Sunday 26 October 2014

2 New Poems

Footsteps at Dawn

There is a furnace fog to these mornings
before digital readouts strike backwards
in redoubling of effort, the skipping smoke
rings as childhood pebbles on Superior's
tracing etched water face in looms of
fractured factory whistles rising by
the Essar plant.

There is a reminder in the slow-fading tenderness
of house lights and car engine sputters;
some echo's distance measured in one-way streets
and bilingual road signs, the worn-rubber
creak of dress shoe soles some semblance
of the ruffling starch-collar manner meeting beneath
the Houses of Parliament.

There is a sounding symphony of hymnal in
stained glass, triumphal illusions wine-cider
shades from the naming of apostles in tongues
those fighting figures of fancy we draw tightly
together for cloaks of royal violet, warmed
with memory's bookcase battered, dusty with
the saloon sentiment.

It's Never Like That

In the shaggy span of adolescence
you'd have been altogether otherworldly,
jetting with curly androgyny from
the sidewinding clip of typing message
reflector ribbons in the sensible loose
glass grinding of your spectacle frames;
indeed, I'd have been lost

with how to term these 12-hour naps
and over-breathing fits you spin
as outback dust storms in the
rigid farmhouse corners I leave
unswept for fear.

Any undertaking you could imagine,
the white tusk a glimmer
of ruining rail and patched-engine
passenger buses in the middle places
of this land, in the countrysides
of foreign ones, and I knew I
didn't want to be some lover's dalliance,
some holiday weekend's great distraction,
some postcard placeholder in the
chandelier swinging section.

No, as I reflected

on how these bridal sheets bleach at
but barest blush of strong
moonlight stain, how prom queen
crows chip away in lead paint liberty.

No, as it was breaking at the seams.

No, as you looked up from your sandwich plate.

No, as I studied the lines in wood bench
backing and the steady fizz of Italian
blood orange soft drink.

No, as I reached back to lessons learned
about eyeglasses, androgyny, breath and blinking.

No, as I trammeled words about something
like a love.



Saturday 25 October 2014

2 New Poems

Collisions

I want to run into you on some sunny
escapade in Chicago's brick-swelling summertime,
in the wild grins of two blessings hung
splendid aloft in the symbols of broken
thorn, of hanging vine, of flower shop roses
and creaking staircase wood, all those promises
you can make with no worry to have kept.

I want to cross in the blood's swirling air,
the staining Pollock points of traffic yellow
glint backlighting in halo-swan half-haze
looking Bacall, Bergman for the
stitching hour chained, and we were
drawing morning barely-seen through
bleary tears of dewy painter's inspiration.

I want to crash in zodiac formations
of limbs and lips and lover's wish
entangling on the musty shores of mind
imprinted silver-ruby to the twinge-shift
embossment of you and some solemn aching
shadow called myself like Euro coin back
marking of some nation lost to former epochs.

And I want to collide, connect, collide.



Once, Wondrous

This night explodes in dazzle-burn of hanging
firework, the kind I'd watch set off on
the waterfront pier with the wood painted bluebird
shade as a child in sandal stocking feet
tasting first milk-laps of June: calf-footed,
unready to step.

But this is silent, no crackling crate paper
construction dividing in two the winding pages
of dusty historical tomes and newly-scrawled
chapbook lettering of soppy adolescent poetic
theatrics; streaming, all brought together
under threadbare semblance you smile.

I was just wondering: how wondrous one
evening's embrace and the arms of solemn
sleep intoned could be, how brittle-petaled
the woven crown could hem your head,
how lit to flame's flick this tremor
spirit, just and true, in knowing its nature.

Monday 20 October 2014

1 New Poem

Dancing In Peacetime

When you silence the sputter-chain,
broken fences mended in the cast-cattle
lightning, down-pouring collarbone dress
seem at the ribcage, when you spoke in
those dawns at war's end.

In these ballgowns Victorian, the elegant
glint of sapphire ladies' handgloves, shimmering
of Edwardian day lakes in tea leaf etching,
you becalm beneath the hollow echo of our age,
the smirking devilish necking up of Legion
Hall cacophony, with word it was:

“Let us be young, dancers in long shadow,
in splendid ignorance of callous train speeding,
metal-on-metal embrace of future's foreboding
and, for the nights of washing stone smooth ambiance,
enjoy the peacetime's silence.”

