Here is one of my ancestors.
He is dressed by an anything suit, he is dark.
His torso is an elephant, his legs are shapes of buffaloes,
his eyes are like a tree's.
Once he was carved from flowing wood, but now
he has stuffed the rolled-up years of his life behind his backbone.
It curves stubbornly.
Now the sprawling sun simmers the vapours of his life and
they rise, like rumours.
His eyes are stored in their original envelopes;
A green winged ocean brims there, still caressing.
He has seven lives, he has thirteen dreams.
His faces are storms, and hills ploughed by children,
He wears his wide-brimmed hat like a universe.
Once he dropped an apple, then he caught a hungry bird, a kingfisher.
He ran from a war I will never fight over,
Clutching the warm handprint of his past.
Now, he lets the light drip onto his shoe
Like acid, bleaching it white.
I hold his heart in my hand.
It turns, softly.
barbecue
Empty of images, the sky is blind.
Dressed in ropes, the goat is forced into the compound.
Groups of ancient hands-shrink-wrapped in leather
place over its high and low parts.
There is a rough grumble, snorted, and bits of
speech falling like crumbled stone.
The wide smile of the blade rejoices into juiced joints,
severing jolting limbs, cleaving knuckle, exposing white eyes of bone.
The fast wash of blood enfolds their legs and forearms as
the subject is retreated into the shed-bare kitchen.
The freckled compound sand bears knobs of
dark hair and the duff crescent moons of skittering hoofs.
The grit behind the kitchen is oppressed by damson stains.
A slake of uncorked cherry sauce sickens in the sun.
A butcher's instrument roves through the goat with rhythmical crunch.
The flesh sighs apart, webbing the wood board with misty membranes.
Each jewel of meat- still warm as breath- is bound with loops
of brilliant veins squeezing furls of red.
Soft rocks of sinew are shoved through with
iron twists; they drop bright juice like flatulent Summer fruits.
The barbecue is hobbled into the compound,
an ancient bull-breadth spider. It mulls the fire slowly.
The charcoals are raked; unleashing more
lifeless heat, thirsty and threatening as a desert.
An hour on, colossal gasps of burning air shriek at the sightless sky.
Intrusive as splinters, smoke-starred air kills eyes.
The sun sheds sharpened straws of heat in payloads.
Clutched roses of flesh kiss ros‚ maps into moonskin palms
dead cells nuzzle dead cells on respiring cells.
Each purple muscle fist is grazed in rocksalt
and furred with coughs of pepper.
Like drips of acid, needle-hot steel strikes eat roads into goat lumps
The myrrh of roasted death rises blackly, like flies
(real flies, smoke-struck, stray away).
The tart plash of meat on metalled heat
The jigsawed corpse squeezes itself of watery gold,
Flipping it in blisters onto the hell-hot coals
And bleeding back onto the floor below.
African Wedding Reception
From the pale London streets of a wet afternoon
the wedding friends tumble into the old hall.
The women are wrapped in fistfuls of
Coloured cloth dyed in
Blood heat, field and five shades of earth.
Men try to lounge in well-prepared suits, and
Greet with fierce laughs and respect.
And the polished children exchange bashful grins before
Starting their own celebrations.
Having shared good food, good music and goodwill
They leave the bare floor to the dancers.
Soaked in the roots of a three-rhythmed song
the wise and the less wise ride the dances.
The women with neat and dedicated pace
And high-spun rays of melody.
The men with energetic, headlong leap,
Rumbled murmur and soulburst cries.
Living out the twist and pound,
twist and pound of celebration.
Clustered round are thoughtful smiles
Deeper than savannah evenings.
Good things drench each fertile mind, and
In a feisty, thin-walled London dancehall
Sugar-cane is growing.
This lady I know
A tree moves, undisturbed; her route slips through the slow swarming
tornado of crowd like a wind-chased snake of rags.
She is carved from flowing wood, with limbs of chains; like
Water, a back drapes down from a high-held axe.
Bright worms of gold burst her ears and
Across her stomach is a bundle bound with black leaves.
The fish bar shunts, fruitman lets the sun shoot his sweaty globs.
The clothes shadow her- afraid to nestle skin- stiff-stitched, dry as nuts
(their rustle is the soft speech of desert sands).
A shroud of sand-grey shawl guards bushels of her hair
A darkstone moon, her face pours frowns and stares in turns.
The black milk of her skin slow-burns with health.
Thoughts jostle barefoot behind eyes like bleeding eggs.
As she passes her name smears in screams over slate buildings.
Traffic lights loom; their submarine fires do not bruise her rhythm
(she has no time for hot-blooded cars).
Unturned; a breeze flings her round the corner.
A smell of spiced honey.
The sky shuts.
The angels weep their wings, like insects.
Hummingbirds
I massage my dust-filmed cocoons of memory, dredging
for silver-plated souvenirs.
Now a fragment crashes into my eye
like iron shanks through a derelict roof
A mustard wall, hammered by African sun,
Wracked with cracks; is tended by purseloads
of hummingbirds. Each sapphire, sugar-boned
Sketch of a life eases bursting blooms of syrup.
I see the fluttering birds so clearly;
Suspended like thumbling pitchers on needles of water.
But I can't remember the flowers at all;
were they heavy and dark like bruised peaches, or
petite red- handfuls of scarlet clots- or
careless folds of yellow like unfinished capes?
And what sounds (my ears draw a blank)?
"Humming, of course." Of course.
But the fresh-cemented picture is breaking like soaked biscuits.
The atlas of my childhood weeps another page and deserts of
NOW stream before forests of Yesterday.
The wind eats at my broken map; I clutch it and scan each dead horizon.
I keep walking.
Eating Mangoes
Fetch me a mango.
Reach up into the lap of wide green
Smiles and pluck me down
an oval sun-soaked globe.
Will I puncture
the lazy skin with my teeth, and
let the grainy sweetness wander over my face?
Or will I
fetch a cold, wet knife
and clean slim slices of
slippery sun from the flat dark stone?
Do you eat the skin?
It might feel good to bite
burnished folds of speckled butter;
but today I'll only
scrape the meaty underside, collecting
shreds of yellow sugar-stuff
beneath my tongue, before bundling them
down my slackened throat.
CHRIS BENDON
Master Arnold's 5 Queasy Pieces
Chord from dawn, some wisps some scraps for the birds
of half-forgotten
sounds from the century's morning. That which was
orchestrated shall come unstuck.
Our shadows are thrown back West
but Victoria and Bismarck are dead;
only the Archduke is left of this trio-
we are children free of governess and strict papa.
But what is the agenda they have set
(for they have set one- look at these old dinner plates,
these spoons, these forks, these partly ornamental knives)?
2
How all that-that clarity of hallucination,
is forgotten by the afternoon!
We have already lived a lifetime.
Still, despite shadows stirring like the
grandparents in lithograph,
in undulant and sinister ripples across the lake's stones,
there is time yet for some fun and games, some violent
exertion. When no-one's watching.
The very windows of the house are caught napping.
As for the gate, who can trust rust?
3
One perfectly original thought. An Eden flowering.
But I am troubled by this cast of sky.
Something about the cloud formations,
massed military,
teaches me to be thick-skinned as pink or black granite
if I am to live through this moment's crisis.
4
Unless you are prepared nobly to sacrifice,
what life is worth the savour!
Moderate, with all these mounds of cakes and
roofs of Lebkuchen; who dares talk of moderation?
Make way for something light, you ponderous waltzers!
Make way for the Dematerialists, the Immaterialists...
Because I am so restless, always on the move,
there must be a second crucifixion, right
here in this neat and tidy town.
Golgotha. The station clocks all lying
with the faces of those hated clowns
They dragged us off to see one day
for the sake of their comfortable, distorted,
fictitious memories. They were never this age!
This age of ages. Serene, o most serene;
calm and lucid as the word on rolled scrolls.
So much to remember. So much to repeat.
5
And now the long daggers of shadows,
the long seeping away of all we were into the East,
whence we came, come.
And it is a tarnished dirty brass evening,
something already fabled, antique.
You dare to take it out then and look at it.
The Face.
Of the second coming I mean, any second;
the first being when (when? -why, this A.M.)
you were kids all ready for the ritual slaughter:
the Second when you pray for admittance into your heart
of the Sacred Heart, the white and evanescent God.
This happens as conscious adults making
conscious deliberation, each for each:
conscious choice because
the choices of the world are driving you to desperation...
And you may picture two of the untruest, truest, bluest
most patient eyes in the world,
right behind yours; for they are Yours now.
(In German, we make much use of the Upper Case.)
And the face, without sniffing or sneering
because of all-sheepish- you know you have
lost or spat on, of the chaste Maid.
Face of Sophia, of Wisdom beyond all knowledge,
Grace seemingly inseparable from physical grace.
And maybe you are still in the dark
waiting for the first morning to break.
Waiting below the Mountain,
with the lambs and goats.
In German, we make much use of the stiff Upper Case.
To some, a Schoen- or Zauberberg, daunting as an Alp
they daren't cross. It makes them dizzy-sick.
But step up folks,
despite the sky of green, the blue voltage...
I can see Your House from here.
Beyond the cross you must grin and bear.
Symbolist Movement
I do not know whether my books shall sell
(mad Optimism spilled.... in 5p pieces),
but saw what quietly lured me- and have bought
(for an arm and a leg) you a small case:
sandy linen;- and it locks.
In it you'll find
just 20p [(in case)], bearing-
on one side our Sovereign: on the other
Our Lady of Europa (not from
my change: there was none). Some shop,
near Ambassadors, called
The Merchant.
After the weir- a winter-dulled water
makes milk... desperate bubbles
... something surfacing.
And-again- surrounded by lapping
new waves- I am carrying our case
across a humped wooden bridge- courtesy of
European Regional Development...
My heart's region expands at the sight of
my ex: this time as a tawny duck,
reasonably comfortable in her
complaisance and care... there is
the usual dependent dependable male:
blue, beautiful as Satan.
And one so white, and fair
like Art itself- none could harm it.
And should it be necessary ú(among hotheads), given
a touch of sun, this would blind you to
its ever presence.
And now I'm bearing my little gift
along the long stony path
nowadays I'm accustomed to...
My foot dislodges old netting and wiring
as a good land Lord corruption:
why there's a small blue coffin!
Once holder of those smile rotting candies...
And here's young Hope:
a speckled praying mantis...
nameless bike without wheels, going
... on into eternal reversal.
Our Future- apparently destroyed for
this limp gull, that paper-thin shoulder-blade;
that endless toothbrush hurled off a ship;
that single child's sandal... is here
...or nowhere- likewise for all behind my back-
as... on my now favoured uncertain terrain
... I face the sough and plunge of the
Unknown- that which- crablike-
sidles sideways of Science.
Marching, twisting and hobbling over
brown, large, no-coloured rocks;
emboldened, then slowed by
barnacled boulders, I walk barefoot
wormed mud, sharp mussel-beds...
Some great change of State:
something momentous goldly born.
Kelvin Corcoran
An Account of the Year Zero
This is our founding myth and this is modern day.
The son of a woman and the emperor of heaven did
it all: the spiritual foundation laid, the data
for all values and all our people etc.
Beyond the rim of a continent
repeat chant repeat chant.
