Thursday 27 March 2014

1 New Poem

Creases

The creases you make, bold and black stocking feet, on bedsheets
of checkboard and cornflower blue, expanse as the core
of your weights and measures, acts of being and perfumed
trails you took as spring robin companions in ancient
myths to maidens old.

I was a chilly shifting in red shades across the room,
the blackened rift uncoloured in binge-bought sustainment.

The creases of clothing-sun cotton sweetly worn as blood-deep
thorn decorations, movements as complex-common as
summer breezes in a whisper-soft light storm to your
figure carved deep in shape as eternal canyons, rivers' spirit
freely-flown.

I was stealing glance-passes in half-broken echoes, head
heavy as heart from drink and sodden angers.

The creases upon your face, line-worn and buttoned
from the thousand nights you spent smiling, lighting
candle wicks in constrained explosion, the thousand
colours all collapsed to one, the thousands of
loves which bloom bright as new moons each
night beneath this old hamlet's hum;

I was never there, in line for light, in line for warmth,
never there to feel the great cross-man's crease

of your head rested to shoulder.

Thursday 13 March 2014

2 New Poems

A Thousand Cuts

Pass the pain, the ibuprofen and sewing kits
to blood clot close the wounds we crestfallen carry
in case of exposure, in case we give ourselves away.

You hold the binds, the whipping boy, a ripe-blue
bruise here and there you tie the cord to, an
anchor-wheel in fishhook style.

I am, still, the unchipped tooth of porcelain
making; never bit the strawberry summer, never
saw the bliss of winter's perfect-passing sky.

It has its own dead pleasures, its own muddy swath
of leaves and the smash of Lebanese liquor bottles,
but it has too its own faint longing for knives.


Too Much Time

Some state in the burnished bluster of flask casing
reflections, half-moons and Ferris wheel cars, you'll
find yourself there, some day, some day, in the
last hour's chime.

And, perhaps, for you.

The ink quill bindings of parchment and ribbon-ties,
matrimonial script on hard harp filigrees, scale
weight in tumble stone, you'll have, you'll have
a happiness there.

And, maybe, you will.

The blood and bone of cross-cloth tables,
candlestick memories of sweetest toned talk,
gold-hued in passive performance, the dance, the dance
we all go through.

Oh, you, yes, of course.

The tense sway of adolescent surprises, darkness
and sheet covers draped from pale to post
in breathy flashlight talk, in time, in time,
they held their meanings.

But, me, well, that's another thing.

Friday 7 March 2014

2 New Poems

Time Markings

I will wait there in the echo wash,
levy time and limestone runnings, beneath
the clouded clutter of city-run water,
the heady bloom of aluminum and ash
on unbound skin.

You are the untamed wild, the unbroken
Palomino upon icy cliff-stairs and falling
buffalo pantomimes.

I am running with it, pace-clocked to
pagan marking, scored to pieces and
in reminding, cast eyes across bar light
and the trouble pretended.

You are the golden plain, the untilled soil,
the Kolkhoz scythe running through it all.


Spirals

Skins of talking drum lines echo in vibrations
about, aloft the questioning hum of light brackets
fluorescent in dead air conversation, the illuminated
dust dreary as untyped fonts, and anchored
in the curvature of your shape, coiled.

Coming closer, felts page pen tips trace out
a contour-crease how it fell in dollar-store
sheet cloth, in lampshade odours you tossed
around closing light switches as fine-woven scarves.

Your lines betray you, the moves you make
in shadows' pale comfort, milky swirls of
liquor breath into the failing light trust;
something else to unheavy the memory.