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