Iron expanded and then revolution spread,
wars raged through the peninsula;
agriculture invasions practical science
the king reached out to new borders,
the art is now lost.
Village rites reach back to our ancestral homes:
family, community, nature respect and mankind love.
Rolling the big words at you every day,
our spirit of independence
driving the easy to learn phonetic alphabet;
repeat repeat.
//
We have subways for mass movement,
we can go just about anywhere
and the stations are pleasant places
to meet friends, hold cultural events.
Farmers wrestle in the off-season,
grasp, throw and stand to rousing percussion;
two people stand opposite ends of a plank
and take turns to jump.
We have many recreational activities;
hiking, swimming, and many more,
ancestral games, dancing for the moon:
binding us binding us.
//
There are colourful landscapes,
plants and animals alive in tradition
network the social forecast,
families and work and the dead loop.
Inlaid images of clouds and cranes,
the endless speech of the sky
spelling out a thousand rivers,
GNP sure as an arrow hits the cow.
In the halls of the palace
mountains and arches frame it,
years of violence codified
in the canine vaults and ramps.
There's a key to all of this,
a 256m DRAM chip, first in the world;
rituals performed with government finance,
we put dreams inside our children.
//
I hide in the museum of unspeakable loss
in the private treasure house
racks upon racks of jars gather light
jar of stones
jar of air
jar of stories
shaken out over all our heads
one thousand years ago
still falling
I cannot breathe
these objects
help me.
The son of a woman
and the emperor of heaven
did it all
iron data stamped in the blood
inscribed on tablets
big words and 8.2% growth.
I toss an arrow in the pot.
The Literal Poem About My Father
There's nothing like music,
certainly nothing like the music in Eniscothy,
cracked and sobbing republican songs
sung in the face of the Black and Tans.
Those murdering bastards from Glasgow slums,
for what they did to the priests,
nothing like the tuneless drone from upstairs
and a curse on the morning for what they did.
Each night we breathed a drunk's mythology,
the English officer and sweet colleen;
the drone's in the air around me still
though he's in the ground nine months now.
When my mother was dying I was strong,
I hit first and faced him down
all my years buoyed up against him,
but for all that it's like he never was.
An alcoholic given to violence;
a thief; an abuser of his children;
an arsonist who was finally sectioned:
each term I secure for clarity.
Where's that Johnny Corcoran,
the little Irish man with all the kids.
He is gone, gone, gone,
four daughters and a son angry with a dead man.
Gone, gone, gone.
//
Again I think I drive the old road
but it's the open landscape design
and the memory is stronger and physical.
this is where the old road was;
the look of the trees, the nearby village
it's not there, the place is changed
and the people at the end of it gone.
Out there, field upon field of darkness
I don't want to be out in
but on the narrow rise of the old road:
descending into the next town
the pool of light of streets and houses
I think I drive towards,
each time along the flattened route.
//
I thought I saw my father
walking towards me on the street,
though he's dead for months now.
It was another man in the crowd
but he looked as I remember him:
short, compact, and fixed;
a trouble to my mother and sisters.
I catch my breath before the truth,
watch him go and fall in the dust.
//
Lee I was thinking of what you said
driving to the next town
though September rain and landscaped roads,
there's no end of things,
the good is the fact you're writing.
I think the trees in the wet fields
lean the way of the coming truth,
to return by instruments, by earthly stars
mapping out a restored country
as darkness falls in each fold.
My children talk themselves into dreams,
our hands deep in the sea of glass,
we rush to the edge of the known world
where the road ends in air.
below cold-shouldered hills
SIMON SMITH
Third Hymn to Venus
'Remember the TEMPLE, its endless colonnade,
The bitter lemons printed with your teeth?'
Gerard de Nerval
'My steapps are backwarde, gasinge on my loss'
Sir Walter Raleigh
We exist on the thinnest songs, a buttercup held to your chin:-
you played hopscotch, voyaged across the high seas.
At Versailles fountains spew what the people say
via an earpiece. Clothed and fed the mob swell.
Not quite everything else agrees (it's not legal in any case),
so I began the hunt for something hot to eat, kept things tidy,
a fresh start in the morning, as certain as The Graces smiled on the worms.
Rough pears and apples. Stomach pains.
The whole of Western Civilisation depends on it,
ranged in the mist as I sleep a little through the day
a line struck through the Subject, awaiting my return
to the bluish line of a garden maze above the meanings of objects,
a great sonorous place to fill
like the aristocrat who owns the woodland. The Unicorn burnt up
on impact. This instant. The Ancien Regime
and the Third Estate: the Definitive Account,
I dined out on that one for three years! But the reason
why I've not sold anything before is because I've had nothing
to say about etiquette, by that golden thread hangs a gloss,
sets the tapestry aglow as pretty a picture as you'll ever see, oars poised ready
above high tide. Fact: things are better today than they were yesterday,
I raised my hand, the whole sorry affair
so stained, so rank, necessity
was never far away, the Future washed out of your ears;
the crowds stood the chill and you could see vast squares for miles
below now. Who knows if Great Men (induced to take their white linen jackets off)
could've saved the what-could-have-beens; all we can be sure of was the way
and an Empire falling like that, while the typhoon blew and blew.
2
The summer months are the one fact you'll hate
along with an inability to form relationships I can't be sure of.
On The Gold Coast Our Lady perched on high, the car parks are hideous
beside her throne. You told me so
while collecting dragon's teeth. You were master of none:
the terror in the kisses where Ideas might intrude
as a blue yacht slips through the waves,
raising the serving-girls' terrors to melodrama.
Above, the descent of the dog-star, and below chimaeras raging
as dirty sleet falls.
Like peppermints. Who owns the rights I want to know, so protect
your head. Numbers are beautiful, that's why.
They taught me how to fashion most of industry into Art,
a whole view, if somewhat worldly, nothing left unspoilt. But where's
the Ark/act I inhabited, where the lemons marked
with the indentations of your teeth? One terrible white-out.
I remember best reaching the summit, the zipped body-bags
and not far to go, wind whistling around a high-density episode.
This is where I made my home amongst hostile animals,
a lion for my cushion, the lurcher at my feet,
that's about as traditional as air temperature measured, water metered,
the predators attenuated, nosing a food trail.
Then I fell out of that darkness onto a West Coast cool
and easy as the tattoo at my heel, that's me shipping
precious wines and spices, (the vibrations randomly agitate the Cosmos),
metamorphosised into Paradise, California- no frontiers there except parking lots!
Take a parking lot, turn it into a museum, the memory wiped out when all
else has failed. This lady was before me, on Mount Ararat.
3
He, who led the defeat asleep through winter in the absence of light.
Foreign body. A bag, just like a plastic bag, the accepted boundary.
The Body and the Good bottomless.
Renaissance lyric for a keepsake, boomtown laments recessed,
the death of a wife between absolute quiet and the musical score
a love note gripped the lack of conclusions.
Below, the orchestra practice. Surrey's not so leafy then.
Bubbled babble blubbered rabble outpouring one fair song.
What was the question? Red and green cones find the nerve
torn, and battering at the fresh cornea a blue dusk of occupied territory,
the 20th Century's requiem stored in the rain,
cartoons submerged, fotofits sunk to the bottom of the pool, and human
to the end a supply of workers for the mills;
farthest from the sun the middle class at prayer that afternoon.
It was habitual I tell you, the satyrs mad
as the cautious tender lovers we are: we, who discovered the New World
that sprang from the fiction of a natural metaphor,
the blue earth and its idylls.
I am thirty, I am thirsty and dieing while I lay out the colours
close by the Trinity of Powers, rationing the Good and the discord.
Sink or swim or travel light. Not without me you don't,
but with the relief of elevated speech.
You are impossible to live with,
footpaths shrill with hawthorn and snow-
estrangements whilst soluble, continually expand, leaching
the news of the day, and besides that, beside that the field's edge,
unable to relay a question, or as useless as the past run out of steam.
There is the heroine, abducted and dead on the stave.
4
You are behind my life. Even with the invention of the car
horse-drawn vehicles lasted down the back roads.
I can stand upright, cover all bases if you want, excluding the rattle of keys so loud,
downs a calamity like a whisky in one, so harsh nocturnal visions
are unable to compete, calendars rendered unpalatable sung to obituaries
sang our progress to a forest clearing. The chimaeras from on high and lofty
add the odd, minding their own business and profits to monitor the bloodstream,
no, sorry, as prophets they monitor the bloodstream. For this pain
nearer the stars try and make a fist. They advanced
the horror by the exponential ratio of ten, wasting reserves,
tipped this backdrop into my eyes akin to the earliest templates of data,
of eulogy, of needing durable specifics, (e.g. sumac, coppery red), so let
the information degenerate into Art and various states of disrepair.
Randomly assimilated, this was some kind of Paradise;
yet we came to expect defeat when overwhelmed by a stronger
enemy instead, match-needle to maritime north. Therein burns
the temporary Universe tasting like salt spanning the hemispheres
both south and north. Let the gold impossibly accrue, the various ideologies
drying on the radiator. I cannot conduct my life as a seminar,
or suffer the penalty, being translated from conversation into descant,
a suitable topic for the salon, you understand, fit for the ladies
and the ears of rulers:
they've been at it all night playing out Life, and absorbed in loneliness
if you will follow the gravel as far as the statue
where earthly calm anchors the intolerable tumbledown of manufacture:
so make yourself scarce, we're in for a cold snap.
December enters via the bones and the resources invested in the few,
wagons pulled by the shadows of horses.
5th May-12th January 1996
{for Winter Solstice 1995}
Fourth Hymn to Venus
for David Rees
1 Utopia
'only the hands that touch her as flowers'
Anthony Mellors
then one fine day everything exactly
as you've guessed -the
sound Byzantine,
an average weekender on patrol greedy for the stuff
teethes prior to the feast. My love is a child and a bawd
pulled the knife on me.
Documentaries stoke up a fever till my pockets sag. The cabinet
crammed, trompe d'œil adding to torment,
but no formal suffering I've practiced
my survival technique for the day, deep, deep blue cleared of hinderance.
At Yalta you might, inventing countries nobody ever heard of. Idle hours
the weight a bluish hue,
sideburns dove-grey dash about the real economy, a price on your head,
ditched judgments of yesteryear
packed with solar
energy, askance to the gift I regret, the next of kin 50s style
slumped in a pink easy chair.
It reads like a book but rejects the flavour.
Maybe I'll learn Welsh. Albeit the loops are mine.
True as the wind, true as the rain, as invisible as the blue
gas hovers above the marsh.
Dirty coffee cup by my feet,
must try harder at the 'Night Diary', an oasis to return to. Find/make
time. 21st January 1996: my fingernails scratched the water,
cleaned out a pipe. Deep inside the main each car's golden distance
from the one in front.
The sun floats about the meadow crazy as Whitman.
Codeine does the job good. Make a note to myself. Can't bear
to look. 'Codeine.' Debts bite hard. More jobs
will have to go. Lines crackle like a telephone call in danger.
What kind of man lives in the moon, an enthusiast for my invective
unthought (like the land)
dirty trains to the wearer's knowledge, forewarned is
immediate breakdown.
What killed the Joker and finished this book?
