Saturday 30 January 2016

1 New Poem

August

If summer came early next year,
the long light strikes against
blessings chalk of cheek, making
deeper gold, tainting with denied nature,
it wouldn’t be swallowed so hasty this
time, it wouldn’t be so hesitant as
last.

No longer the clumsy embittered
poise of college bookkeepers in limerick
embraces, but the Greco-column
marble of lasting arm-wrapped
ecstasy measures.

But a recaptured scan never
lights up as fictional paper,
possibilities burning up quick
for that.

And everything after August
as metallic hallway echo,

everything after as refracted autumn sun,
everything after as half-won prize.

Sunday 24 January 2016

1 New Poem

Not As We
Too long since I felt wisened skin,
your palms against me;

Talking like that,
burrowing closer, junk drawer memory,
knowing it kills of affections
denied,

Knowing cross patches of
steel reading lamp light,
all keeping company.

Knowing next time, if ever,
I’d hold you closer to heart:

Beating still the same.

Tuesday 19 January 2016

3 New Poems

Blood Work
Line tracing, interlace of brutal
freedom; there isn’t so much
of an imprint in charts,

Imperceptible what it does,
clear as ice water, swift
as bony February chill.

Still there, though, gnawing red,
face-flushed, wriggling away
each time it gathers
past some point of resistance,

Breaches some barrier.

Starring into 50-year’s dawn:
a kind of tempered obsolescence,
planned and begun now through
forward ever.

Your still life chase of bloodstreams,
of beating hearts, something charging.



Would Not/Could Not
It’s a sort of quill-based dilemma:

To suffer shocks, string, be stung,
but to have felt all along,
to have been but for the hour,
came the man in stride.

Or, retreat, denial of
blood being bled, tea kettle warm
but not so close, cozy, as all
that implied,

Not so much as lemon water
lip touch.

Once, it never came,

In spite of
dreamcatchers, newspaper clippings, awkward gestures.

Now, I deny it.


Backsplash
The course of treetop pine,
summer lawn humming,
seems so far, statues’ tumult,
outside one window pane,
outside dusting glass shard,
paper-push arrangements,
diet drink formulation,

and why?

Sliding sop, wet linoleum,
slick in over-polished glisten,
chalky disposition worn in
defensible typecast:

too bright in sainthood,
too dark in January work mornings.

Friday 15 January 2016

1 New Poem

Ashen Lights
That made sense, once;
it did in the way it only does
at 21, 22, 33, ignorant
of ways you sweat, hand-flutter,
stumble about paper sheaves,
of photocopier chiming, blurry
facsimile sort of love.

It makes sense, as you stare
blank into lunchroom crosswords of
B&W film star honorifics,
afar with Acropolis
dreaming, afar from madding crowds,
fluorescent dusty department
shades, reading lamps.

It makes sense if you see
same across forsaken
Mayflower muck, or did in
wilder time, afar from
meeting close in train platform tic-tocks
for the recent-minded, the
wrecking crew sentiment.

But it never does next noon,
never does at stumbling dinner,
never does in type-delete-type,
never does in that bent, sickly light


only bureaucrat barracks
ever have.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

2 New Poems

Start Together
Four late trains, four missing
minutes more of pacing unused
dockyard, four times unspent
together in heated, deathly starlight:
bit bent, bit wavy, streaky road tar
paint; I collapse.

But you hold up: water bottles,
backroom bedding, why didn’t
have to, why do?

Nearest thought: it’s a bit charming,
to have a drapery, a kind word,
a chuckle,

or, could be, we started something.


Plastic on Plastic
It’s a whistle of timber, falling
wounded steel,

those first churning treads,
then glowed maple-trace petrol,

peace-making Medicine Wheel,
formulation of Garden River signage,

vague reminders from federal
buildings that it’s still living,

here, the land with creeping totems
of checkerboard morality,

chess jump movements through
map line.

Sunday 10 January 2016

1 New Poem

Viennese Trinkets
It’s not so glittering here, with all
the flake crest sort of patter
making lined smile of imitation
leather; in fact, it’s kind of darkened,

with the paper letter sort of
framing, you lose that swampy
August tender, through no
fault

but passing of sunlight,
the setting of moonshades.

The easier thing passing
hotel maid service sort of
affections through the briny
box wires bramble-snare
tongues in two by turns.

The mailing parcel of craftworked
sentiment, letters emboldened,
Renaissance pretension stiff;
it is all managed, not fainting

spells of first meeting.

Tuesday 5 January 2016

1 New Poem

Cities Can Be Lonely
A kind of bread and water living,
impressions unfaithful in disappeared ink,
takes its cresting toll, wave batters,
not as in Bloomsbury backrooms
of men-of-letters candle burn, but

some imitations we find by chance,
or screening midnight intents.

I don’t want to be your newspaper
lover, some scandal morning press;
we’ve never lightened names enough
for any ways of great confusion.

I don’t want to be some summer’s
sea-breeze, Ascot memory etched
there, defaced by schoolboys’
pocket blade turns.

I want to be,
more than bread,
more than water,
than passing glances,
than swallowed words,
fainting phrasing,

the kind that makes unfinished
spires on Dockland shore less
grey,

that springs old column placards
back in pristine shade:

yours.