User:ZephyrAnycon
I exist only in a dream world
Where darkness rules the light.
*
Then as th'earths inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea waters fretfull salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my paines,
Through Rimes vexation, I should them allay,
Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
Me
I'm a 20-year-old from Hertford, England, currently in my second year at St. Anne's College, Oxford, reading for a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Literature. But I preferred being 19, so 'twenteen' is better.
*
Centuries of trial and fights
your demon beauty ate me—
made acid of me, shaped me
The fact remains
That—thunder lightning rain—
I'll see you, I will see you again.
or
I'll see you again, I will see you again.
The distal end of the Spit
Articulacy
Figments
Undoing
*
Newdigate Fragment
A girl’s tongue un-
furls, curl-
ing on my skin;
licking thoroughly in
every hollow and nook
and curve and rut; wetting
my nerve-ends, her electric-
warm touch
a memory of honey.
She haunts me stickily,
as honey does unclean hands.
*
she was flung apart
just the romance of it all
took her up and bruised
the thin barriers
till they gave; what ensued
was nothing’s fault
(love being past blame)
stolid the night-time, rabid
the hustling wind
which foams air and froths
laps noisily
at walls, our safe neat roofs;
soundless inside as people sleep
dream crashing shores, waves that fold
(one is awake—
he dreams anyway)
*
Their love unlocked volcanic spew
of oaths adjured in quavering type,
of quickened yearning, kitsch romance, of blue
texts, a tentative few
asserting kisses (none would come),
of pledges which assumed those feelings ripe
another life: they lasted months.
*
2 songs
And light
fetched the house in pools—
‘See’, she grumbled,
pointing for coasts.
(Fires mapped the night.)
‘What, darling, what?’
‘See,’ restive. ‘See.’
‘What?’ ‘Out where Loch
Tesman is blended with ocean,
see.’ ‘I see
nothing but firelight.’
Orphan, she rose,
coming to know
the far sea was hers alone.
And spark
went knives against panes,
the safest doors. In dark
our human laws
unhinge, are silhouettes waned
for lack of torches
casting shadow. Neon shows
slack in porches
ripped bundles, blood keen
curling rivulets
which form a triplet stream,
issue of thugs’ forlorn blows,
making by dawn
an indelible mark.
*
My motto is: 'We defy augury.'
Though I am not Hamlet the Dane.
Peotry
In chronological order with newest first.
Triolet
Draft
To speak the truth of tragedy—
Is there such a thing? As a word
It suffers abuse, so it is remedy
To speak the truth. Of tragedy
They clamour, serving who are greedy
Diets of precedent unheard.
To speak the truth of tragedy
Is there such a thing as a word?
Gun Petrarchan
Rectors—fat, thin—untwine the clastic boughs
till wine drops out; they drink, sing. We find
(knelt in rubble, face to sky) the subtlest kind
of college man: so stern, he argues land allows
untrammelled licence, revelries that souse
with blood and scumble city quads. Rewind
a frame, though: he’ll disown a portrait signed
(it shows the aftermath and fields of rose
corpses for background) with pious vow
of candour—scratch the sign of those accuse
his grace of cruelty, lies, their willingness
to self-deceive. We leave him staring. Now
he sits among coins, winestains, loth to bruise
wreckage or fruit of lusts alone govern us.
ruin or fruit of lusts govern us.
(on the resort to poetry)
i the resort
of thorny rubble, the kalefield
suddenly confronted with sunlight
I sing iambic trot. of lofts, open
windows, this quietness of locked
rooms, and of pollen in long shafts –
for these I split silence, for
these I blacken white.
this happens in sight
of the high barrack, where
battalions are housed, of redoubts
and steel walls, pillared with
trunks, and spiked. it happens
for all suffered losses, all
time unclocked. it does not
depend on slight sanction.
for inarticulacy, the unspoken,
for soft life, hard living, or those
incompletely alive:
it is the foe of hours,
the resource of light.
ii the recourse
‘they are such darling weakness’
these lines and sound, so flammably
packed. unpacked, we span
lovingly apart
– ran again together, later – then
the both of us made
beautiful whatever
story there was for cash.
(who is she to so obsess
an opposite Midas?)
yes, that’s all I've got to tell.