The doily attached to a Reality-shaped space,
behaviourists call
a momentary arrest where all kinds of lace-up shoes
don't be modest, don't be blamed. What did you say
in my defence doubles and redoubles ceaselessly.
Each thin colour floats on
the surface, today no special occasion; sunsets in the mussel shells. Light flocks to the march of concerti.
Led Dido blinded by the fire, shy no more,
teeth obvious as white as toothpaste would be makes good her smile. Homes overlook the stinking canal, stop at the black refinery.
Her promise the charm for good luck at the head
the whole discomfort
won't allow me to finish. I began life as a piece of cheese.
The terrorists or freedom-fighters
hoard a little black transistor with in-built alarm. A portable secret.
Richard leant forword and said, 'Life:
A Loser's Manual'. That needless artificial leg.
Detectives clutch at straws. Good Housekeeping and the London
Telephone Directory for Business Services causes one to misbehave,
good knowledge
made derelict for its bitterness. How many mays
would you include in a literary work and silence the fleet?
Reason doesn't even enter into it; although the Imagination
managed one brick and the hint at Creation
rescued a sugary wine from Common Law.
The irretrievable passes my eyes once only
silver foil conserves the heat for its redness, pays for what
you don't want.
Add on the continual interruption of a Friday night, and we've all gone
home to our families,
the alternatives are as various as they are various, pried from clemency.
Ingest slowly before meals these raw gifts.
The men and women who lose their hearts.
Fed bad milk: it didn't happen.
Wouldn't notice the commuters bound homeward and packed tight
as green, as orange, as grey maggots.
The Philip Larkin Archive we endure for historical time a workman-like
performance established the radio tone poorly tuned as the lily
to the day's rest. How different are you?
The iced surface meets the clouds. It's too late.
Get to know Paris.
I regret style or refrain
the gelatine plates sheltered perennials
out of all proportion. By the time I get to it you
could've and represent my feelings, I collected
the thoughts with the stale bread into the bargain neat
as the red border. Vapour above land dropping away rapidly
safely airborne.
Now my heart, now my money. Ah! the fragrance,
it's Givenchy pour homme
100,000 fall, and many dead. I work and sponge colour at the tips,
the distress my Bluesaver to Hades is like a milk pan.
The trick is to reject everything,
almost.
Black loose hair telling tales of fun
my mind across that dirty river with you.
Hull was the end of the line, sunken densely boiling
too busy to ask the solution.
I prefer my ice-cream a little melted, visit the old town
for something to do. Draft dodging or writing poetry, many
a free-loader and genuine talent ruined overseas.
My Route Planner to Farringdon, sensitive, comfortable, fin de siecle
Kentucky Fried Chicken to Kwik Fit seeps through the vanguard,
the ink not as fast as we believe,
fought Mallarme for the immense cloud and pot of gold. And lost.
By air obvious as paper causes pure functionalism
the sun-bleached door torn off
entry by the fake and you
and at the end a red distress flare
I confess. The waiter did it.
As the day goes by the great narrative fallen down the back
of a cupboard.
Egos seep at the corner I relish the beast, you know, durable
as a three month contract
concludes the search and part of
the orange primeval sludge, a city left to freeze.
I cry a little to write down your name
exercise the oblique tax, and too many birds
often relics of quotidian circumstance.
The smelly barge moored on the outskirts
beneath low white mist.
The orange tarpaulin engulfs the black earth of Lincolnshire.
A man attempts
suicide, 'what have I done to myself.' A halt
along the A1. Dead flat prairie,
desperate to confirm your necessary r“le,
checkout to checkout, the appointment kept or the fetish
worth preserving to have found the middle-way vanish
and reappear, as if by magic imprints on the fields
where the snow has lasted, substitute displacement activity.
Poetry asks the same questions as mathematics: for it is I
Apollo who had high hopes for less than the music to scale,
a personal view, snake lightening the wound is well
in recession, purple heart this season he jogs along the grey road,
the old ideas treasured in his yellow
Sony Walkman anti-roll
device, waterproof and all, the letters spell out 'S-P-O-R
T' in blue and also the moments of green, but express
a preference for greedy
karma and children you gotta
work hard or jot down the figures.
Tom Raworth was too hot.
Buy a checked shirt or printed blouse.
The collage an emergency legend, the cash full of snow hunts out
the airy culprits overhead.
I like etiquette an attempt to label
the song cannot travel to the end left to daddy
his left leg is sensitive
to the weather, his bomber jacket has elastic panels,
wears it baggy as the experience of tonal dissonance because it won't
the Pleiades drift above the subconscious
delicate pigments act;
to strike out alone through the long grass on all sides a maker of paths;
I can really admire that, said the artist's impression like haricot beans
do, sweep past the rump of afternoon
Move or focus I can't
2 The Age of Reason
'The Singing head, the different metal head'
David Rees
Difficult to maintain a self-impression from the middle profile and enjoy
the unrest. Nobody really cares the population
shunted from village to town. Fables to rent.
History as it whistles passed, and how many angels can I include in one
sentence. Forget pinheads-clich‚s are true and all you take
into the oven. That's not a question but a whirlwind. He lives
just behind my ear, to loosen
or cope, you must come by now; the bombs have put you to sleep,
as experience touches red. The publicists have won the battle:
small trees frosty, next
we flash through some godforsaken shithole like Grantham
composed of the bits, so ends another pointless year
and marooned by contract I'll dream it for you. Told in the shrug
of the earth, waived birdlime, a question
did occur: on the Issue of Greatness, only visible
to the naked eye the dead men
carry their debts as far as the Styx and no fringe element,
the land ripped up
into slag heaps for the local people to afford a homestead with a porch
to piss off. Whilst we're talking emulsify the Dasein.
We want poems about the Subject and I
want my little niche in Literary History! I don't feel well
about the echo, a hang-over from the pastoral workstation
territory formalised. To the madhouse.
Anglers kneel and fish the same water for the same fish. You take
conventions and then abuse them.
The one thing I always wanted were goats and horses.
I'm collecting poets: cf. Rodefer's Answer to Doctor Agathon,
his tour de force.
I want to be a goatherd and whip up another cloud of unknowing.
Hindquarters the isthmus, the Palladian mode, inclement at base
whole flowerbeds look to the sun,
a cocked hat of anti-social behaviours flash celestial, flash Nike
react odd or even perpetual flight
myriad deceptions, breakneck to dazzle and plan the evening.
Cooked meats are a favourite hobby.
In this world clones fight colons and Paradise with all debate
wiped out daunting columns of newsprint and greying debt,
two carriages powered by as many diesel engines lifted from old buses,
put up your hood or you'll travel poorly
freezing in winter, the beaten opposition
wrong-footed proves the mess
after sunrise, bright equipment finds you in danger
THIS IS NOT A SENTENCE
Mitre Square greasy from the centre pencilled in
a chinagraph scrawl of London
on the riverbank
aloof, lethal with lime-green
floats, no touch no sale, rusted hooks, precipitate
multi-coloured umbrellas. One dead peach-stone,
the same goes for the single foot-passenger:
the back-to-backs smell damp considering the nice, neat front gardens.
Guilty: reading decadent and subversive literature
from his shiney Elysian boots.
Shot for paying attention. To what use the yarrow. A local undertaker
walks a tightrope to work with the privileged,
there's always a job to be done, he says: to preserve
the expression of little selves, a rosebowl wrenching light towards it
manages your affairs for Good.
Chough and ibis, at the minus sign. Reliefs swing up, so true.
I don't do fashionably late. On initial impression a personal loan
made of chocolate. It's fake: the language died
c.1755 and has been preserved ever since in your name, The Angel.
Descent of the famed, the sentiment of days-gone-by,
I hover in the monstrous distortion happy as a lark
gliding over tundra/ploughed field/moorland.
As the eagle I am the one who sees everything down to the chemicals.
Grass blades and the wind like us composed of hostile echoes,
help the wild beasts. Exile
tightens coins in your palm
before you can make a name there, before monies
appear in your account.
Headstrong young Freddy checking timepieces in St Petersburg,
saving up to walk in the countryside; members of the orchestra
see into this man's bloodstream. The only solution to bed
down for another winter surrounded by dictionaries and the love of them.
Study a family of chimpanzees, you needlessly rock the boat.
'Cariad' factored in, I know unenglished the flavoured Welsh, opaque
bubbles of cold air hang by, cloudy pear-drops of speech,
a Love Poem I tell you, a Love Poem my sweet,
from Siberia via the North Sea, for those who died the coldest
hole in middle air improved no chances,
stars wander joyless thus far
sure and combustible snapshot creations a trio or less than
chance abandoned, balanced on this momentous wave.
Looking for a poem called 'The Horse', insufficient evidence
minty with particulates drifting along a dust track
weeding the hostile camp.
"Out to break the old rules, eh. What do you have pockets for?
'My Little Wing' to a bygone era.
We can't all be troubadours wandering the highways and byways."
The wind screams gale-force. Easterlies roughly in isobars
strip lights flicker. I'm alive the office building tells me.
Three iron figures stuck to green and brown meadows, King, Queen
and Knave, the cabinet holds a deck
of playing cards the Ideological jukebox, some kind of
precious retreat smells bloody as the feeder towns north of London.
The soundtrack of everything hurled goodbye, what rhetoric.
Discreet loci in the bad weather: there's the body, there's the head,
there's the steaming vegetables.
The sculpture/theme park fresh as the concept of village dwellings.
Chew, then leave it
alone to darkness inside the rough sack
the first roses this morning proof of proof.
3 Comet Hyakutake
'actor poets prat about in arts labs'
Kelvin Corcoran
and the new-found sea. Schoenberg
thought it a packed lunch or the rotten warehouse.
Not if you were the last man alive
or the phenomenon of evil. The streets bulge with angels,
and all those wankers from Crouch End who go and watch Trainspotting
thinking it's the real thing. Dart a long way, much to learn.
A bathyscaph half-way down to the ocean floor.
forgive me my seasonal nosings, Langue or Parole, not sure where
we are: they usurp the deep blue; let's displace
autobiography by writing it. There it is to one side, chock-a-block.
Another cloud, another dream. What jackass did that
offering all visitors a welcome? The troops are in
and I'm a dullard or a dandelion. Can't tell which,
the whole deal reduced, as attention off-course
the faltering snow of it, the sentimentalism!
Throw back my goldfish, aching with continued
resistance cleared out the muck
for Orpheus, what remains of the charm on a more realistic charge
trumped up, sore throated alien.
How you classify the Enemy is up to you,
a gibbering nostalgia for an avantgarde which never existed, indifferent
to the little seeds and their viciousness,
finish on time for once, choked with painkillers, insignia dear head.
Dogs chained outside, the pupil to the thief-how can it be,
when your whole personality is a literary conceit the stomach burns
when 'finally' is not final,
dodging semtex and bad coffee, wheels past your next victim.
The Aegean is in fact the Cornish coastline, and the appearance
of the white egret indicates a worrying trend.
Faded now a mere sketch, the collection of sad and ambitious men
shelter beneath the motherfucker of all parliaments.
