian Glassworlds

Poems - 29th May - 8th June 2020

Here’s Noseybonk: We danced in the morning

for the sake of the young we went back to work

we lost all of our jobs we pled like servants

clover bloat, bone on bone. Over the hills

methane obstetrics

pair off by chance. It’s hot in the garden. The filthy

jealous wailing

prius contesting the year: I danced in the night time

trembling in bed. You wailed about your feelings

Ziyang Fan, Head of Digital Trade, World Economic Forum;

take me as you find me

all my fears and failures what are all these bands so angry about, purity

ziplines into dampers, heat in the sorrowing whip.  

//

In the first Spring we grew bold.

We asked ourselves ‘who might die?’

We have to account one day 

for our helplessness. I don’t see the death

I don’t,

more, I wanted to suffer, long and hard. 

Poisoned again

intimate you piss off shreds of stagnant beef

quick scan started here cometh the dreamer:
This city turns people into shadows 

when I stand in that place

free at last you have won the race sleeper in metropolis solitudo, 

Fiaba per un mistero sepolto tra verdi siepi, in preda ad un cuore che pulsa.

//

With one tired horse denial of work, efficiency 

line communication; dwindling spiral of control.

The process is long the poppies to seed

sweet as vinegar mit coconut milk sprawling across the sea

who fixes the levy 

staked out for the dogs

sonorous filth be upon you. 

Ardent love surrounds me like a blister pack,

I used to go to work each day eager through the dreaming coil

left my love behind me on the horse without his entrails. 

Hoof and horn, hoof and horn

all that dies shall be reborn fly by night I never met another gemini,

so with one tired horse and our packs we trudged out over the earth.

//

I Am a FREE 

I Am Not MAN 

A NUMBER. 

Precious seizure; dance, dance, 

wherever you may be. There’s ants 

in the salad. Send it back. Bullet holes in glass

but you’ll find the ants 

give a zesty crunch. We go to the cancellation

fun run: Refused are the best band in the world. Nizlopi

are the best band in the world. Avicii on bagpipes. 

Lord of all hopefulness

Lord of all joy, daughter of the sun I was raised 

to do no harm and go down quiet. The heat screamed ‘(Riot! Riot! Riot!)’

//

Daubed in off-brand kejerie, my silent eyes to you,
my love, I walked home in the cancelled rain 

and turned into a shadow. Every door was painted red.

The dead are in the grave, awaiting resurrection

and outside some children are playing

in the square. They do not turn to shadows, 

though they are parts of the city

and the clouds who do not come to sing;

the spider dangles by her hook the echoing sea calls to the shore

who waits for the wounds to fall. Even the eyes who roam

all of my deeds, everything I’ve achieved

cannot earn my way to favour or a shoulder to the wheel, particles

fall like singing stones. Tako takoti o takoti sman yamba takoti.

//

and I’m so glad I’m not in school, boss. 

Switch the machine off, boss. I tethered my horse;

when the militia arrived I hid under a heap of sacks. 

My breath was held in, tight, ever so tight, 

it will betray us all. 

Stem for survival. The hegemony

of the agonised tawse:

Endut! Hoch Hech! My Bonnie lies over the ocean

by Bonnie lies over the creepy abandoned house

in the woods. Oh, doubters! Oh, come declare your lives:

His form was of the manliest beauty, 

his heart was kind and soft transfiguration head over fist

I’m so glad I’m not in school, boss, beating away at my tedious head.

//

Playing at pilgrimage; the problems of work;

if there is in fact a life regained, switched on

tampering with the clamp eyes thrown out the skull

glanced sunlight therapy trips inside the little ear: 

How do you make curfew

force the headrest out, 

so there all he goes

pissing in his bunker rushed in by secret

demand “I do nothing for nobody”, truth inching in

liber mucous; terror in drastic actions right ahead

running out of breath

the fight beneath Your feet the humming acceptance speech 

disgust that turned its stupid ear again to cracker shame.

//

I am a free thinking anti authoritarian, I said,

to the dialysis machine, I screamed at the cleaner,

I whispered to my mother as I spilled

into the world. That’s obviously not what’s meant, 

said the dry roasted crusty,

changing the locks. 