‘they are such darling weakness’
artists, verse. the heavenly
unnumbered writing us.
they need help, because words
are impermanent as the shape
of a flock. they will break
unless showers
fall regularly upon them.
which, quiet guest, is why
the heavenly unnumbered rust.
pantoum of chance, confused
down second lane my truelove waits
splits the way; I decorate my skin with it,
at different speeds our feet abate
hearts lose rate: I can’t be part of it.
by weakness, youth, I ebb from where
down second lane my truelove waits
and take the first, albeit there
at different speeds our feet abate
we lose each other, hands unfuse, and as
by weakness, youth, I ebb from where
together each his phantom has
and take the first, albeit there
the way is cold, solitary, is slow.
we lose each other. hands unfuse, and as
our loss is harder graven in the air, we know
together each his phantom has:
her phantom fixed the light, mine lied, as such
the way is cold, solitary, is slow;
the other (hours behind; hidden by leaves) so vague to touch
our loss is harder graven in the air, we know.
the decorated skin betokens how
her phantom fixed the light, mine lied; as such
it’s fact that she was always, not singly now
the other (hours behind, hidden by leaves); so vague to touch.
that volatile blend, I am part of it:
the decorated skin betokens how.
without art, I wish she’d never started it;
it’s fact that she was always, not singly now
a tightrope at which fear and romance pull –
that volatile blend; I am part of it,
because I fell. she settled her embargo, full,
without art. I wish she’d never started it.
of long contempt, bred lilting combat –
a tightrope at which fear and romance pull
in parting. which is forever, true as that
because I fell, she settled. her embargo, full
of long contempt, bred lilting combat;
at different speeds our feet abate
in parting, which is forever true, as that
down second lane my truelove waits.
Jazon's Garden
with thanks to A.C.
As clouds crossed the light of the sun;
Ishikawa bent, watched meltwater run
a second, and set his bamboo trap to keep
the deer out when he wrote; the garden
flexed its pelt of snow, sound fell asleep
and Ishikawa waited for his lines to harden,
to pack like fallen snow. Silence rang
loud as flies; as it took his ink the paper sang
though nothing came. He raised his eyes. Outside,
beyond the lantern, like ruins antlers jutted; snow
feathered: it was a stag collapsed. Before it died
it shuddered, bled, its ankle leaked a carmine flow
marking the white ground Ishigawa wrote.
or
that marked the white ground Ishigawa wrote.
Porn
Save
the harsh words for those you loved,
sitting there, legs pale & half-open, in
yr gown all pink & gauzily veiling
nipples, in yr soft-voiced slow blinks
& beckoning, yr finger.
Tell
the swollen men at home
that you want them inside you;
do as yr director says, &
if he says tease yr purple nail
between yr lips & tongue, you’ll
do
precisely that. If he says
fuck yrself with a garish toy
you’ll turn it on & pull
aside yr thong, sequins falling.
& you will appear to like it.
Keep
yr eyes, very darkly made-up,
on the lens reflects you, fix
yr undesiring gaze
on the chinless man’s poised
oblong, black, its recording light.
Speak
filth as you undress in dancing
gestures, the chemical smell & hot
air thick in yr gorgeous throat.
You, slender hands, bones, slender
hips—your reclining among dolls & bears
—push
the plastic in yr cunt & yelp
becomingly for the microphone,
let yr lids pulse for the watching
lens, yes, arch yr lying back
& show us, that’s it, onto film you'll
come.
Politics
Light spans the cell in pale bars.
Bottle spun the cork.
Cars scraped the gravel, broad tyres
Muffled the guards' talk.
Gun slid & clicked. Trigger hung –
Finger, thumb –
He shuddered sick;
It punched him back against the brick
In slumped attack. The fat prick,
Truncheon-hard,
Parted cheeks;
Knuckles bleach & grip the bars.
Bonfire
Didn’t the damp suns chuckle? Didn’t
they gloat? Least I think I caught
them laugh like kids tickled
by older cousins till they struggle
shout for breath. One leapt
alight fell graceful into giggling
water, spangles dashed the sloshed
surface as it broke is welcoming
cold shelter; another sun purled
all schoolkid gawky, slapping
the scaled meniscus it issued
pitiable croaks of shock. I grope
my ragged bandanna, this rusty can
of spraypaint coloured dayglo;
prink lapsing walls with tags
politically firebrand, never read –
then spy the vaulted sunsparks
in spitting flight, tornado-spun
trajectory of dropping swirls
that cut the close air crazily.
Emergent blood? Flesh bacon-crisp
coaldust skin and splintered bone –
what ruin which bespeckles, what
wreckage covers river-mud, dots
the shaly bank? Whose legs are these?