Winter biting off the days in isobars. Eventually I will disappear
leaving Dido
This night will be true, if you open it
21st January-2nd May 1996
Stephen Rodefer
from Mon canard
Julie my duck, mama's lute, zouzou in lieu of amor
of our lou, butte of my butte, beaute of your butt,
mont rue, my verity former not here, not her, mob
spent of row, flowers in rue lappe, pet asinine pot,
my lovely cinder, my ashen heart, my onliest wit
ness to my witness, my jump in Seine, my ankleberry,
my thinnest necklace, my sturdiest hysteria, my white
patin leather policefemme, my unreading gaoler, my o
pen letter, princess mon ami JEW, my little left bergv er,
my choo choo, coughdrop of my esophoguy, my
lu dens, by my mitten, minion of my invisible cake, liz
ard die of my destiny, my mutt, my flycast, my gal
oshes, my smitten gloves, smith of my smith, my bull
s blood drawn in sleepy smiles, mon petite carotide,
mine outside of libraries, mine inside of sky, my re
flection of a flicker, my intermittent heaven, my turn
into heaviness, my whats-her-name, my little beachym,
my sham, damoiseau mar on my divan, my penny coach,
my virtual chum, chinchin of my chin, chin duster of
my shoeshine, my main cat pal, my pause, my going
wobbling but unmusty, my sexy gerundiva, mon chat for
an hour and a life, terminal initial of lucrece and lucretius, place
where my fingers learnt their place, my buzzing anklecuff,
my dearest ear, l'oreille cassee, nose for my eyes,
my agreeablest knot, my sweet tooth, my toot, my b
low, my job, my wife, my snow, wasted poplin of my
unclosed drawers, knicker of my let, my tie and my
redundancy, tongue of hyacinth, tongue of clement
een, my plain darkling, my lasting crone, my looniest
tune, noon of my noon, and the second afternoon all
night, my sheet kneeler, my slat breaker, my color
less felt seat of Leicester's double life, my shad
ow of digression, the new vague shape of day, fig
ure e'en now at night, my little porcelain pissoir,
my tiger, my jump from and for the rest, my elip
sis, my short contraction, my resignation from is
land life, my assent, my premier something or other, so
ts like a brain, a heart, an army, a limb, an el
bow, a bubbling shoulder, a pout, a will, a per
mission, my lust to stay there, my inability to
put out an unputoutable fire, my skills for the imp
ossible, my trade, my dress for your shred of comp
any, my rippling red and white awning, my bit of az
ure for your eyes, my fortune for a whisper, my we
t loincloth for a hook, my bath for new years day
in five or ten days, years or weeks, my careful in
difference to food, my veronica on a stalk of sill
er and silk, my Magdalen-like ability to move wh
ile staying still, my chipping statue at the back
garden less than life size and life like, my coming
running when running came, my leaving running left
when running left, doomsday cowardess of treacle, my sill
abus friend, my wider girl, my wide boyfriendship so jaco
being ardent and intransigent, my dawning bullock g
irl nicked in bud in bed in mind in place of the pla
cent, my corny alienate comeuppance as high as my
eremite riding on an elephant, my shag rug with mess
ages, my reign till dawn, my adornodding club, my dis
position of dissertations, my present to give, my dark
appearance for the coronation, my wish to be forced to
be teddy, my sequestered quarters, my resignation, dis
appearances of the consorts of kings, Gibbs good fe
ast, my nick and my nora, my little yapping Asta, re
marriage proof of my film with James Stewart, my lun
ch with Kelly, my what acknowledged gives, my grateful dis
integration at the parade line, my blank film of your
happiness, my countess too much, my count extreme, ser
ene silence of my unspeakable delay, my unfuckingleave
ably beautiful seemster, my lateness to be slower to
church than to hill, my ticket in your garden, my dye
d in wool, my borne in rain, my lying still, my step
hanotical last lay, my weakness for the Elizabethan
ate, my trade to become tiniest lantana, my mistake
of presence, my allegory of undercurrencies and the
year of birth, my hour, my second, my orchid, my life
of bloom, my clear unseasonable infanta salvaging dry
dock, my mute trial, my friendship of friendship, my
views on view, my hat lying dormant at you ball, youth
full jollity, my wild child, my blind, my duck, my bet
black or blue, like your browning eyes, your bell
my bell, your bell, my body of work at your work
place, mere cœur, my belief the earth is sleeping
with the trees, my habit each night to pull the cover
up and lay the chin at the hem of moss and bark and
all night long to stand in awe of such cheek, such
eyes and the uprightliness of such eternal marri
age, that of mine as chance as sky, as opportune as
music always had in mind, my grant you bell, my he
raldic tift, my helenic jamesian vendor, my pearl asea off
marjoram, my dot, my mousse, my blanc, my jung fr
au, my chocolateness both going in and coming out,
wengen and overland through becks and calls, my
after browse, mein lieber freund, my yesterdays wee s
now, my nose for eyes, my gift for burning jeans,
my ou s'eloigne mobile, where the fuckers of yesteryear are exiled,
my moped at the juke box of your speciality, ma
femme, my grey, my untied and made knot, my mai
den all gone, my nothing overdone, my not enough is
more than enough, and my too much just enough, seer
ess virago of my former bike, my love, my middle
name, my sweetest scent, my highness John Keats sic kerchief not se
nt from the handle of too early consumption,
unreading jailer of my deeper fund of Isis,
my burning fanny of pages, my daddy thrown
by many generations of horses, by all the music a
bove accomplishment- accomplice, accomplice,
accomplice, accomplice, my accomplice...
Karlien van den Beukel
Bathing Suites, nos. I, II and III
I
Should delicacy hold one
to one's inflamed ligatures
or, in organised rages, say that
Nature is
to apologise for palpably moping
a lourdish dip
behind the vanishing point of pontification,
when no-one is looking,
not even those
whose disposition would have seized
it to introduce its own
launch of the well-aligned stone,
in luminous baths, diagnoses.
II
In the cubicle of an early canto
heliotrope those hot dry eyes
snort lavender and silverpine
do pistou with the John Canoos
over those decorous ochres go
to kick larks up sapphire skies
& the water almond-white swim
O, to be faunaing in avignon.
III
How I wept when it appeared
I was unequipped
to be an interpenetrative twin.
Yes, I have nothing
against the lamé underpantaloons of dawn
thrown over the Backs
whilst
taking the matitudinal interpluvium
in winsome
losesomeness.
Maurice Scully
the section INTERLUDE from the book PRIORITY
The Sirens a ballad
Everything correct. And no
use. Facing a tree
in bloom.
Playing the trombone.
Broken glass blood-
stains
spiked fences desklamps dream-
homes/I/Is it. Between
the laws (chance)
(the twisted chain)
(chance)
or:
how many kinds of colour
have you? Or have you
any?
Lithified beach
densed starscrap
touched
with yr feathery mobile hand
chipped metallic
blank.
I mean as far as I can see
that's as far as I
can see.
A spider eating jagged
shadows under a
leaf
raindrop crystal
at the drip-
tip.
In a shimmer of
hollow surfaces
at so many
removes from
so-called
reality
in the unworld
is
and True-/False
tremble
in
the ring-darkness/
coyote
scat.
Let the skeleton set off
then down
the
laneway through the gate and
be gone. Gorgeous Art!
Joints
click. Blank. Dancing
an after-image
on the
retina out of silence
and back into it
and out again
and away curved zagged original
good/good-
bye. And.
Of the many links in the set
of all things
plural
that make up
the twisted
chain
i ngile an trathnona
i mainistir na
feola
sirens thread the streets
ferry the
dead-
dying-injured-past where
you live (repeat)
(clack)
to the table in
the corridor
or
slab
in the
dark-
splash of
vomit on
the path-
pleading for the sound
of thinking when
the sound
is the sound of no-one-there
that sound-
a
crack in the rock
where ferns
grow-
echo of sap-conducting
paradise in the
shadows
a dog in the dark
cat vanishing from a
sunlit ingle
to brush your ankle
as you pass: mine:
keep out.
See! said the Mirror we are civilized-
subtle urbane
tolerant witty-
holding the pen
just-cheerful
and vigorous
(comma comma comma)
like that:
here we are. Whereupon there
rose up a thing
called
Order-the Giant
spinning in his
skin-
AW. DAH. The adventure had got
under way then out of hand
that's true.
Blue damselfly. Rock at my back.
The secret police. That.
And then
this.
Half-remembered
light-flashes
sky-
grass-trees-
bad
and then good.
What you get
is the Clear
Possible made disappear
by one shifty
manipulator
after another but
the point is/
one two
one three four
two/disclosing
the opening chrysalis
(air bubbled
in the bones of
the birds in flight)
just to breathe
and live
sing/passing the little
fruitshop on the corner
by the lights/
the sirens.
Yr move.
Sear Search.
I'll go down
I'll go down now
down to the people walking
talking face to face eye to eye
I'll go down now tonight among them.
Hey- raghaidh me sios ag lorg daoirse-
looking for locks chains impositions
writing listening taking note
25 years 25 years now
bottled up. Is raghaidh me sios anocht.
Tonight. Look down there. Caught.
Pack of dogs-in the loneliness-
of-
of wherever you are and on the dot.
Fixed façade/cut stone & the hands on the big
(joke of a) clock- ha!-exact.
Tonight. I'll go down tonight.
Is that thing depression? It's a depression.
Or anger or both. O fanfad libh de lo is d'oiche.
Is beidh me iseal, is beidh me dilis
d'bhur snabsmaointe. The usual ABC. Know what I mean?
In the quiet in the mind
in silence
listen
listen to what is thinking
as it locks unlocks locks.
That's it. Things inside things inside things
inside is the world in discipline
& delight.
I'll go down: tonight. Yes.
Tiny animate creatures connect. Proliferate.
This house; that star. Bless
the smoke
dispersing in the air.
Be desperate. Measure measure.
O fix sticks in the mud: decide. Stuck. Raghaidh me sios anocht.
Song
Good.
The huge eyes of the dragonfly
spotting food so far away
fingers keyboards territory ego
all that sweet stuff in the buried pulp
chipped from the world compacted
fingers keyboards territory ego
eggs in the broodpouch & in the dune-
grass tiny seasnails eating
fingers keyboards
the smooth illusions in their big machines
sugars + phosphates in the chain ring round
territory ego
make a rainbow startled to begin
fingers to the keyboard listen to nothing happening
listen to it well listen
to the creaks & clicks
in oldfashioned Advice territory
ego tiny seasnails eating
my river the giver staying put
fingers & keyboards.
Good.
Description
of Maurice Scully's extended work "Livelihood" as at March 1996
The Set
book 1: "On Site", (The Basic Colours) (revised since the version published by Pig Press)
book 2: "Zulu Dynamite" (revised since copy Harry Gilonis has)
book 3: "Priority" (published by Writers Forum) (since revised)
book 4: "Steps"
book 5: "Adherence"
period of composition : 1986-1996
"yes the Five Freedoms book for some time kept sticking itself onto this work, but finally, gracefully detached. That's been reworked a bit since the Dog version ["Five Freedoms of Movement "published by Galloping Dog, 1987]. It is now 15 years since I published a book in my own country.
