words & pictures
I thought I saw In the dulled cement Of your sink The reflected ire Of death’s autumn moon The fading red Of haloed leaves, and last summer’s fires As if the light Had slowed to a dirge But, your windows were opaque Rippled glass, an upraised sea The spilled chalk of erosion’s residues Just me, and a hand-sized moth Tenaciously still, against a drunken tide Knowing, I am almost dead While you disdain Our silent worshipping
This is the kind of note You should destroy after reading Scrabble pieces in a cup Spilled out across The worn parquetry of meaning Tear it from the book The ragged seam almost invisible, but Now the pages Never sit quite flat The teardrop bowing of lacuna A whistle elongated between Fingers placed uncouthly in the mouth Saliva wet Shrilling in that forest way Of sunlight and warning Decanting through the myrrh and honey branches A cat grows in sunshine Poached eggs, an insistent wind Left over from the barbarity of desert summer Small clouds dragged across the sky The eclipse almost fatal On thick toast for late breakfast Flour dusting The distance almost serene Between then and now Crumple, discard, forget Almost, once upon a time Someone died today
Hang the washing sideways she says with the crucifixion drawl of dust eclipsing a copper beaten sun centurions at hem and sleeve makes a livelier kind of execution the snared bird scrape wrist bone against an enfilading chin decaying like the silver halides of old photographs to a spit-edged, palsied shake an ochre layer to prevent halation (the blistered, liminal glow of blurred mirrors and sun dogged tv screens) laved with the first soft breath of rain in the liquorice blasphemy of her mouth a grit like succour heaving dust-devil exhalations flows across the raw edged bitumen a vine that bears dead crows In efflorescence swerving wrist-break hard the tread marks plain as a slap
The grey man Slowly shook his head My imperfect soul Will vouch for me – Me and Shakespeare Lost my ticket, somewhere Pockets turned out Like elephant ears Quite rude Banging on the cold glass door Only two allowed In the waiting room We are old On Wednesday afternoons The sky criss-crossed by snails The phlebotomist says The blood coming out Makes a hissing sound A minuscule amount, but Enough for tinnitus Feeling quite deflated Morning birds make lopsided croupier calls The breaking cloud throws gold coins beneath their beaks Confused at the taste There is a spiral In cat’s fur Constellations warm Beneath your hand With the musk scent Of rising static A brief, intoxicated calm
That rockmelon moon Leant to a smile A girl, leaf brown Fell from a tree From limbs with mouths That age old gnarl Turned yellow eve, russet, sun lost Spiralled down to holes and with The endless shape Of clasped hands In her soughing, see-saw breath From the morning, scattered
The mouth of childhood is laughter, liquorice dark Teeth stained long after you spit it out The aniseed taste of droning dragonflies over the scry and gravel heat of waste ground Iron where you bit your cheek A sting The twisty shape soft and thick as mudded rope Barbed wire and glowing jimson weed in caduceus tangling Step heavily Python-backed you can’t lift your feet
Ramesses first pierced the isthmus A canted, unevening sky Efflorescent waters displaced By the severing motion Broadsides the narrowed canal’s Machinely segmented rout As if the ocean evoked quiet insults From a sidelong prow The consequences turning In bank interactions (A gull’s weightless, departing camber) Interference and reflection In clawed, crosshatched lines Progress unforgiven Inland a jackal sunrise The eternal gnomon Turned shamefacedly away
The day wheezes in and out
A forest fall of rain
The sky molluscs
in recalcitrant insubordination
I demand the colour blue
You do not submit
At your nape
The vinegar
Of Friday evening’s fish and chips
As if that were
In butcher’s paper
The transparent stain of sunset
Fear is a bell shaped curve
Crumpled, thrown away
The pierced chrome centurion of the bin
A sacred vessel, overflowing
Love will always break
The small bones in your heart
I think it was a plesiosaur
In the distance, swimming
A bird-quiet in your hand you can almost see over the chipped smile of broken fences the wood with the dull rotting disease of constant rain the gleam of autumn’s decaying petrichor blackly carious splinters crumbling too soft to pierce the skin night’s vapid breath against the glass the solidity of outside in the drift and moth flicker kitchen lights encased in the mesh of forwards and backwards lives almost (but not quite) promising a canary singing