Fireflies bellyflop, get extinguished,
whisper mirth: each time a corpse is
dumped a new cloud flees the blaze
and billows, finds weight, descends,
flecks cackling in lambent shower.
And I am stunned still: in cramped
warmth, brackish fumes, it seems even
twilit motes of ash may relish
the unspeakable pun on dissent.
Weapons
riven the swatches of mist, the brown
enveloping gas of this
ungovernable swift
march of kids, Kalashnikovs, who hound
the foreign faces, monied old; who ravish
the stiff daughters
(kitchen corner)
while families watch, recall the lavish
love, and frown.
Manuscript fragment thrown in writerly frustration from the window of Mr Prynne's Cambridge
study; preserved, thankfully, by an observant passerby, & printed here without permission.—Ed.
iv) organground is dandiprat
beltway collagen impaction kite—
Bicester is silken; Bicester is city of pearl
syphon and cough I challenge you luggard
to a triune retrenchment, saving alas none
we don’t croak
and sneeze if cars entreat. Bling filing
system belies our alphabet’s quite
sodden futility. Hundred thousand million hundred
Jews gassed outta thought free-undesirable: we
guess it’s fate
old chap your Bicester pincushion
soggy with blood we mustn’t sniff
is caught flung midair by a chav’s pug—
what now but shout shout whack split
soft-fall, floor
and costive cauchemar? O holy O
ivy @ least try redemption; if
it don’t fit sue a brown man from telly
or yr neighbours fr being black. Stop
collar it
that’s there y’go unbrim the Brum tea
and dunk some healthy fibre there’s a girl
let let me kiss lick the fine hairs
the ladylike pudge the womb beneath
your tummy
or I will hurt you with such scissors
as I whet on Jew diamond, in the car-
drowning beltway (flown kite!) and Bicester
a city a city of wrecks and silk and collagen skin
left unbent.
Pop a cork.
Robe of White
Song
Where’s the world
Where’s the world going?
Where’s the world once oil peaks
Once ash of glass or rubbish piled
In crushing weight sink cities
With alacrity, once streets
Aren’t lit all night for lack of power
Once billboards peel,
Nobody thinks to recover,
Where’s the world?
My heart misgives me
Where once floods
And London’s underwater
(under floodwater)
All libraries lost?
Once constant drought—
This our future,
Money having sunk
With the city, under floods, with the towers
of ash, the rubbish in high barrows.
My heart misgives me
Once more storms winter swallows
Up the year, every year. Once riots
Burn the country, politics
Dissolves, once catastrophic
Altering how will we live
so misgiven? Suffer
Icebound, straitened Britain, water wars,
Chronic shortages, this wild climate?
Once lack, once loss, once moral
Collapse; once winter is the year;
There's nothing to drink. Once
Floods blur coastlines, oil peaks
And we’ve nothing to buy or to earn.
Once a hundred
Thousand dead. Where’s the world
going, gone? No no
My heart misgives me
Once lightning
Our robe of white, where
When fire’s ice, ice fire?
Pseudo-Villanelle
khattam-shud
She’d been right to cry that dread September,
she, perceiving all was wrong, how we would fail,
as now I live in loss, and struggle to remember,
fix congealing blame or set our narrative in amber;
love so misconceived its form predicts how it derailed –
christ, how right to cry that dread September.
Once ‘sick’ with love, she sights me now in rancour;
liar to herself, slighting me to pay her lifelong bail
as now I live a dream, I struggle to remember
what precisely pulled our hands asunder,
why time together always felt so stale –
why it was right to cry that dread September
when underneath I know: love online can only simper
pale opposed to love in real. For us it acted like a veil
as now I live in shade, a struggle to remember
reason why I’d thought to disinvent September
knowing as I loved you all assays would fail
as now I live a failure, struggle to recall
just why I nailed my heart to lies, all dead November.
Loss
What it was I loved
I do not know.
Oh the sun’s uncommon bright.
Ain’t the sun
Uncommon bright?
The frozen search of winter light
And night's undone
And smoke entombs a frosted lawn –
Frost the thorn.
Oh, true: when
I think of you I
crumble inside –
crumble apart or crumple
my face slackens
eyes prickle
and I lose
purchase on the proper sense
of numb remove.
No lyric intensity
Elates my loss;
Just the Decemberly
Morning frost.
I am continually
surprised in recollection.
There are particularities –
tics, expressions, tones
of voice and ways
of shaping words –
such particularities
will force so certain
a nature fully back
into my head. A smell
and you are there again
like a test: for how long
can I continue to tell
myself I'm not still in love?
