You have the wary crackle Of radio in war time Uncertain of whom listens, and Whom exactly speaks In formal pronunciations Desperate and resigned As slowly burning ships What do you recommend For half-life —neither exactly Celebration, nor lament Mostly, perhaps At resolve’s inordinate delay A smirk, exasperated With brown sugar and cinnamon Baby’s breath, aspidistra, nectarines Gone overripe —soft As waning summer— For the intoxicating scent Arranged in a chimera Of cellophane as nauseating as breaking glass Well, we all have something to sell The static hard dismay Just perhaps not quite Drunk as wilted flowers Pretty but The stain indelible
Tag: love poems
Artefact
You say morning people aver the sun spilt homilies from hands bent to dismiss for too long I refuse to let things pass jealousies, an arc weld heat the bronze, once globulous and molten rigid in that deceptive, ugly shape of desert rivers I will lay here for a thousand years inconsolate as sand until I almost evaporate still, that mica glint when you pass and almost catch my eye Is as bright as drowning once again
By The Rail Creek I Wait, My Pomegranate Crush
The rumours have you, anger brilliant At my peril, I of course misdoubt Rain falls like wolves Chasing lithe bare earth In gouged ochre Upraised in spirals There is a smell of rags and cans Of death and lightning As if the carcass, ripe for burning, summoned storms We cross in the weft, to a greased unconsciousness Hollow where the water Flows through mouths like fishes A jar of reeds to catch A kind of stillness At last you come Out of a yellow evening Leeches bright on your skin Offering in swollen fists Broken pomegranates Not for me, not, for me A cattle stink The dragonflies drone out A passing train i have come to watch you drown, not catch a fish
heliconias & a winter sea
we squall
in the intimacy
of suddenly thrown rain
the fricate quieting, our humdrum metronome
where you watch (turned aside) an august ocean
spills in folly, the rampart swallowing seawall
thinking, perambulations, of the fools, deluged
silhouettes a regnant weight
calving waves with palsied lips
pared in the slingshot grin
between teeth girt, a swollen silence
past the nodding arcs
of grandiose reverberations
where you cast them
to the stone
in petulant pantomime
through a wild sea
the heliconias are flying
Through Glass, Brightly
Inelegant metaphors
strained at the bit
From inside
an insect gnawing
exulted
when the mandibles broke the skin
Excavated
that disgruntled earth
a machine that
mouthfuls spat
Curled to a walnut shape
heat escapes
through scalp and anus
as if we were
some alien
and
obtuse kind of planet
The sites
of old injuries buckle first
bicycle crash, careless menagerie
a slight body weight
elastic in collision
where once you flew
cleats and laurels
over the minotaur
a monster gnawing
at your thumb and wrist
the crabbing slew
gravity’s sidelong spill
an arced trajectory
the stoic, downturned face
a theatre of cheap betrayals
enmeshed, the jackboot heart
where the andiron slipped
an upstart fire lick
the doorway guillotining
in the inadvertent pneumatic hiss
dull magnetic eye
through the safety glass
as if the web and constellation
of all things, in the enfilade of your dismay
so easily fell apart
Pulled at the thread
A red crochet like love around your wrists
Circumnavigation
The red earth graze
on your chin
makes your tilted face
round like the world
An iceberg tooth
incites my lip
as if I were set adrift
colliding, capsized, lost
(tethered nevertheless)
in your unforgiving latitudes
Brow cool
and fever dry
as any
brazen templed sunset
I suppose I must be the yellow dog moon
with my lopsided grin
bridled on a half-mouthed horizon
changing my mind
(and back again)
a creep closer and dark
with each circumnavigation
Still
when you gently
bite my face
I start to die again
When I Was A Dog
Hungering For the reassurance of your face Jaw thrust forward, a monstering Marionetted palsy Of strings and pinions Inexpertly manipulated I met you once In another world Ate a stale biscuit Threw it up again The sky in soot and butter Curlicues and approbations When I was a dog, for a while Glass house, all lies, no windows Barked at the moon At her silver mockery Barked again, in the dark When she was gone Stars like tears The poet said But I was just a dog Alone and Not done howling
From the isthmus of my eye
The wound is sunset volcanic glass the sea between the cradle in the lee a swell stretched in a glimpsed hiatus The cigarette burn you left still brightly watching from the harbour of my chest A ship with nowhere but this destination You said sorry, how you slumped burnt copper dreaming slept the way old lighthouses do The fabric holing with that mesmer’s grace Spilling ash and flickered thoughts the glare clenched in the spasm of your fist gone wave break lax Afterwards for salve a sting, the glassy shine of long past knotted healing The grain of sand in the isthmus of your eye all that remains Watchful in a different glass (still wide awake) Of the beach I dreamed
Cotard
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
On the impossibility of describing your hand
Today I will forgo my mundane raptures Just to say Torn by duty Worn by care Daubed in blue and yellow By the welts of savage and grace-full arts This constellation, needle marked I am lost in wonder By the way with all such wounds It still holds me