Monday 29 July 2013

New Writing (2 Poems)

Wrote these yesterday.



Hallyday


It was not a running, more a gallop,
more a trot, more graceful, untrained.
The bridge’s metal echoed dropped anvils, rushing
beneath us as torn deck tape, rippling in ribbons.


The winding path flashed townhouses, red brick,
windows reflecting a New York summer’s heat,
the furthest flashes of visage seemed to be there.


The ladies chain-smoking on their porches, fading,
turned to chatting girls, drinks on patios, fading,
became but blurs of glass in hand.


We slid to the theatre chairs, twenty minutes too late,
foreheads as sopping puddles, legs as tie-off tubing,
breaths held miles back.



The Bringers


Jejune fruitflies, dancing as embers
in the dying sunlight’s ash,
flitting as strange neon to unheard chords,
amongst the license plate stamps, the bowing
fern leaves and rusting mailboxes, the echoing
of suburban pastimes.


The rains come in silent, whispers under heavy blankets,
forming distaff curtains, shattered mirrors,
to view the world through. Ink-like,
the fire furnace swirls about, dilutes in the glass;
connectors, pieces of progress sag shoulder heavy,
under strain of nature, time.


Rising scents of copper, the soft tremblings
of clover and dew grass under foot,
life jutting from the oddest of angles, cigarette
leavings scattered through them, colours contrasting.
 

Sunday 28 July 2013

Some New Writing (3 Poems)

Dishpan Gloves

Sometimes I’d imagine you,
scraping the dinner leavings from our
chintzy glass plates, running rubber gloves
through your torn hair and asking about
the cobwebs yet to be cleared. We’d turn
with the clock hands, dead tired at 6
or 7 in the evening. Just like now,
in many ways.


It’s nothing I like much to dwell on,
but, I could see us picking curtain colours;
making my middle school snorts,
you your gripping sighs, signs of embarrassment
we’d hide behind breaking shutters and hastily
slammed doors. Patching wounds over
with half-meant words and half-heard
regrets, sympathies.


Sometimes I think the only sound
with which I could sleep a good night,
is your breathing, its off-kilter bleat,
your cutting little barbs (no damage, all so
harmless), your solitudes and cold hands.



They were as thimbles of rain to a wanderer,
promised an oasis, far off, never found,
and that I will always be.


Reading By Streetlight
The caught ember casts hazy beams,
hovers orange and gold as
lit fossil, a Virginia cliffside.


Bits of ruled black ink, intolerable vowels,
became blurred and more blurred,
casting off their form like dress shirts.


Lit candles of the click-clack switch,
burning out as still flashbulbs,
disturbing the purple half-light and chirps.


The washing rattles about, machines whirring,
humming as they do. I exchange
the damp air of its breeze,


For a sweltered room and dirty blankets.


Soggy Sun
I woke in a spin of dripping faucets,
ice cubes melting on kitchen counters
and pulp mill produce rotting in odour:


I couldn’t have had much to say of it.


The powder blue collar, seeming correct minutes before,
scratched and crawled as aquatic life, flopping about
beneath flesh-sweat and flaking scalp:


Legs alright regretting the slight incline.


We wake, the brown pants and me,
seven hours apart, in separate dazes, feet
bending as shapeless liquid, as cut rubber:


Humid drips, honey from spool reels.


I regret this holding, more than anything,
it is buried feet deep with toy buckets,
tapping on concrete, with a word on screen:


Oh, you, floating, fluttering, above it all.


Today, it is brutish, it is short-of-breath,
I thought of you.

Friday 12 July 2013

New-Old Writing (2 Poems)

Staying in for Winter

The sky is greying, dark;
my eyes do not open to
a shuttered sun, I slumber,
undisturbed.

Tossing, twitching, the radiator's
heat clamming close to this
skin, I must awake at some time.

I do, oh, as always cold
sweating for the cracked
window, dried off from dreamer's running.

The snows have unfallen yet,
only speckles through the morning's
sky;the trees have no lights,
colours.

I hear the shouts through drywall,
brick and steel beam: they are
there, this I cannot dent, only
block.

Turning from the cold lights
of rattling hallways, the cold
airs of outside, I lie back
down.


And stay in a night once more.



Cluttered
There are too many things on
This desk, too many emblems,
Too many little trinkets:

But how could I ever let them
Go?

Each perfect, each so well-refined,
With their broken pieces, their tattered
Corners, nothing would be moreso.

Then again, I’d still sleep clutching
My nursing bear.

The clutters tugs me back,
Back to the old times, back
To the sunlight: I slam the
Small door, trying to shut it
Out, to live only here,
In this moment.

This place would be too cold without
It, the walls too bare, the air too
Empty; and what else could I hope
To fill the space with?

I cannot grow, like the trees’ roots
Burrowing beneath the frost-ground,
I shudder to the touch of new
Soils: they feel as molten ask
To my pallid skin.

I line them one-by-one,
All in neat little rows,
Like a general of the old
Lore, like an obsessive infant:

I cling to these past emblems,
Knowing none else, knowing
Not the vastness of time,
Too scared to step.

Saturday 6 July 2013

One New-Old Poem

Descending

I pace in step down the stairs,
boot rubber echoing throughout the rails,
gusts of wind burbling upwards.

I heard the subways running
about beneath, the shouts of
steel wheels like lost children.

I felt the heated breath of
concrete walls, ceilings of smoothed
linoleum, enshrining myself in.

Drawing deep, airs were trapped
here long ago, times older than
even this body consuming them.

I see this place, strangely clean,
strangely clear, strangely calm,
and readied for today, tomorrow.

I taste the bitter sting of the
flickering lights, burning away
my evening's dull haziness.

I walk the few last steps,
the widening gaps in the floor,

and to the night, drift off.

Thursday 4 July 2013

Creative Writing (2 Edited Older Poems)

I've decided to start going through my archives of poems I've previously written in any attempt to find things that I feel are salvageable or not entirely bad, and then tweaking or changing them. I'll post the results as they come up here in addition to anything new I'm writing (hoping to do some this coming weekend).

I've got 2 edited poems to post today.

Imprint
I have found beauties leave a
Mark unspoiled, undying, spread
Like Arabic eagle’s winds
Across the brain.

Stays light, as a milky dew
Upon new-found eyes; refuses
To dim, flicker, no matter
Itself.

The thoughts still sting, swim,
Repose in blue; smiles, frowns,
Sweet songs and death knells,
All still, alone.

The wonder is bonded in image,
An old memory from the voice,
Some strand from the modern letter,

Silent.



Walking Past Midnight in a Small Town
There was nothing to be afeared,
There was nothing to cause a shame.
I was lone with but the lights,
The calmed forms of brick buildings,
Shines through the windows snuffed
Long since.

I dressed sloppily, in shack-like
Disrepair, feet bound with the
Flimsiest support, rankled shirt
Flown to the dark sky’s breezes;
None were looking, so, why
Would I bother with mirrors?

Only a faint memory’s flicker of
Headlights flashed by, no red
And pale gold to break the
Moon’s hazy illusions, the dying
Mists blanketed by clouds most
Ashen, most enveloping.

There was no shouting, no slamming of
Doors as now, only shudders of the
Maple keys, the soft songs of yawning
Birds; here is too heightened, I block
Out the window’s echoes with rattling
Speeches, just to sleep.

I am heavy as swinish iron,
With no more a light foot
To skip, no more strung along
From places pinned to the push-map:
My own way is to be now drawn,
And when I walk it is now but

The shattered pavestone, the bleat
From heated lamps, the stone
Eyes of the city-dwellers,
And no more the walking
Past midnight

In my small town.