(It's a test
I tend to fail.)
And winter stunned a frosting lawn –
Nomad flower
Wouldn’t you allow my lies?
Have I lost falsity
As well as truth?
And winter stuns the frosting lawn.
(What it is I love
I do not know.)
Translation
How many
women’s, girls' initials, guiltless
hh ft ek ap
are carved in tree trunks, left
webbing playground benches,
doodled with steady care
through schoolbooks, curling so
ornate round notes on history,
the Reformation, how it links
to Milton’s prose? Two letters,
each of countless pairs enclosed
in rough-hewn hearts, those
which sometime goaded quiet
boys to sighs or hapless tears:
now unseen graffiti, worn vague
by sitting strangers’ forms;
cyphers whose keys were lost
some decades back. A language
lacking any translator.
which sometime goaded sighs
or hapless tears from/in quiet boys:
True Story Sonnet
To L.H.
That time of night. A twisted hour. We partied
over wine and foreign beer; a bar in Hertford,
locally swish—fat plates, mean portions, cash.
His slinky girlfriend—dyed blonde, too much
slap—eyed me through the gabbling crowd;
our pupils fixed in brief array
and unravelled, jostling knocked the glance awry
—frisson burnt across the boozy whirl;
it fizzled out before we'd blinked. But fuck
he'd pegged. Shit. Wrong end, stick, male rage
and such. Fist had gripped a lager bottle till
it whitened; eyes alight he marched the dancefloor,
elbows barged the suits aside, in slurred approach
toward my table raised the heavy glass and struck.
I bled before I fell.
Mercurial
To P.T.A.
To be published in OXFORD POETRY 2007.
Corporal
Cordner floated, broken-boned
on a green sea
that softened his chalky cut
skin, slackening
and swelling round a limp form
as limbs slackened
muscle-fibres frayed, and the sea
undressed his skeleton,
exposed the fractures in his bones—
they were fans of thin cracks
dark as lines of ink on whitish paper
drawn to no plan.
Lies in Love
Some of us think lying's fun.
In love we're at our vulnerablest.
Thus lovers, betraying loved, have won
Nothing but what liars must:
They come to know that love is trust—
Knowing such, they feel like cunts.
Parody, after TSE
O horror. Forgive me for I,
I have sinned, father
Horror this hour my father.
Forgive me
Sin this hour, O my father
Gentle father.
In black rage I hit mother
Till she fell. Now ghosts
Dog my nights alone; I can’t sleep
For troubles. Father help
Me as I writhe in such need.
Please. Help your youngest to recover
Innocence in an hour of pressing need.
Father pluck me out. Lord
Pluck me out. O sin’s night
Must pass. Let Divinity afford
Me moral light. Let Divinity
Afford my soul’s redemption
Tonight when it is dark.
Sin’s night must now pass. Sunbeams
Shall breach the cold night’s cloud at last.
At last forgiveness; my father I fear
Forgiveness. Be gentle you. Hold my lean
Hand in yours and together we can shun
Dreams, for sin lies back in shadow. Here
We can breathe, shrug off that ghostly cast
Or haze of figures bedevilling our sight
Begin again, again step through figures into light.
O father
Begin again with me, again
Step through figures into light.
Goodnight
staggered smokeplumes hang
tatters of nightlong
destruction again in Dresden
the nightsky over rubble-embers
of a bombed city
havocked actually in the darkling fire
of a lightshow, in the violent glow
streets of children blister
to black carcasses, to crackling
in their thousands there are housefires
and men screaming pain
but you can’t hear for the rush sound
of flames, or fires’ whomping thick
collapse and can’t see
any moonlight, can’t cry for dying
children the damn heat hitting
your face which
snatches tears to air, takes
your tears for so much smoke
as much smoke in fact
as your bombs made of their hospitals
or
as your bombs made of orphanages, hospitals
Fuck in the Park
A sin for Isis
We did filthy things under covers of daylight.
She sucked me soft & drank the sap, lapped
it up. I ate her out; she yelped. I knew
what to do. She said Fuck me till
I bruise. I said Whore slut bitch! take
my cock & came in her. Sweat dripped.
Sin done, shaking a bit, she
breathed relief &, lain flat, unwound her fat
legs. Sex acts. Consensus. Fuck in the park,
the kids' playground; in fact by the blue slide.
Bell went, distant. She took her satchel.
Minute later I got back to work, marking books.
EXERCISE—partly due to Milton
Softly softly softly softly
stop. Spoken booksful of ogres
trouble our sleep, make threats
of fresh wounds, blood refusing
to clot, its ebb and spread. Should
we blame such dreams on letters?