The work isn't a sequence, more radial. (...) Enclose Priority. The mid-section ('Interlude') rhymes with the mid-section of ABC which in turn rhymes with the coda to DEF. The endpage notes in DEF are the bindweed from the preceding Cohering adhearing & in-here-ing. You can read this graphically aurally orally upsidedown-ically & sideways. The Irish language stanza in the 'Interlude' section is from Sean O Riordain's hospital poem 'Siollabadh' and means literally: in the brightness of the afternoon (i ngile an trathnona) in the monastery of the flesh (i mainistir na feola)."
raghaidh me sios ag lorg daoirse I'll go down looking for unfreedom
is raghaidh me sios anocht I'll go down tonight
O fanfad libh de lo is d'oiche./ Is beidh me iseal, is beidh me dilis d'bhur snabsmaointe oh I'll stay with you night & day. And I'll be low/humble, & faithful to your idiocy
raghaidh me sios anocht I'll go down tonight
The three pieces printed here form 'Interlude', the middle section of the revised Priority. 'Sear Search' takes off from and comes back to Sean O Riordain's poem 'Saoirse' (Freedom). The saor bit is pronounced like sear.
JOHN GOODBY
Lords of the Navigation
And if there had been more of the world,
they would have reached it.-Camoes
There was no such god as Jupiter, but I saw
his wind raise hackles on the Sea of Straw
where caravels strained for the Great Fish River.
The Romanus Pontifex chartered it
after waylaid Crusaders stopped off for loot-
so forget the Twelve of England, forget 'proof'
Joao was descended from Tubal-it was
Gaunt's daughter that sealed the House of Aviz;
Ceuta was gutted with English expertise,
but taught us that our own homes were pigsties.
With that we tracked the Negus, keelhauled the Cape
to style ourselves Lords of the Navigation.
When Da Gama fell on Calicut, Arabs jeered
"What devil's shit brings you here?" "We seek
spices and Christians. A gift for your Samorin-
this crew of his, diced, for his next pullao."
We dipped ledgers in the Blood of the Lamb;
our doubting hands foraged India's side
and Saint Thomas' Syriacs baptised
a scratch empire of entrepots, traders' scurf
from Ormuz to Malacca. As for Spain-
we say, when a man's field is narrow, his cow
will mank his neighbour's pasture. They can follow,
as long as they don't call us 'Galicians'.
Once I was trustee for the Dead and Absent
in Macau, amanuensis for tales
of birds that feed on iron, anthropophagi,
tribes that inhale only the scent of flowers;
they were nautch-girls' gossip, cannabis mists.
After Sebastiao I believe only this --
that the first, and first last, will be first again;
that the boy with genitals like a radish
and what vanished like hail off a wadi
at El-Kebir, will grab earth by its balls;
that my salt epic skins its drum, whatever god
sways the Hidden One's Hy-Brasil or Avalon.
The King of Flowers
He had heard the comet sputter 'Poltava'
and die; ever since, the state's banked fires
hissed science, vivisectionists and priests:
Livonia was old hat now Hats fought Caps.
In the gloom, brass coughed up purer elements-
cobalt, nickel, manganese. Taking orders
in beasts, in the lilies of the field
('Tobacco is five husbands with one wife'),
he would sleepwalk like Swedenborg's dead
in a world that still limped on flower feet,
his apostles scattering like thistledown
as he spied from the library on his hands,
and, when river-mists crawled the orangery,
the King of Flowers begged a new retreat
from his ornamental king. His king said No,
and gave him a patent of nobility.
He wept, then, inconsolable as an onion.
Fate took her measure-but was all God's work
for mankind's use? His farthest bodies?
He had gulped piss, warm from the autumn herds;
stomached it. Eyes cataracted like the skies,
twenty-four classes shinned up smoke-ladders
to where his two-faced name ran as bronze
from thickets scrimshandered on a Lapp bodhran.
BLAIR EWING
Name That Era
The Second Age of Islam
The Age of Intolerance
The Post-Market Era
The Dawn of the Net
The Post-Democratic Era
The Second Dark Age
The Multi-Zeitgeist
The Newtie Nineties
The First Cyber-Age
The Plague Years
The Necromorphous Nineties
The Rise of the Philistines
The Age of White Rage
Twilight of the Caucasians
The Rise of the New Millenarians
The Age of Oblivion
The Time of the Harijans
The Prozac Decade
The Nanosecond Nineties
The Age of Extinction
The First Age of Morphogenesis
The Necrotic Nineties
The Age of Revenge
The Age of Kakistocracy
The Neo-Nietzschean Nineties
The Re-Aligned Nineties
The Decade of the OJ Trial
The Nihilistic Nineties
The Time of the Assassins
The 'Crush The Poor And Burn Them For Fuel' Decade
The Neo-Darwinian Nineties
The Age of Millenial Exaltation
The Virtual Decade
The Twilight of the Nation-State
The Third Age of the Global Corporations
The Dawn of Corporate Feudalism
A Theory of Epistemology
Professor Razor Dave our tormentor and entertainer
(Wire rims, suspenders and suit, bow tie
And hi-tops, greying ponytail, a grin
And goatee like Bukharin's) wondered out loud
About when we'd be eligible next
For body-bags. For some reason I laughed
Too loud and got some sidelong glances
From the spooks and Sharon, who I
Had stranded alone in front of an
Audience two days gone. After class I
Got too loose (I'd been up 50)
With my mouth, bargaining for a last
Question down the hall with Dave's little
Demelzna trying hard to ward me off
With her rock. I caught her pitch
Just as Razor emerged from the head
And then asked him menacingly
What had he meant by one on one? He retreated
Into the elevator grinned slyly and said:
An Iranian student once wrote a good paper using Lenin.
Then I followed Mike and Steve to the computer bunker
Trying to argue with Mike the whole
Way about Sendero's prospects, our own.
They turned on me, shouting
Get your badself gone!
It wasn't until I had split and set
Myself on cruise control that I realized
My syncopation, so I just drove
To the beat blankly
Waiting for it all to sink in
And get reassembled according to plan.
White-Trash Fascist
Prolegomenon:
The poet herewith expressly rejects
and condemns the political views
Voiced in the following poem.
America
I hate
what they do to you.
America
The great houses no longer
do their duty.
America
Who will love you enough
to rape you?
America
Out of the many
comes nothing.
America
Their strange and vile
tongues daily mock us.
America
hear our oath:
I will trust in guns and God
to know what is right.
I will raise my prayers to Him
who made the air itself white.
I will burn
the jeweled night on the Cross
with the painted mass as witness.
I will glory
in the flames of the old bosses.
I will rejoice
when the police strike is crushed.
I will love the criminals
who seize power in my name.
I will salute the fiery afterbirth
of the new order.
I will recapture the truths that
were so cheaply sold: for fame.
I will applaud as our proud legions
erase the old borders.
I will keep silent and stand watch
as we smash the enemy within.
May their voices never be
heard and skins never seen!
Amen.
[Observations: Shock Front]
All the suspects and their honorable crimes
So raw and near drawn by some psychic artist
Painted on the solar flame winds and imagined
Stars with a minimum of wrist action and free radicals
As the magnetic sheets go calmer than tiny equatorial seas
A smaller infinity unfolds only for the first unknowable now
With impunity while trying so hard to avoid
Linguistic malpractice direct sexual contact
Is elided and we are disarmed in a
Government-run injection room
Where magnum clockers
Dispense a false mercy of
Alice-packs for the journey
I overheard one of them bullying
An old woman:... so what is there
Besides glory and survival in the memories
Of those who are not our children. And for that
You must suffer for we and not you shall rise again
In the language and so: begone! And as I climbed
Back into the box of streets I heard myself say: I
Saw a light burning in the house of my enemy.
[magnum clockers: small drug retailers sporting ostentatious handguns
Alice packs: packs for hiking or hill walking]
Khaled Hakim
Letter to Antin
Dear Mr Antin
This is part of the poem. I wonder if yd be interested in some of my performative work. Ive lately been occupyd w/ episolary forms, wich is an enactment of riting. I realy wanted to giv a long piece, my 2nd Letter to Brakhage. This is a performans poem wch givs y/ an idea of wat i do in performans & episolary.
I wen to the Poetry Library inside the Festival hal. A realy swanky place. & i was dying to go to the toilet first wich is conveniently just outside it on the 5th Level. & inside wer a cuple of ruff trayd who sort of flattend themselvs up against the urinals syde by syde & lookt at me out the corner of thr eye.
& id only gon in to wash up. I thght, Oh its a cotage- I thght it was odd this place in the Festival Hall outsid the Poetry Libry shd be chose to coksuck, & what kynd of clientel they got. & i lyked that. It felt lyk poetry was beeing kept alive. Caus ther wer mor peple in the toilet than the libry.
Its the best stockt plais for new poetry & peeridocals anywher heer, & id gon in to check up on a poet w/ affinitees-David Antin, & i notisd how morglike it was-somwon was asleep & otherwys it was in profownd
Ive com to be unable realy to rede w/owt mowthing. I remember i was trying to rede Rimbaud & lern French, & im speking it to get the hang. After 3 weeks i wen in the Central Libry & took down a book, & i fownd cauz i cdnt actually say the words w/owt disturbing other peple & them thinking i was thick- i literaly cdnt understand it. Saying translyted the sines. If i tryd doin it sowndles- as weve al lernt- i cdnt reed.
I was thinking this caus id just been reding Onians abowt the Gk Homeric lokation of the seet of consciousnes or inteligens (phrenes)_ in the lungs- lyk children think, thauwt is in the mouth.
They cald me Owwa in Bangladesh because i wasnt fluent in Bengali, & not beeng fluent in langwage i had no idiom of ordnary lif. It meens idiot, literaly dumm. They wernt teken in by my books.
This is how peeple red. I was in that Poetry library w/ all its roling stacks wich is ment as absolute repozitory or depozitry, & intrested peopl-profeshnals-com & reserch. I dont kno what for. Its hard for me not to wish i was w/ the tee room boyz in the toylet. I thawt i shd hav gon in & sd Lissen if yu dont giv me som of yr ars im gonna stick my fist up it. Im caerful of my fascist impuls to burn appropriat librys.
I recal reding abowt St Ambrose hoo was a wunder to the other monks becauz he cd actualy rede w/o moving his lips. Do ye kno what the cells thees carrels wer for- it was so they dint disturb other monks when reding the Bible. Becus nowon was abl to reed silently. Becaus we hav learnt to see nothing. Dont worry if i tawk beneth you- its part of the grater redundancie of oralitie- y/ can drop in or owt, because i dont speke to a supereleet-of one.
I didnt hav to think of this as a poem. The occazion of poetry is simply a decision. I gus in th toilet theyr disturbd felating. I gos in the libry its unnatural qwiet, because thouht is in th mouth. Its not becuz Antin was saying somthing abowt myth muthos is simply saying
Rather the poetic brain begins organizing th flux of my living into connexion. I think in form.
Im looking up a talk poet whos work isnt even a scor, only a record; its only strange it dosnt mak sens mor ofen. Im lookin up a magazene Talus i can giv somthing to, & now ive had the idea i can transpoze this into a Letter to Antin.
