1
In the slackened-off momentum of a
Holy day, the Machine left to idle, I
put on someone else’s shoes, wore
unfamiliar clothing, styled my hair
a way I’m not accustomed, found
the walk, in the shoe, and allowed that through,
limb and thought. Then put that self to walk,
at the rural fringe suburban,
to where the towers, amplifying
pennies into pounds, as we talk,
resemble after-harvest stalks. The
ground is hard. And dry. And lamb-brown.
I can’t, or don’t -maintain, the stranger’s walk
for long, it opens up an eye tho’, enough
to look at why I need to feel apart—alone,
in festivity-free solitude (dandelion afros
in backlight) instead of other ways
to celebrate success in merchant ventures
the Machine, the shyness, and mystery, and release
from the anti-sense of opposites and death.
I could hear the meat sizzle,
saw blue gold and purple
tinsel, someone had an elf hat,
red and green, cooking fat
Christmas afternoon, heard
carolling, in snippets, snatches
of their chatter from afar,
the meat smell, on the hot plate,
black with the bursting fat,
their bottles touch where buttocks are
scratched on the corner of the bricks
as the wide large bulls did
on the low willow arms
at the bottom of the vale.
Europe way up north, in three,
four, & 5 G, masonic G, gangster
in the buried heart, and all
the heart creations of a specie
mitigated with googled streets
& cattle trucks, bold type, wifi,
all new anxieti — ample urban calm
changed, conjunct lapidaries,
with their voltage-melted calcium-gates
triggering the wrong amygdala.
2 Nein One Won Is A Joke
—You’re in it, the shock, waves
of the agitation of oxygen, it rubs
against us, passes through us, not
the actual thing—the Sound comes
after the explosion of blood, glass,
gas, the quarry dust, the gasping
thermal sheets of drying heat
thrown over the radial streets,
behind the crown; Suspicion;
police supply; informants
with c4; dormant agents sleepy
in decisions
as the sceptic does, the devotee
his scriptures, the pivotal patriot
chief pictures a Cult too difficult
to swallow, however, the accuracies
falter, however much data
is shown; meaning and thinness,
fools gold, trinkets, abutments,
the un-contained heat signatures
Firemen recognised immediately
and shipped the pieces off, swiftly,
out of Smelter’s reach.
The patriot chief, the Chinese
son-in-law, the devotee, contain
the same molecular core
vibrations as the sceptic, held
in at the boundaries of page-edge
& content, while rubbing against us,
in dotage, at full-strength, like trained
deviants, aboard municipal transport,
their clocks out in Time’s colossal frottage.
3 Hocus: Focus: Pokers:
Some confusion of morality today
of morals in revision, & minors in decay
as that bigger mess, below me, unified
in prayer at least, from a rooftop
this is how it . looks . like they’re trying
to push a button on the console
of some odd solution-state device
requiring sound to operate —
they’re yelling out the name, hitting
on it like a stuck command key
but happy, in the cold, on the hoof
absorbing light. It is unclear, though
the purpose of the march. Promises
To Wives? Gender Pairings Nominated
Insolent To Life? The noise this aperture
creates is suggesting what it does…
No one appears to swim ahead, no one
or two Lead Fish have floated out
in front of this assumptive Sunday
school with their banners. Their children,
gill-lodged in drift-nets of invisible modes
of fishing, don’t feel the fishing I guess…Not
a guess, they don’t and wont for years, on tides
of stormy light as silent pressure is added
every µpload to the oxygen; fee, fie & 5G,
sonic G, gangsta on the buried drive
and these are not the prayers of quiet
expectation of the best conclusions
we’re years from that, man, this
is the opposite to Quietness!
Is a complex, tangled subject
in the network, in the know; milliefields
of far kin reaching co. a low collusion
rate, the chain of each command
redacted from the first, heard
around communications
specifically, the transport/saturation
of. who’s afraid of marching on
the spots the power poles & lights
know your name? Who knows
even what is worth assembling
the unstoppable battering ram
of populations massed knowing why
frequently we creatures sensitise?
Sow a speaker and a camera into;
grow prune, weed: at the mitochondria,
placenta, and the placement by their densities,
aggregates of luminal, stellar algorithm— Dementia,
people, we make it; people, blood, brains, and barriers,
flame, transfers, in fire-easy touch, the concepts
of fulfilment unlicensed transfer, watch
in the heatgrip method of metagod
by love-lust, in the physical worship
-by-participation. They are not really praying—
prayer this way-out noise, pulps and pushes . it
doesn’t attract . it . is like it smashes dioxy rungs
on ladders which together could be used to climb
walls higher than a hedge, of satellite dotting
this edentulous if credible compound
of toddlers teaching that it’s us to be loving,
loved, and calm enough to look each to the other
over the impersonal eternity of infinite Is:
the complexity— involved to cough, to Hide
a Fart, aren’t we smashing? Something… Made
to love, refer to birth, default position
set in under very few conditions
made to love, to reach ahead of Now, to imagine
not the place to put the blame
or trim too many wicks touching
at the one and only flame,
but how improve the soil that is time,
the burn that is being fuel in time.
Hi Dean, your rhythm is so good: you’re like a rider on a horse.
well thank you, Mark.
yw. your work’s outstanding. if you havnt been published yet, there’s something wrong. i suppose you know of the nz journals to submit to? & overseas?
lost track of who publishes what. writing in the hobby format, really. I think I always hoped someone would notice my work, on a site like this, and jump in and do all that for me. a fan… to blow my poems across the desks!
it doesn’t read like a hobby. try this:
http://authors.org.nz/magazines-journals/
also, these journals: ‘geometry’; ‘headland’; ‘sweet mammalian’ ‘starling’; ‘mimicry’; ‘minarets’; ‘aotearotica’ ‘mayhem’.
i’ve had poems in ‘mayhem’ – but i know the person who runs it, & it’s waikato uni.
also:
support@authorspublish.com via dwdmail.com
i subscribe, and get info on US literary journals that accept submissions. I’ve had poems in BlazeVox.
So, try. I get frustrated by numerous rejections, & it’s hard to take.
great. that’s a start. i’ll look into those
emjay. sorry, miss key
Thanks, embay, quite a lot of words to take in, I realise, appreciate your reading!
I really enjoyed all 3. They feel sure of themselves to me.
I especially like the bbq scene in 1. The imagery of beer bottle on scratched butt, and a wide bull scratching – uncomfortable alongside the meat on the bbq. The ‘trained deviant’ ! Love that in 2. Thanks Dean.