On writers’ paper magic? Oh, yes
it’s them—they, who, necks crooked in half-
light, conjure roaring monsters, waif-girls,
black, slickly coiling things that break bones
and suck blood; summon flames
of images, visions, from thrashing hot
roils of language; crack rocks of speech
on harder rocks, cold stones, releasing flows
of poems, fiction, bad dreams of dark stories.
Hardly hardly
started! Before hedged fields of dying crops
in sudden bloom blew death to quaking
coloured life and shivered bright in falling rain
(drops of it, fallen, ran trails down rewoken stems)
as god shot loads of clammy cum,
flung cum all over everyone, leaned
back, coaxed his sack, guffed
and spat the red sun black
again. Believe me,
Ben: I got it sussed. God’s muck.
We’re fucked, friend. Dust.
Title
[Set in Aldus]
Burly Hill sobs
rhythm, maudlin,
hauling his caned
weight so far, up
at white portals, North;
mute all night
he chewed on moss, sods
and black meaty
fungus; his balled
fists spun
rocks at birds, just
till he's ash.
Triumph, a lie, calls.
The False Dawn
To Prospero
Scarred and rucked bark
on leafless trees, some broken
in two—each edge
charred black—killed
in old storms, shone
grey-gold as a new sun
came up, as day came; and
as morning lit the dead
bark yellow, it flashed
to life anew—a life conferred
by dawns’ daily repeated
and fleeting novelty; in a brisk
shiver of minutes I thought
the burnt forest, bones
of trees, again aflame,
alight with life and growing;
but it was just the dew—
I was morning’s fool—
the life was only sunlight,
guileless, faking radiance
as a sun, in dawning, shunned
the horizon eastwards,
traced the long arch, mottling
rays through wreaths of cloud;
it left me engulfed
in a ravaged landscape,
amid ruptured trees, charred
bark, watching rotted branches
fail to sift the wind
in leaves they lacked, me,
awaiting tomorrow’s false
resuscitation, perhaps, or
simply waiting—for reason
to hope for change, to trust
in hope, to take the brief
image of promise
that dawn conjured and tore
away as auguring betterment, not
as disappointment refreshed
or renewed—waiting while noon
encroached on a forest dawn
for such reasons to emerge
like a new leaf might
unfold, aloft, unseen and
lost in a brittle cage
of twigs, its small fronds uncurling
from a dead bud.
Pop Song Lyric (Made-up Lovesong #44)
To be sung roughly to the tune of Death Cab’s ‘A Lack of Color’, & with an American accent
Rings like tacky bunting
Auburn stripes in her gold hair
Tufts and sheaves of corn
Flopping in the breeze
Eyes froze wide in headlights
Big and innocent of hate
Bracelets filed in rainbow rows
Trust her plastic glamour
I asked why she liked me
She explained it can’t be helped
And asked the question back
Which was when I kissed her first
I tongued my explanation
We spoke it lip to lip
I guess she understood
Through a tactile language
There’s no lack of colour
No absence, lack or want
That night her gaudy necklace
Was vibrant like our hearts
Bright like our hearts
Hot with the promise of our hands
Clasped fast palm to palm
Happy, just for touching
Rings like tacky bunting
Rows of bracelets glittered, flashed
Her hair was rippled yellows
Eyes brown wells, down I sank
Hunting for a smile
When it came the prism broke
The sun became a candle
Rainbows vanished into smoke
Corn sang itself to silence
In the waking summer’s wind
She laughed and shook her head
Shook the quiet into colour
The colour of her hair
Colour of her laughter
Repeat
Ice Shelf
To A.P.
I tremble
melt
into seas
shrug
off ice, slow flakes
shake
icily in the breeze
shiver
mass to water
crack
into long blocks that
stop ships
die, fall to bits
more water
from cold solid, more sea; as
I shrink
I rise, too, take
cities
with me.
Old English Class: 3 Diversions
I (Old English)
Daisy’s grey feet; Grønlie
illy thin. Paul curly,
subtle, a tease in tweed. I smile,
remember a lonely pylon—
grey man of girders
—and I hate these poems,
dull works of dust-men; they
bludgeon one’s senses with words.
I am tired of this exhausted
language. Siân shines at Paul, eyes
cut gems in gaunt-cut bone.
Cross-kneed, we sit, read, but do not
understand: these poems are
hurdles, not footholds.
