Tuesday 25 July 2017

1 New Poem

Harps

When songs go slow,
city lights grow effervescent,

I think of Haringey foot traffic

When the sun swells and drapes
these little rooms in finery,

I think of gold harps
on green tapestries,

and of you.

Saturday 22 July 2017

1 New Poem

Dull Rainbows

Rustwater clank of rattling awake,
these post-Soviet planned models of
worlds, with their grease wheels barely
touched to track in friction form;

A meeting in soapstone
centerpieces, town names tongued
over with untrained whiplash,

belying those dreams of a Judt
reader all the same.

Back with the tin can charmlessness
of slanting roof cars, there lies
the snow-bound winter wash of all
that’s being sung on fire escape
stairs;

Ever-draining-colour copy
of old wounds we kept over-painting

with trinket-seller timing,

with flat-eared generator hum.

Sunday 9 July 2017

1 New Poem

Still Bleeding

Second-hand pains, worn washcloth
in downcast river triage,
that won’t do so much from these
red-white blood rushes I get
outside of exact modulations,

When I don’t want to speak a
single thing more poisoned with
firewater wash and boot-heel echoes,
as I knew it always did with
the muddy tracking over grass carpet;
still committed, but dulled with click-clack
tables.

How I heard still the trilling of front
lawn keyboards, in the brittle whine-chant
of police sirens.

Two being one, as cheap kitchen shears
to rip and tear at bones, to chip
away at map lines,

But didn’t hit the same damp way:
firework pageant,
forgetfulness.

Friday 7 July 2017

1 New Poem

Bigger Things

Something to say was:
you taught me the difference,
between peppermint-vodka stings
of sticking throat in younger
dalliance,

those ways I always thought
it felt for boys whose shirts
fit bitter, who sat more
still, could focus on time
signatures.

Between all that and
stiff breach it feels to
not know what to call you
in tumbling digit-point,
except alive,

Alive in wan hues,
but without a word in
infinite scripts to call,

Making it so seeming bitter,
these half-spun living rooms of
faces scarcely held to minute
flicker of waxy imprint,

Marking the celebration of high holy
nationalists’ days, that scale so
far to stretch a sink water sky
itself.