Tuesday 14 October 2014

1 New Poem

Encounters at Metro Stations

Your lips glance briefly, stop light
flash off the chalice glass, marks
you leave in scents of Christmas ginger,
tastes of honey wine.

As wiry-spun, quick in the moving
shadows' creep of carousel bulbs,
running Rhiannon, you took up
and spoke with washing fire tone:

“love is not written on suburban
grid-maps of city planners,
nor the wandering water droplets
dappling lakeside remnants of

crumbled Gaeltacht castle walls;
it is the spoken clock's conundrum
chime, the rumbling steam train trail
you write of in blazes of interwar

men's coat fashions, women's scarves
trailing celestial, framing aged brick.

And that's what you think?”, smiling.

Monday 13 October 2014

1 New Poem

Ceilings & Stardust

The ceilings press in four-letter phrasing,
drawing in wailed echoes of cities past,
abandoned steel structures left to
weather's withering rust and postering
placards of ward councilor memorials,
and here in this I thought to ask:

was I cohabiting your heart with the
stucco laundromat lettering, rapid twining
the first fallow Fall night before clocks
are set an hour back and when
bus journeys beggar the daybreak half-sweated,
whether milling rough or bureaucrat smooth?

It was those beleaguered wishes: torn pages
bathed in memories' Paris Exhibition twinkle-light,
diving off one cliff spire as two fractions
defeated, and hear crashing midnight's bell
toll beating in crested waves on bloodied
shore; it was nothing, but I thought I'd be there

when you'd sing from the basements of Bar-Ilan,
spirits beautied, beatified, drawing on dusk's desert
of endless, radiant orange-red, as I

gave way, in finality, to Northern starlight.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

1 New Poem

Going Somewhere More Quiet

Bar lights charged with magnetic heat,
the drifty wooze of sangria coasts
in southern Spain, backpackers' fall
leaf crunch in time beat skipping
to floor drum strike, sign of
crossing celestial seem stark threading
held up to supple sheen of midnight conversation.

Crackling burn of family furniture
for firewood, the crass sweat of
dancehall devilry, cherry Coke revelry
implied in jarring jet of curl shine, soaked
in absinthe bottle spills and sustained
by movements most mystic, invincible to
freezing distance's covering cloaks.

Sunday 5 October 2014

1 New Poem

Wild As The Night

Starlight catches in pincer pose,
unkempt: a radiant, brown-eyed laughter,
drawn in by the wine stain lipstick
and kept there crisp as dress shirt folds,
sewn linework in suit jacket tailors.

Let's cheer to rafter planks, fiery
filling basement rooms with turbine
tempest of being foolishly young,
arms wrapping in hurricane bleats,
trying out some signal smoke for flair.

Shine on, you, Chilean bike spokes,
glacier crest waves and all
free-dancing wishbones unbroken,
never be so bound up by wishes,
weighted by suit-coated men who could only

draw something wild as you were.

Thursday 2 October 2014

2 New Poems

Ever Clear

Light floods in the shallow brick square,
brigand tumults in lens flare opulence;
finer jewels, finer shades of longing,
could never be bought, at these
city bus benches and Sally Ann shopfronts.

Glasses chipper in window tinting,
striking but for your difference apparent;
you flutter, errant updraft catching feather,
I ponder, surveying shipknots' tempest.
With the softest chime you mentioned muddy waters but

they were clear as glacial springs to me.


Say Something

I say something scratched, panicked
headlight trauma the core of it;
tries to give warmth, wriggles
dying under lens watch, evaporates.

I say a clattering cliché truth,
winding pattern, wind-like totemic
to pretensions past, making sacred cross
of Popsicle glue, of corkboard pins.

I say to spit an edged shard,
rendered reflective past marches
with fire-print intensifies, petty cruelties
settled as prefab foundations, dug-in.

But unsaid is something in haze-mist,
of spun umbrella, in crackles of
windows open to late spring's dewy breeze
and you, the roses and sill lilies,

the somethings I beat in chest for.