II (Fragment, Abbottesque)
A heavyweight of sea-fruit
Hungering for
Fire to digest;
Air-thirst rends their gagged shells,
Crumbling to
Sand at the son’s behest.
I rest, blessed;
I passed
Your test.
III (Poem poem)
I’m a genius. I write
poems of words. You read
my poems of words; you cry
dance and giggle. I write
your crying and love my gift
my love I love your crying.
Your tears spash as thick ink I
drink them. My genius works poems
from garbled griefs, your words.
My love you tumble, dumped
into books. I shook
you and when poems came
I wrote them, my
genius my love I wrote
them as words, words
I murdered you in-
to black beautiful
words I made
your pain a poem they
hailed. (It hails, it rains.) I'm
a genius for having made
them hail in words
(your eyes' furious rain)
that wordless hail I never healed
only turned
into words, some poem.
After amy
a thunder-storm the
earthy sky, purplish earth:
hot bolts the soil, cowed,
staving off clouds’ weight
Mass Grave
blood had congealed to fat crystals in the snow
that melted to runnels as the fires' sparks alighted, hissing, blown by the wind
whose stench had become unbearable due to the commandant's understandable miscalculation
regarding the size of a grave that could never contain
Man
Cum warm on Brian’s back
(but congealing),
I left his flat
(that sunken feeling);
the scratch of spattered
blood on my back brought back his bleeding.
You don't like that?
Here on this tattered sphere
every breath
catches you, snatches us
closer to death:
we are always leaving.
So why cry
when I stop you breathing?
A Humorous Account in Metre, Written by an Adolescent, of Mr Tobias
Wolff’s Lecture at the Rothermere Institute, Oxford, on 17 May 2006,
at Which Various Distinguished Persons Were in Attendance
To S.R.
Paulin balding in purple—you
I, aflutter, afry
sat, fat, behind
you. Fair, what they call ‘fair’—who
are you?
Paul (a Professor?) gives me the eye—
don’t know why—you
flick off, green among grey; Garton
Ash (my heart afray) thinking
I’m gay, smells
a bit like a garden, fragrant in May.
But serious, serious, serious today:
he's an article to write. He is bright.
You flickered off
backwards moth
shy of light?
Tedious Tobias, whom you obscure:
that
snowy nose-plume, scholar’s
brow, those
eyes, dots, lensed in his head;
then:
‘Memory does not exist. There is an act we perform called remembering.’
Eager, inspired, desperate
for paper, I
fidget, sweat; will commit you
to print. You:
your neck your hair your ear your fair,
fair skin. Your blonde hand. And
those eyes, not
blue like the sky, they
lock with mine
in shifts; your glances swift, you flick
those blue hoops and I, I’m
all warm, abuzz, inside. Your eyes,
blue like the ink that thinks
our rhythm, spin
this remembered rhyme
(memory doesn’t exist.
There’s an act we perform
called
remembering); ah! blue,
blonde, soft, you; your
irises met mine a few
times: it was enough for me. I
remember you.
Us
I, I broke open the moon
You, you changed its hue
He, he rumbled me
She, she humbled you.
We won’t try to flee.
They? They stitched the moon and fixed its hue;
Scotched our scheme
To split the moon
In two. And wrought the moon anew.
African Tune
A response to Diary, LRB 2 June 2005, by Rose George
Forking through tall dunes
The rebels' trail
Rends slice-domed sands
As May-time bends to June. /And soon the sun bends May to June.
(The world to her is wrong-way-round
Like your face in the bowl of a spoon.)
Footprints of a totter
Scatter round a jeep;
Air grows hotter
She continues to weep.
In the desert at noon
Girls don't tend
To make much sound,
Nor to defend
When men are proud
To make such wounds.
Pun
yes they called him self-effacing yeah
he was a shy guy y'know—not many friends?
when they found him dead in a cellar
neck broken on rope
they said he was self-effacing yes
he has effaced himself
Improvisation in Rhyme: 1
Trees breathe; inhale suns' humming beams,
the wind's fingers usher their rustle, tenderly
they inspire midnight light caught tight and kept
in trees' wet hungry depths, and kept alive;
kindled, cupped and shielded like a poorly child
behind bark, from the buffeting air; alive its life
sprouting limbs, springing new fronds, stemming
and shooting to new fields; its leaves shimmer, breathy, thrilled.
Trees breathe; inhaling suns' scattered beams—
yet they choke on thunder, whose light sets lean
trunks asunder, whose fire hunts trees that suck and cracks out their seams:
the flames' fluttered tongues ushering trees to dreams.