Dere Mr Antin, yr poem tawkd me out of my afair. Wed bin having a ruff time anyway & im down ere cauz of it. This publick occazion poem that seems to be looking for principls of agreement in lov, in mariage, & wch pretends to a matur judgment, & wch is reely looking for a way out yr prezent afair. Ye can see it in this pat opposition, analogie w/ the story abowt yr erlier affaer wch is so obviusly unsatisfactory, & Eli hoo is so obviusly somthing els-oh yeeah. I dont kno if yu kno it. I usd th poem (found) as a sign, as magik.
Im so misrable Mr Antin-I just watched the Watson-Eubank fiht & when he yad him i jumpt up & bangd my hed against the beem i hadnt been so happy all week; & wen the referee stopt the fiht i hadnt been so unhappy al week. Three seconds later Eubank got up & knokd down Watson. It meks me think thoz Budhist w/ thr distrust of emotion, this paranoyac retreet from activitie into the mandarin contemplativ, maybe they got it rite. If Abbie ad been ther id hav puncht the shit ourof her. In my poems im always the most ridickulus won.
I did a performance last tym wich dint werk becuz i got cawt up w/ yr Sokratic curv of inqwirie insted of keeping to my short agressiv-in, owt. i dont want nuffinn to do w/ al that sweet resonablnes saintly seeking after process
Look at this performanse poem- its al bleedin level discours like wat yu do- whers the gimicks the acting; i stick in look at thez fuckin paragrafs, im suckt into tropes that arent nemonic
the more i kno abowt yr work the less i wanna no- i shd stick w/ the fiers campiness. Hoo can bore peple better w/ yer mode
same w/ that L=A=N=G=W=I=G=E textualitie guff they starid afecting me owt of wat i doo-what do i do-a lone popular polemick against the cors of poetick use & transmishon since the Renaisance. Im careful of my conformist streek.
Wen ise a kid & had suss but i always fownd it dificult to argu my intuicions from werking clas values- becuz langwage & reason wer the langwij & reson of a class literat; & i had to lern the langwige of categories to lern i didn hav the langwage of categoris
I realiz im being drawn into dogmatizing oral modes, cause nobody nos wat im doing, so not only do i hate all practicioners of anything that looks lyk vers, i ate everythink that dosnt qwestion why its in a book, the whol fuking inteeriorizd seeking after identity wch is the excuse for poeticks
hyding in som fen for 12 yers then inflicting craftid pietis on us- drop ded git
I jus thowht Mr Antin yd lyk to kno that yre not qwite an isolated voyce, if not a sad lonelie old man w/out my lov then furrowing a lon trayl up yr arsole. Thers somwon in Birmingam hoo was doing poems w/ a prozody of comutative verbiag, caus wat the fuck, & I know hoo yu ar, & heer wer at the interfase of a hole changeover from an irelevant cultur-but nobodie nows it
Birmingham Nov.91
ROBERT SHEPPARD
from The Lores, Book 4: Thirty 1
Featherweight she floats unrevised leisure time
fiercely cooked involutions of not-quites
pitches her tent when digital twitches
knuckle down her stomach sleepy balance-
conditions that web orgasmics, blink admonishment
Activates his tongue hammers the desk
rubs himself shaking rhythm the wrong
time in expectation of iron sensation
scraping trails pussyfooting through built environments
imploded as points lasts a second
Between her legs oval birth slips
into biography metered meat shaking assets
self-possession baited through her slit
tattoos winding out the distant tickets
chime the stream slipping through loathing
Briefs stretched churning coins in his pocket
he pumps his eulogistic glitter as
dead skin falls from epiphanic forgetting
trousers flapping inside out ergometrically neutral
you're complicit as imagination, libidinous hound
Investing in people damaged history a
diversation to link to sketch to
match perception her services surrendered she
listens to Braxton reads Adorno judges
the moment the familiar breaking anew
Howling for ID gooseflesh across her
back as data offers her Yes
flirtation with responsibility links with negotiation
a seduction to share culturally his
pleasure, she cannot submit cannot resist
Unlinkable puns trip reluctant guardians
turned inside out lores of their
loving a rag-tag glimpse of
bed-fellows wings her down to
the speed of the street and the state
Beings in motion pecking in farmyard
flicker along the train's body positioned
forever behind his chains at work
editing in the persona, our
Fhrer thinkalikes counting time from Auschwitz
To make links of contractual obligation
ethically with her name walking puns
off maps which absolutely refuse linkage
no sin intervention bless'd in external
lores, virtual times Are a Terror
No porn now no swastikas
she's gloriously out unable to integrate
into his timetable colonising his disasters
pulls down his pants from behind
a non-exchangeable gift of his fugal lores
Weaponly Language silhouettes her words hewn
from a lifetime beats him repeatedly
building time a spider-fingered kiss
until the end of non-oppressive duration
stared into each other's parasitic eyes
Sucks his tongue ritornellised news flashed
catalysing his moments' little Spanish vibrations
the theft in delivery never the
card-carrying member of his data
bank gathering her nuts for winter
Self-appointed governors pushed through disaster
swifter than passion looking at cunt
his exteriority filling the nourishing noun
fantasy fades on her dripping face
loose-leaf manuals collapsing a mansion
Ain't nobody with identified cut off
dizzy with guilt emotion lives splintered
no longer human closes her legs
feeling is a shiveringly coherent mirror
a solid fragment dispersed in wholeness
JOHN HARTLEY WILLIAMS
from
Pistol Sonnets
Palais de Leaves
I'm the patron saint of anti-dance
St David of the penny, St Michael of the knot
I'm the oak-loving labourer you picked up at the Roxy
I want to show you how I feel about standing
With nowhere else for you to look but up
I want to make yr world a sky, have you see
A comet plunging home to die
Above these night befallen trees
The forest strikes up the band. Rustling all round us
Moon is the dance-floor out of which we grow
The single trunk of yr body, the sweep of yr branches
This is Hard Symphony Hall, a concerto for us
I spit on my hands to get a better grip
And hold you still against the vertical of me
Liberty is the bodice of invention
Take it off & show me yr snow-shoulders
Pull my mouth to yr nipples
Freeze me like novocaine
To me you are proof we have evolved
Despite this boring room & the absence of God
Yr ankles rest on twentieth century me
Yr eyes watch me from yr nineteenth century pillow
Needless to say, the dark crux of your body
Is deep in a pool of middle history
I wd gladly surrender to you
Now, forever, & retrospectively too
Let the enjoyable chill of you flood my fingers
As a third-party climbs the sill
Hopscotch
And then, taking off her clothes, I saw Sheffield
Lovelier than statues or the approach to King's Cross
Where nothing exists that has not been seen
Yet teems with what you cannot see
Beautiful termini that light
The impatient oil in my head's lamp
The city was inscribed with the word HELP
In such large letters you had to pace them out
To find out what they meant. And the chimneys
And the rooftops were exhilarating: rainy summits
It took eighty jumps to cross the map on one foot
Eighty back on the other
To see that I had written LOVE
On a place where neither chalk nor candour reached
The Devourer
When my love, my patient enemy-licker
Was eaten by a crocodile, I felt sad
All the sperm she had swallowed had turned her sweet
And the reptile recognised that
It knew, instinctively, it seems
What it is about a woman that makes her
So true, so wonderful, so exactly right
My village & my friends were eaten, too
"OK", I said, "we'll see about this." And I went there
Tore the crocodile in pieces & threw it far out to sea
Until it pulled itself together & swam ashore
Having become everybody again
A stern crowd, wading up the beach
Waving Bibles & telling me to behave
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW
touched
Because a star stroked it, it moved. Like a rubbed switch of fur.
It ran out onto a stony auditorium of storms, slipping
the brack smart dabble of a primitive sea
off its unformed back. Green, it echoed, green, and so it clung,
a most persistent weed-to crevices, niches, cracks
in the real estate of matter, the rock silence of order.
It conf-uuuu-sed
itself into an old man asleep, at the bottom of a mere of dreams,
into a still dance of leaves, like a root god of days, dies, deus,
with arms that spoke the wheel of mean... D'yus mean?...
Ah, I see, life, you say.
because of the brush of a star.
Wi(th)in
a print a mud trace (a hundred and eighty
(ahead back there (and into the mirror I sidled:
(tell me I mouthed tell (the higher animals came
(touch, touch the guide implored (and I saw the stars
in their clouded nurseries (rah-too, the bird called,
rah-teh (then the stones began to fable (could
I but tell (how there when where not there
(at the first molecule twitch. (Broca's patch (see icy
I sea a seed) broken down) like unlabelled cans
on grocery shelves) how where when there not when)
could I but) one by one by one by)
then smokily it faded from sight) and a wind-
ruffled corner where a bus never came) and vanished,
that's history) two by two by two by) and
found myself my questioner) ah, hello, echo, hello, ha)
where there began) degrees turning) the steps of breath
Seven attempted angels
(for Brian Fewster)
Evasion at birth
Faints oh white on the white out blacks out
innocent on snow as new born see? Party going
Breathless hustle in the they sweaty chill
silent is speaking: draught not like me? Difficulties on arrival
Only a glassalike a border of ideas
where bodies shatter unstained the clear. Oratorical questioned
So what's it good for people always snap
lift it cannot scalpel eyelid prayer. Belov'd cherub
Two kissy suck suck wet smacky stick
grind down dream bones sweat slide cold! Senex waltz
Too slow played at played out so ready
as guardians wander the children old. The far side
Place in an envelope post in the blue
nowhere the mist is shaping like you ...
David Greenslade
Kerb
Kerb, it's happy,
cement between stones it's happy.
Know how? Why-the world
it's falling (from shelves) towards me.
Drum, towel, vent, valve
tumbling themselves
lateral, transverse.
Lens, cup, cement mixer
chosen into separate
loneliness,
dry grains,
accidental coals of finding.
Bewildered dent horns
swollen flags signify
gala isolated care.
Gear concealing shares, fit
all restraint;
compact manufactured appointment,
no parallax contracted touch.
Burn-where? expedition starts.
Box-hamlet enduring paving top;
tripod manifold competitor;
calendar-scarf against climate.
Perpetual emigration towards treaties.
Devoted wristwatch, modulate pushchair,
red sanded plank, pebbly gargle
keyboard with crocodiles where damp!
race, ribbon, song's footstep burst.
At nail, rubberband! At hose, vine leaves!