There is more at stake. 

You’re being glib. The games a-fucking-foot, my friend!

You’ll never get away with this. I’ll see to it

you rot in jail. I wondered where my king had gone

entered our world, your glory veiled

not to be served but to serve, he is the boy, the past is a grotesque animal.

I never went back to finish it, the dead end stuck in the neck.

//

Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally  Industrial Complex 

(indigenousaction.org) realises the ally as temporary...

Think,  allies want something from you, in a moment. Strategy:

Accomplice: ‘A person who helps another commit a crime’. ‘You can 

now pay hundreds of dollars to go to

esoteric institutes for an allyship certificate in anti-oppression. You can

go through workshops and receive an

allyship  badge. In order to commodify struggle it must first be 

objectified. This is exhibited in how “issues” are “framed” & “branded.” 

Where struggle is commodity, allyship is currency.’

Some chosen source as was need not be 

the only pattern to build a world on. Where pathways meet, low

down the sound of law, burning Horrified one, take up your scream. 

//

Tuesday 2nd June 2020

//

Sitting at the shore with wine in perfect light

by you, never disallow regret, she said, 

and sipped in the weakness afternoon the boats singing clinks

at the marina wall. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

It’s not, but once I contrived to make

this wretched rule at a party: That we only listen to music none of us 

have ever heard, just to avoid Paul Simon again. I couldn’t help it. 

Saying it would have been worse, as painful as this wretched coronelle:

'Cause You are the Lord of all I am

so won't You reign in me again all circles shutdown,

but I never did it, never spoke the order, just a horrible thought, the evening killed…

//

Let our spite rise up in love

‘the new normal’

fresh horrors, what was once called ‘austerity’, 

harder, faster, 

with attention 

to the detail

of the body,

tracking it through the world, closing its magnetically sealed

doors its airtight perimeters; let our spite

rise in love and tender revenge

the trumpet sounds

and the dead will then be raised that terrible, terrible night: Dialogue

has never been our option, closed doors, brackets. Bodies through the world.

//

Chew around your speaking lips. 

Where are you, Wendy?

Do the plants stare blank the raining sky?

At the base of the lock I used a small light;

the lamps at forty four

were out, I went to signal across the air.

Is anyone there? The little flicker

in the bottom left glass, silence. Silence in light. 

Oh death where is thy sting? Angels, 

moth dust, 

that sacred pot of red stuff

could blow me out, ribbons undone, gentle joy;

if we’d only allowed for our confiscated world...

//

Starry ribband beds about his wings

their cobbled lilies clog-danced, 

on planted earth wallow’d about he stands

so we bare the shavings, and suddenly

the light air beating easterly

at frozen plummet front;

their lives would fall to bits

by auctoritee of persones

we go out to build; 

a problem with the axle. Though

I have a sweet hope 

of glory in my cold little heart. 22 letters

to the council,  still no arrests. The scorn of the tussling bins. 

//

Amongst the herbs & electricity. The air 

rolled through the blockchain, & you were crying 

again, waiting for the knot to crumble down. 

A delivery of proper medicines. No food. 

The buildings speak, unyield 

beyond paraphrase. Dock your mouth.

The spectral  spiders screech 

and creak: False. They are silent, you cannot imagine 

the terror in wordless descent, the never screaming 

jaws, the silent armoured limbs;

it sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing? Laid to rest & gathering herbs:

Eat well, exercise. Live to be devoured.

//

By the swell of the Brapple, new day at last. Scorn hangs in the tongue,

the assailing mandible, correctly infers with rain to PAT test the stutter:
Terrorism is the worst thing in the world. Ripe crops bolt upright

swell their chests to any scrambled data, perturbed to telling,

I am dead to you.

 For God sake, eat something, please. 

When have you ever worked. 

This is what not realising looks like. We should separate the hostile world.

The whole orange air migraines into your swelling eyes. You are the furies

screaming at the camera, your children in the room above, pressed into the corners.

Zealots fire that bigots warms,

Fury’s wrath that fools alarms, Hell and misery, everyday life, goodbye,

he snarled to the begging window, old uncle Tom Cobley and all.