Modern Song
I fold the dawn across your shoulders,
Tuck the dusk around your arms.
Sleep, my child, you'll grow no colder:
This starless night will bring no harm.
Derivative of Hulme.
First Snow
Over the streetlights
a prickle of snow;
white, still, in thin dark.
My coat of snow is
muddy-dark. Cold
points sharply resting:
sharper-cold centres of cold air.
Winter now. The light
snow like autumn leaf-
fall; spring budding. Snow
melted to night-glow, on tarmac,
somehow warming the orange night.
Like, in the station, waiting:
those globes—pale lights
I thought were moons.
Churchbells
Hourly that clangour bangs out across towns,
through curtains, to quiver in ears, making
hammer shake anvil shake stirrup; it pummels
cochleas, ripples thick round seashell spirals,
stings to nervous waves, bouncing twanging
and wobbling through worn brains—those old bells,
telling us what? time? no: they belt out death’s sound:
their time-telling—a distant itch, tinny and shrill—
clings to life like a little burr, unasked-for, not
welcome, dead yet clinging, like christ’s religion
to a use that’s passed; a duty long unwanted
longing want. Ding-dong bells. Ring for Nothing.
Peaches
the soft glow of round peaches grown
fat on summer warmth; boughs crooked
with an hour-heavy load, glowing
all dawn in clear sunlight, loud amid
wet leaves which flutter at the warm air
moving slow past peaches, branches, slow
amongst growth, animating oddly the still
trees, as if life were an energy, these
heavier softening fruit sighing its flow
Walkeria Bushus or '43'
This—man. This—monkey (?)
—God, his plunder stuns me—
with my balls in his ignorant
fist. I like him. That
his ignorant hands
—so power-thrilled—
hurt the earth, can
at first feel sad—
unreal, like a monkey
handed hell's doorkey
& told Go: do what the fuck you like.
These hands—pale palms—
these monkey fists' grip
—make me feel safer, solider
(as a soldier of sand told
Go: napalm a school trip)
about us/me; my/our (con)quest
as The West. I like him. His
monkey grin. His ape-talk.
His power-thrilled walk. His
unknowing nod. His chatline god.
on Felicity
he hugged him to her small tart bones
dreams he thought of not-alone
but gazing greasy at her back—
birdy, sighing, striped like that
smudge-eyed and soft initial cutting—
he knew the paper her was fact:
that oh this weird and fleshly presence
would but postpone an/the absent hugging
Sky Rhyme
How beautiful the clouds are.
And do we ever look?
How beautiful the skies are—
And this which we forsook—
Relentlessly we took and took:
To the listless, lilting hook
Of the many suns' setting choir
We raped that charred sky
from afar.
ode to Fiona
struck dumb by your love hum I've sung
a thousand songs at your figure,
a-thousand-and-one homages to your face at a pace
so rapid I race to keep up with the gush
of love-lusting phrases of praise that won't fade
till I'm laid and I'm shushed
struck dumb by your love hum I've sung
a thousand songs at your figure,
berating myself as a singer.
struck dumb I've tried to still rarefied
thoughts and whims but they're bigger,
oh bigger than hushed throats can render—
hushed dumbstruck and shocked I surrender
a thousand times to your hum: this song's mute it won't suit
me as singer to sing my song louder as stood
you are silent and perfect and I'll stay a minger
whatever whatever
I sing
This could be read as a parody. Unfortunately, it isn't one. I suppose it's best described as 'Adolescenilia'.
Juvenilia
Bad—pretty—but bad.
Written Refraction
The Ice-boy smiles,
And drums his frigid fingers
Like light on sound.
He turns
With a frozen flinch,
He walks away
To the outside in glass-dome snowstorm
Of the cave mouth.
'It was the straw
That changed the camel's mind!'
He says, smiling still;
Lips stiller, mouth blacker:
Blacker than the Outside;
Stiller than his icy gaze ...
His gazing – subtly penetrating,
Not calculating – unfazed.
And I dance in the deliquescent
Stillness of it.
Rejoice in its absence.
Find joy in his cold
His coldly bright beguiling stare.
He saw it where I could not.
Where it was, the Ice-boy smiled.
His fugal-frigorific, fearless
Face saw; enlightened, conquered;
Then fell, reflecting old-time glory
In the last light of his smiling
Eyes ... Frownless,
In sunset-faded shade.
Strollin'
Fluid generation:
Recognise my movement
Within spheres
Of contorted misconception.