At why? The path a woodwind.
act for seen one in visible states malordor of autrement, acrid scent of othernesses, sparkshower of memory vaults; an ad hoc ministry without portmanteau- observation boast za braggadocios and veingory. a swifte wynde - corpus delicti - cainable caurus sang too a man's mother murdered his brother in fonticide; feringes dede deed infernicide knows magnanenmity for the vainquished, invicible states the smell of the glas barrier slag breaking to a tankard of slurried speech: moguphone! here was an ariel of fate lift about her stars had been turned in their elevated course, a blured white flug flap trained into six buried vapours of noumena in cant contrast to phenomena; an object in penumbra of pure intellectuition devoiding plenum chamber systems: the shaded region round the shadow of an opaque body. proces criminel metalled mischances hexing chord contact; duer dishearted brain burrowing spine of shrapflak. flesh burr rings rise satun faced at vide ode seethe bloods, heed eyebolt gullies inbulging bugling a gules spattered ground infringed, spoke in tonguing tied frenne as pox americana. neither knew either some hatched ridden husk of place to live in in seizm seintewarie under actuality nomaps mundane just exist yielddish knots of ice frozen with doubt's knarled spightful etym. come visiere di cristallo. some few faex populi things in whitch bludi wooded copse boxes all rites reversed. is this ireonic a hung buriol mound of olive branches under up on milton's opprobrious hill at the edges of the valley in the gasses wa bi beneath a hall of scandal; mountain offensive seeps corruption in opposure. ultrableu blacche grave gast of ulysses. through the floor grasses route chambers and nothing came nothing came, shot to move on in histerical process. how splint ballets crack open body bag pupae, airs the ruptures' nepotune, no nerves or paramour ei ie not civil warlaw. what which was it the ethnics of aristotle gouged in marbleface as functionless underbeing? taken in by a single fiew duh banditti; cosa nostra nocity beyond pale reach of its breath project walls out cries only unjust yasan heimless traces helmintholith. to groin an everlasting mansion upon the beached verge of the salt flood seahem. at home in dogmass grave kode nas coda vas: ala frontier du jourdan si schi heartmouthing schibbolethe rest secrete wheat earring nailed around kuglas ascents. scariface of agnneau domini. the entertaker epidemy arrives here in hearzmonde with funereal parler games: a raki's proguess from odin to otan it swells underfoot the scorched land how the heel peel takes it in under the orb of the foot; too bleached promontory of stone scratched for an age or jadran dream mislain in a faut gap of mind the missing showersparks of memery loss a gain for rassenschande. renograd wanderstadt curls vinograde across swollen ferdent virtual hills over the plain above a crumbling barochial caw, a perhapsburg umpire whose hissing understorms of late summers summons another border beacon giving unpeopled voice to imagined edges of hour zones longing lust of dues ex machinaveli of churchfire & gunbells. the state itself cannot be got as such for its subjects, becoming mere lutte simulacrumbs or rather simply manqu‚; that might have been but is not that has missed being; draining the soul of the parole to fuel follie. untied nation of hired state hoods in truth in feringhee ferity. violace peurple canopy rome left dying for europes' red rivereined in fiume of sulphur resurfaces, blooded boiling in deman demob times bandanna'd from a word a dyeing technik. bannered as the coordinates are to fluid too fruitful uningraspable rei ban frames of reference- shades with style-suisundail rotates, only the body follows or actually cannot be bothered to test knowhowho. gravity insists that shed bullets' shot arms must needs be returned to their first earth. only hope to glimpse a brief flaying of our self in the realpolitik body ricordo of ricochet in reflaks into severally mirrors leant agin dooma forests or boulders. agin government and set in the island lunescape soft duna pinks play on ceruleans of inland seas. glad all over before the nexit news comes woemanouvre to the westnorth and eastsouth straddling apyrexy. elan the call, this cynic pejzaz more paid than sage in some refrain only flags and charred memories of a churlish filolog; smorzando pasage of time of he war ode to joyse in tristesse. the remains the fleg is limp id, badged to crow of a bedlam emblazoner; verb-skull glas naroda. drang nach osten. waesucks. hajduk haggadah. everything ta'en even voice and unacceptable words spewed out driven from a retchnik of ill ductionary. the box of letterleads lipslet slip soured words go by and language ends in silt. there are ecodes of our tonguage beyond the hills the river slit between le! tra! la! ricerca della lingua perfetta: astrologia chiromazia fisiognomica geomanzia piromanzia idromanzia e naturalmente i negromanti. bleak songe still of the cord stretched taught between warsex, shore ditched fountex of abeceda in cancer: still peony took his wrist between her fingers and felt the pulse too swift to count. we have no time to waste land she ex claimed, theirs are poisoned mucus in the throat. now p as all the nons must had been much with the sick and she knew a paradisease had fallen upon the city this year borne hither upon vile winds from the north. boy choked and strunggled under episodic discontrol but she persevered until a clot came up into the tube and he fell back with a great gaspburn this tube into the fire she told the servant it is full of lapste poison and bring me wine to give him under camuflage. manqualm frage mendax, a silver cuspidor or cupid (who is a casuist a mystic and a cabalist) o spittoon x rayted pismo letterclam. leontiasis, the zodiacal stellation lying between virgo and canker entered by the sun about the twentyfirstofjuly which remarkably enough does not get anyone anywhere for there was a great depression over the centre of our continent, it was travelling westwords o towards the rising and setting of suns and of moons and the phrases of these moons, of venus, saturn's rings and many other important phenomena in accordance with astroinimical forecasts in the yearbooks. the vapour in the air was at its finest high: it was a tension day in august in the year of loe minor, a modem constellation containing stars of faint magnitude, their sluggard light reaching here afterall be for becoming. lying between the great bear and leo major, a soul trader star warshipped gracious giving godhead passes through theocular gap. a helmet rust unwhoed at planette earth, hull hellcraft chiron lees drunk to dregicides and woeful princes of velvet genocide. the scroll above the table in the great hall was gone, instead a painting hue hung there of crags and clouds and spines, sad fucks without shoulders, equilenin inbred as the fashion took them. a fixion of grief rushing oes the would, the desart sands rise up vertical now downde as mal contents of whorlblast winding rag read faena, bura routs the strings of a glissaning harpy chord, snatches sound, crashes its iris arc space down against a crumbled column, shatters to potscar ferlac stunning silent the light to the eyes. wanderlustre in don juanhisn of jeremiad; green beknighted breeze dried onesprute flays borders smack smooth bore deprest. ghostarbeiter recieves blake myspells perswaded of the tyger and fleur des lillies hybrid stakes the liger. and where has the romany gone, the common lag of people? sweet king killers of the tempsest, the man without qualifiers; this is where the clash comes, the manyheaded beast but: japonica glistens in all of the neighbourage gardens. curiocity. save session to history to landsend. over cocytus' ever-during darks, herzmund as antisthenos kry: krajl corralanus
RICARDO LAGARES
Port of Gravelines
Stay dustwind within the barrels
of contempt and shipmanship
make yourself host of our clasping
eyebrows, our netted boulevards,
and back to memory disunioned.
This is the night pointed black,
treasured with astrolabes,
sensed and measured;
all things alive to be thought of,
put down to experience:
skies, men, vessels,
and anger-ridden sea;
but the breathing of the enemy
engulfs somewhere in the dark
much like a brother
present, wanted, unfound.
Let a whispered ahoy dumb his way
astern, nobody to edge
its mounting blood impatience.
No land to fetch us,
to project us: instead,
mercurial skulls deliver the taste
of the morning to come,
comradery and the resting
substitutes of death.
The moon reefer.
No other moment will stand
wide open eyed and hesitant
like a beaten dog;
no other will, or has.
You will look for it,
for its fuselage of time,
but the sun is to go down
crumbling spheres to enhancement.
And thus perhaps our natatorial brain
through a psalm of water
calmly, as if endangered,
calmly escapes North and peril.
Maybe before dawn
we will be gathered,
intensely held along
by the straits of memorial;
sufficient and outpouring
for the yeoman here inside
this drifting flesh.
Yet I will deliver my friend's
abdicated heart to this moon,
and listen to it, adamant,
while it drops a last impulse
into the ocean.
That is why resting hands
lying along dormant
remind us of what
belongs to the motion:
thoughts are fostered
working out sextants,
inch by inch decipher
or build the universe.
Under the moon reefer.
It took this limbed messenger
to comprehend.
Oxbridge Dexterity
Dirty rapids, praecipitia of cattle,
this mud is to break out morbidly
while the current is pushing them beyond.
One of us sets the storms, the other
waits hungry and tense across.
One hand loaded,
the other standing.
In the midst, the staring light
flashes the organic bronze of motion,
a full alloy of eyes
is intercepted screaming in the night.
These detained oxen, this stoned fright
knows not of salvation, but dreams
between me and you,
alone though gathered
being driven down
being unknowingly hounded
from further.
This apt, remorseless keenness of tendons
this craving that devastates my mane
seems frightful even to my peers,
appears to cry out a deeper air
than that of gallantry or civilization,
a humour thicker than ink.
Such is the will, the instinct
that prevents me from escaping
the realm of depredation.
Will you join this animal?
Will your pouring hands
flush a river to the extant
ruminants?
Nod, you may,
though that is just a thought,
and it took the place
of something else,
deadly but bearable.
NICHOLAS JOHNSON
fourth section of
Black Trumpet
Thick gums
girt molars jut
yellow white
broom glitter,
all that plastic;
lineage thru the workhouse epochs
from the nineteenth to this
century
Those who died like beasts
those who went human
scant difference there was
and fed priests laid their hands
on them and some fed the parish
la la la la
who went with a gutful of raw
swede who lashed at this girl
with hazel till his wrist
broke, chattel beaten
round the crown la la la la
he
is the continual line
hollering an'cussing his bˆtes
in a lane did no one harm
sclay ye higher whoa
lo lutte oot girt-
cah heiy heiyeh arrow
thorn
larks git
pie'd
eyi eihee hoa
cah breath ley leyt
yarrowthrum
lark skeleton git
trance..
hard at love
brawn knuckle catch
and creep slope up to rill
murmur 'nothing strong'
lantern rage
boot at collie z
witchazel teeth
and so got his cattle to pasture
from
Black Trumpet
Premonitions of which we are guided
complexities of utterance
without voice so much harm
harm becomes a habit to not learn
of harm by a balance in the world
To refute enigma caustic speech
premonition multitudinous obstacles
how you despair of bringing your life home
back to edgy children
without voice even more
harm without learning harm a balance
in a world with rays streaming down on earth
to reject balance caught in speech
David Barnett
Ravens with their Bulletins
What frothy gossip the pair
of them craw into
Odin at a musky
dusk. Logs across
a copse. Lakes throughout
a plain. The crump of harvesters.
Such stunts below for them
to stoop upon. Their nostrils
throb, their pinions glitter,
as they spy the seals
and their pups spreadeagled
on the pack-ice.
Plump
as suns, the ravens quork,
gavotte before their catch,
chaff themselves with snow,
fluff to prove their love.
Salty their swishings in
the palmy air, their hoarseness
at a blinded year,
its thumbs and gums, its snorting
over a hedgehog's roll.
In his seat the god
grows towards the birds
who roost together on him
and on her who baked
him so, familiar with
their magic when they mass
to dash inside a chapel
or to a heath whose shag
is carded by the light
these ravens founded when
they flipped mica chips
into the sky from where
they deal the death-song of
a painted brave, the rain
on meadowsweet beside
the venison they cached
for themselves and for the campers
in a famished land.
Pursuits of Bears
They're sponsored by the god
who's bound to die after
they swaddle inside their wharfs
to winter on their grease.
When he comes again
with a plumper sun,
his bears will ton over
the tundra to their piny
campus, to the gabble
from a torrent or
the scaups.
A hickory twangs
from a she-bear reaching
for her syrup. A tribesman's
blinded by her briars
before she rambles off
to ford a walrus sea.
Cherokees make up
a dance to glean the temper
at her crushing bulk,
to pluck her cures, gesture
her back to scout their march
on herds.
In his pitted
garden he chains her to
a post for dogs to bait,
for him to jeer at
and to stake his means.