Understand the flow –
The rapidity:
Unrepenting egestion
To the blood-soaked wound of words.
Slicker than friction:
Lubricating oil of rough-edged
Fact, contained in time.
Abstract form,
Rarefacted alphabet,
Coiling over and within circumfluous liberation:
Circularly infinite, self-reflective me.
Phantasm
Imaginary worlds, fantasised eternity,
Boundaries never-ending: venture to the dark of the mind.
Deserted shapes revealing, unleashing spirits of the endless,
Creations of an individual, innovations of mankind.
Cult of seers, land of strange,
Oceans of mystery, seas of change.
Hell of dreams / Elysian Fields;
Before the throne of Fate you will kneel.
If you ever realise
See it with your shrouded eyes …
Etiolated nation: envisage the evil. Phantasmagoria.
Prewse
Webcam
You have fully to imagine the situation.
Think on’t.
The girl, nothing on but slight wisps of cloth, dancing.
The camera’s poised black oblong. Its recording light.
The wallpaper, which is pink, with flower-patterns.
The heavy director, fortyish, his flaky baldspot.
The girl, who undresses in slow, mime-like movements; her eyes too darkly made-up.
Her young body. The grey-green bruise on her calf. Her purple, spangly hairclip.
The soft bears strewn among cushions.
The hot air, with its smell of lubricant.
The lens reflecting her.
The Clearing
They looked at each other.
I missed you so much, said Jacob
Don’t. Just don’t. Her eyes fixed floorward.
But—
Don’t! You’re only hurting me. You said you wouldn’t ever. She moved back a step, and looked suddenly more beautiful, before the sun rose, in the damp light that doused the grass.
I love you.
Anna sat. The ground was soggy with dew, but her legs had begun somehow to protest bearing any weight, and she gave in, breathing out a long breath as whitish condensation. A delicate smoke.
I, I ... love you.
Leave. Please, Jacob. Please go.
Why are we like this? Why did this have to happen? It was so … happy. And now—
Jacob, I never loved you.
How?
I’d I think I, well, I must have been—I was—lying. To myself. Lying to you and to myself. Can’t guess how it happened. But there it is. There you go. I lied all along. Everything—all the nice things I said, loving words—it was all fake. Fake as fuck. I’m a liar. I don’t even know if I care.
The sun limped upward.
Jesus Christ Annie. Jesus.
Please go.
I—
Will I ever’ve seen the last of you, Jacob? Will you ever just be gone?
This isn’t true. It isn’t true. Please, let it not.
You know, Jake, this is one of the few times in our relationship I haven’t been lying. I did use to feel affectionate towards you. It was—I dunno—an endearing uselessness? Something like that. Sweet in a childish way. Now I despise you, and for the same reason that back then provoked my affection. You just won’t learn. You won’t adapt. I’m telling you I hate you, I do not love you, and you won’t just go away. You cling, Jake. You cling like fucking ivy.
Jacob turned. His full being quaked like earth over a rock-fault. He made gestures, meaningless gestures, just because moving felt more useful than staying still. He could say nothing.
I think now you understand. Anna looked at Jacob straight. Her hair clung to her cheeks like seaweed, and her eyes caught light in little kaleidoscope-shapes of lighter brown. For a second it was as if they glowed victory.
Jacob bent his head back to the huge sky. There was a question he wanted answering, though he knew no one could satisfy him. He didn’t know that there was an answer; just that he sought one. He wanted to know, or to be told, why no tears would come. Then, he blinked.
The trees around them shook and bristled a long gust. Birds, not visible from the clearing, seemed to call.
It was morning.
Mourning the Forest
A Portent
Jameson Farly looked out across the desert that had been forest and wept thick tears.
He knew it had not always been grey, this land. He remembered its wet lively splendour; the hum of organisms it had sustained; now gone, dissipated, into dry air. His land — once a world of growth, death and regeneration — was still, was empty.
Who had stilled the slow movement of its branches? Who had emptied it of births? Who'd left it colourless to eyes like his, which had loved its vanished flowers? This stinging desert had a father, and that undoubtedly human agency would feel the forest’s loss as he had felt it — would know the pain his absence-forging devastation had engendered in Farly’s heart.
With one parting look at that pale desert (and the clouds’ apple-core pallor), his quick turn flinging tears into the sand-strewn wind, Farly ran back to the shore, and his craft. Nearing the ocean, he thought again of the dead forest: how it had been beautiful and was now a barren plain, alive only in memories.
*
Fuck that for a bag of chips.
©ZA 2005–7