She stands up to him,
this totem of such scope
that he snatches her from
her pad between the crags
where a thermal jerks
her blizzard-shag, to plant her
in the sky beside
her kind, both great and small.
Look to her there.
Lost Child
Along the promenade
he stampedes, between the sea
he knelt on-a buoy,
a pout, a jelly-fish-
and a down, pocked,
cropped, trod.
He bounces
off the bodies, soft
and odd, that wheeze around
the tulip-beds and
the monkey-puzzle trees.
A screech clots in him.
It's older than a boulder's
or a gull's, than folds
smudged by the thumbs
of fern and flame and by
the mothers in their smocks
who crib him with their spongy
arms and laughter.
Now
he's a leveret
mouthed to a cave
hung with bats and barred
by basilisks.
When he's found,
he's pigiron stiff. A money-
spider, he laps the blood
from the lesions on
their tales of wood and dwarf
above his permafrost.
Weather Report
'Cold', he says from behind
his cosy overcoat.
Indeed, it's cold enough
for clods who pick at
the pack-ice in a tank,
the mange on their napes
and shoulder-blades, who cough
thread-moss from their guts,
for whom each day's a daze,
a fumble to parades,
who parry famine's spines,
jaws of prairie-dogs,
kaddish in a hold
too lousy for any friend.
Clubs stun the swish
of owls. Meteorites hail
a ground crusty with
the pumice from the surnames
on a memorandum.
They must be harried to
a circle where kayaks crack
and walrus pups, stranded
on a floe, bleat
at a sky stricter
than the writ of Jahweh
who's sleighed away from what
he made.
A kestrel knuckles
on a stump. Heifers
low. Bluebells doss.
And the air's the husk
of those who choke in drifts,
who rake a pit, the raised
faces on a lake.
Ian Robinson
Going On
...is that the time? I had no idea. It passed so quickly. I'll take the chicken thika now, I think. Or will I? We've come a long way. And with so few interruptions. That night a storm blew up. The cabin rocked. A voice sounded across the water. A collision of saucepans in the kitchen. The Swedes were all drunk. It was so hot I left the bed. The upper salon was deserted. I couldn't see the sea. Later I heard music coming from the park. They ran up and down the corridors. I reached out to you. There was blood on the floor. It was hard to make decisions. I discovered that korv was the Swedish for sausage. Where are we? I'll never go there again. The engines throbbed all night. A woman walked in the garden down below. Sometimes you ask, is this the way? The Ekofisk field lay off to the north-east. Under the apple trees. The telephone rang three times. Between Goteborg and Huskvarna I listened to a football commentary. She sat out there at the table. We left the kitchen to its own devices. The moon shone on Lake Vattern. I couldn't understand it. A man arrived in a car. You always learn the wrong thing at the right time. The Polish lawyer had a stack of sandwiches in a small suitcase. They went indoors together. There were miles of gloomy forest. Or the right thing at the wrong time. I couldn't make sense of it. A light went on in an upstairs room. I could hear my breath. The sandwiches were ready. It didn't matter...
...an icy wind blew through the Norra Bantorget. I stayed on the balcony and looked for planets. We walked out to the end of the jetty. The taxi driver refused to speak. Shadows moved back and forth in the room. The steamer disappeared into a mist on the horizon. Out there were the Aland Islands. I asked many questions. To the left were the lights of the city. He dumped me at a dark crossroads. It was five in the morning. The garden disappeared. It was night again. High above, cow bells rang faintly. A lighted window gleamed far off across a field. I remembered another just like it. We couldn't see anything. Spring came two days later. But that was years ago. We sat on a high bank. She jumped off the bed. I wondered about that. A woodpecker came to the bird table every morning while we ate breakfast. Down below was the river. I could still hear the music in my head. The room was in chaos. We ate 'buried fish'. It was Die Lorelei sung by Erich Kunz. A line of oaks stood out on the far side. We headed into unknown territory. A hare jumped from beneath my feet. Starlings flocked into the trees. The plates were dirty. You could hear running water in the woods behind the house. After half an hour they rose up, shrieking. I left that memory alone. There were still patches of grey ice in the harbour. They flew away to the west. There was no wound, no pain. Perhaps I should have felt something...
...but nothing happened. The sun was red, low down, just above the trees. On the first day of spring the tramps appeared at street corners. Yesterday was different. I drank another cup of coffee. In a Jugendstil courtyard three of them quarrelled over a paper bag. I took the broken crockery to the dustbin. It was full of the past. Evert Taube came down the steps of the opera house wearing a grey fur coat. Outside, a smell of wet leaves. There was too much to stare at. I felt I should go home. Sirius lay low down in the south west. The tram to Drottningholm took twenty minutes. But where was that? The pavements gleamed. The bell won't ring anymore. In front of the palace couples lay on the grass. We talked of those who were not there. A twig snapped. But I didn't recognise anyone. In the garden a troupe of actors performed a mediaeval play. I thought, is this the moment? The forecast was good. Another fine day. But it wasn't. The Chinese pavilion was larger than I expected, but the king's paintings on the walls upstairs were uninventive. Small insects leaped into the past. But I couldn't go with them. The others went on ahead. The mare and its foal followed me round the lake. I was glad for once to be alone. Everything had happened a long time ago, I thought. A small girl sat quite still in a boat. My palms were damp. Who was J sleeping with now? When I stopped, they stopped. It wasn't easy. I was wrong...
...yes, sometimes it was like that. We went out and returned. The lights shone and then were extinguished. I put down the book. Watching the fire across the river, I thought of love. But we were out of coffee. Sometimes we met all kinds of people on the way. By ten o'clock everyone was in bed. I went out on to the balcony and peered down into the valley. She spent hours telling me about her lover. Silence in the streets. From beneath a pine tree, I watched the grey mountains. Down there a car's headlights zig-zagged along a distant road. I touched your hand. A crescent moon floated above the sea. Listened to Heddle Nash singing Let Me Like a Soldier Lie. A lock of hair, some photographs under glass. I could hear your breath. It was in 1931. Is this all we are good for? I wondered. Far away some voices sang Molly Malone out of tune. The stream ran fast over white stones behind me. I leaned out of the bedroom window. That was all we had left. Nothing moved on the grey crags. Two cars sounded their horns, once each. She wrote down the directions. The Rudolf Schober hut was 2,000m higher up. There was nothing to be done. Reeds covered one end of the lake. I smoked a cigarette and listened. I never walked in those woods. A small wooden hut was half hidden among them. The telephone rang again. A tent flap shook in the wind. Rivulets flowed through the reedy garden. There were fewer choices. I wondered if...
...that wasn't how it was. Her breasts shook as she jumped out of bed. We saw the dawn after all. A man without a hand sold us the tickets. It was futile to speak of it. We watched her carefully. The foal bit an Hungarian who came too near. On the walls were pictures by Hofer, Kanoldt, Bissier, Dix and Nagel. The problem was, who would she have next? A pigeon rose wildly from the tree. I was ready to start again. What would it be like? She didn't seem to mind. As we went on, the problems seem to become more definite. It didn't matter which. The only work by Doderer in the bookshop was Die Wasserfalle von Slunj. Most things got left behind. I couldn't go home. The light became more important. Carbon-14 dates were known at Blakewell and Portland. The Frankenstein film on TV ended. I had doubts about it all. Someone said it was getting late. I couldn't move. The Windmill Hill people made causewayed enclosures. When could we go there again? I heard the music through an open window. Will she remember me? You could see Hambledon Hill from the Maid Marion Foodstore in Childe Oakford. A woman was playing Mozart's Fantasie in D Minor, the Andante section. I looked up at those eager faces. It reared up over a brick bungalow and a thatched cottage. She had black hair and a straight nose. He asked for a lift into town. I had to go on with it. Even boredom became acceptable. Instantly I fell in love...
...how could this be? Without shadow, nothing existed. It lasted only thirty seconds. I turned on the light. The car park was full. We gossiped wildly. The Beaker People brought copper metallurgy. The memory's still there: you pick at it like a sore tooth. I looked at her face. It cheered me up. They came from Spain or Bohemia. I couldn't see anything. I thought life was going to be good again. Vespasian fought his way through Dorset. What did 'now' mean? From above the tree line people were just dots of colour. But it didn't turn out like that. All that was left was a letter or two, nothing more. I could never convince her. Thirty battles were fought. I climbed up higher. Together at last, though far apart. Darkness spread like a stain. The car broke down. The East Respond had a Green Man. The kitchen was in a mess. Clambering over a steep incline of small white stones, I bruised my knees. I listened to the nightjar. Was this real? I asked myself. Hundreds of small green frogs basked on the hot earth round the edge of the quarry. Years passed, I think. Every night for a week it sang in the tree outside no.39. We walked through a pinewood. The cat had been sick. Did I deceive myself? The minutes lasted for ever. The path was soft and sandy. I saw the red light in the mist. Her raised buttocks glowed in the lamp light. Sometimes you have to ask, is this right or is there more? Even then...
... the path went on to the sea. She loved to be admired. Again I had to ask questions. Engstrom's studio jutted out into the sea. I tried to re-shape the sentences. She looked back over her shoulder and smiled. How many tourists visited the Flaubert pavilion? We forgot the difficulties of the journey. On the walls were charts and watercolours, an old astrolabe. Like life, they wouldn't form a pattern. As I neared, the frogs leapt into the water, a cloud of green. The dialogue went on in my head. At Rust storks nested on chimney tops. There were notebooks and letters in glass cases. And how many transepts remained after the Crystal Palace was destroyed? The top of a church tower peeked over the edge of the quarry. Vaxholm castle was dark red in the sunset. There was nothing more to say. Once in the light the obvious became bearable. Years later the quarry was overgrown. We drank beer in the Opera cellar bar. So that was good enough. The boat weaved through a maze of islands. We sat watching the grey waves break slowly on the beach. Daily my frustration mounted. The headlights bored into the night. A fox sat in the middle of the road. She stretched and took off her skirt and blouse. The prospect of leaving saddened me. The Peterskirche cemetery was built up against a rock wall. I admired her legs and shoulders. At night I left the light on. It's all gone now. At last, I thought...
... but not for long. How do you feel? I asked. It was never easy. Extensive catacombs were dug into the rock wall. I couldn't see clearly. From the ENKO roof garden you could look down on the King's Tree Garden and the harbour farther off. Opposite was a huddle of graves. What there was provided no satisfaction. No touching, she said, but I did. Mozart's sister was buried there somewhere. Sunlight flashed on the water. Too many questions remained unanswered. Did you like the book? I left it in the front room. The lights went on and off. Sickert met the Canadian J.W. Morrice in Paris in March 1898. I began to see an end to it all. The words went round in my head. But not too clearly. They both loved the music hall and the circus. She sat at the table and waited. There was a moment when everything stayed still. Morrice drank heavily and painted views from his studio window. I remembered the woman in the garden. Am I the only one? What remained conflicted with the sense of life coming to a point. Take that away, I said, I don't need it now. The shadows lengthened in the garden. I looked into the coffin to see my father. I could hear my breath. At last we seemed to be getting somewhere. I waited for an eye to open. I'll do the dishes later. I had no idea that was the time. It passed so quickly. Doors slammed, a thread tore. There weren't many interruptions. Yes, I said, I'll take the chicken thika now, I think...