Tag: time & memory

3.

morning after pill

flowing clumpy through my fingers
dawn-cold sand, a mauve colour
at the grey beach, by the play equipment
where I’d slept, deeply & sedately,
underneath the electron microscope.
crystalline, multi-coloured sand,
up close, inspected individually,
in the light from stars named
though wholly wrong, is as varied
as I am—as you are: raindrops,
leaves, people, dust from cosmic legacy—
explosive growth when roots secure a sewer
pipe of running water, and feed
upon our faeces, like flowers
and boutiquey truffles. normally
I’d claim the same omissions,
whilom societal dispositions,
as words will close discussions,
a ‘star’ is doubtless countless
many things more than language
-polished lenses can ever clarify,
these floating stellar focusing devices,
so many more things: bankers, priests,
plumbers and magicians…but now I think,
as the mountain ranges pink with snow,
all words are pointers, misdirects,
I look away, towards a door slammed.
the sun, twenty minutes from its entry;
and, waiting, as her monologue closes,
graveyard radio host, the Moon, about to exit,
stage west, will not briefly book-end, with Sol,
My dawn, and I will stand between
two states, two distances, a man
amongst seagulls alerted by the croissants
carefully heated on an orange-violet flame
from a small gas cooker. magnificent silence,
all circles observantly. suburban windows.
tight, clear, lamp-lit; erogeny ready,
I can feel it pulsing, I will own this
and command the caffeinated state
for a lean poetic pornography. early or late,
is she going home, or into the big toilet
to cry? I decide she is peeing
on a stick to determine a decision
on her mate, and I close the bag, too
weighty at first, but now half the size
it was, the didge airlifted home, books
abandoned unread, Mac, put to sleep
in a box with breathing holes,
& sent behind the instrument
—the lightness in my step!

        They drove off, waving
from the backseat,
on the wrong side
of the road
at first because
the Moving Truck
was still reversing in.

the Bulb invents its filament,
Lightning stalks the lonely,
and the over-celebrated.
Death: a living body…
Form: a Life imagined;
exercised athletic substance
excursions running mountains
kayaking mountain rivers
cycling into effigies
of how we want enlightenment
through urban redevelopment
where I am neither slow
nor medium, and certainly not
the fastest, even with the advantage
of the water grabbing gloves on.

once, it was only, ever, & always
the performance
at the parties…the artistry
of light, and the bass
we smuggled in
the arteries,
beat, move, & pick-up,
the navaho cortex,
mushroom cloud
and cactus way,
cornering those
who took
their thinking on
verbatim
from their parents, teachers,
government, while not the most
creative
were the more reliable
and they would not be left
texting on a beer crate
in an empty lounge
as the moving truck
turned over in the driveway
as the last red worded
boxes were carried out.

2

I’ve plugged the ears with age
and snapped the rubber cap on,
sprayed the anti-fog, filled the gaps
with home-made, I’ve rode the waves
of causeless bliss, lifting weights
and waiting lift. I’ve left her
singing gently from an inner happiness
to pull her tights back on, how she puts
her best toe forward, I wouldn’t drink again
…unless I had to, there, for courage, full
comfort in the density of real things,

and their not-ness, too;
the outside shape the white horse
makes, stood still, is enough,
in the green grass, snow
tinged bluely on the mountains
behind the cemetery, where strollers
and their babies
feed her yellow flowers;
I latch on to a bouquet, the smell
in a shipyard, the steel and
the hard work,
the feel of a hung bell
looked at.

 

 

 

The retrial started after
I’d taken a sleeping pill
when my son decided he wanted in
the same bed
after a frightening movie
of time travelling extraterrestrials
physically present on earth,
not frightening, in the horror movie
way, but deep, intellectually
complex, and because I had to work
early I took the tablet, and then
the mother said, as I was climbing
between them, ‘Why did you bother
if you’re not going to be alive
in your sleep?, no cuddles for me!’
So using that for my excuse because
I had a new artwork I’d finished
in the afternoon which I wanted to view
under electric light, I drove home,
not far that I would fall asleep
on the way, and when I got home
I stood looking and wondering how
a man with no art training
or even any early inclination
could produce and sell so many
painted surface artworks?,
and because the pill had started
working and it was like when I used
to drink and drug I thought I would stay
awake for as long as I could,
and I took down from the shelf a writer
I used to read when I wrote drinking
and read poetry drunk. I know Regret
is a lame horse, and I don’t know if
it was because the movie we watched
spoke about Language in relation to Time
and Thought as the conditioning agents
for being free or being caught— but even
though I’d removed the saddle
and stirrups and the reins
and had lead Regret, limping
to a small piece of lawn behind the shed
by the tyre swing, where the wood to
be made into kindling was stored
which were the kisses I didn’t take,
and the days I didn’t show up, the mistakes
Bravado allows, and expects; with the gun
in my hands, the knowledge
of Time, Emotion, the symbolism
of Memory, I still was unable
to pull the trigger…

 

 

10. Simians, Babies, Emissions & Closure

A great world, masterful;
postcard memories, cyclone warnings,
hurricane machinery;

whether Engineering
or genuinely warming:
this wet world,

a great machinery
of holographic dramas, equal
periodic restive/freezing,

carbon, missions, Maunder minimums,
Africa, waiting to be restored,
Napoleon on through the English lords

in this great cauldron of the sea-nest world,
in the game of thrones, on maps redrawn,
the sacking of the pyramids, kittens in the creek:

the President speaks, the Pope goes next,
the Mullah and the Viking and the Pop Star meet.
The curtain goes down. The curtain goes up.

The villain’s swapped roles with the clown.
And the people come home, and every so often
the furniture is changed, and the room takes on

a universal plan. The grass browns out,
the grass goes green,
the moon fades slowly from the scene.

How strange, you knew, as the cameras rolled,
the ape would take the baby from the platform fall.

Stars pass over, the word goes out
the prince trips over, towers come down.

Towers go up, the hammer is dropped,
the builder takes another from his birthday belt.
The prize fighter shakes, he stammers and feints,
the crowds stand up, to whistle and clap;
the jockey is thrown from the steep hill chase,
the dogs veer left, the dogs veer right,
the fox runs into the underground night.

An old nun dies, rubbish and lies,
a boy grows up, his one sweet heart,
his car full of friends, tunnelling worms
making love with themselves, the beautiful
movement of snakes, big eights
under bonnets with the airbrush work,
a little bit demonic. In trouble, in resistance
the princess jerks on the operating table;
the Press release, the Press hold back,
more fuel is poured on the fire of the fable,
as the wreaths, rotting at the castle gates,
indicate only her kismet dates…

Or how about this? Math is back-engineering.
One (1) is anything chasing its tail.

Zero’s the one thing catching itself.
All numbers are fractions.

 

11. Sugared Milk

Yellow roses in the fog, it’s happened,
the ape holds the baby as Staff descend

with a cocked dart gun, their customary
strength; to live, one life, and let go.

Of the good world. The great life,
counting on something else

with cradles and graves, musicians
and spiders, and other frequency

-sensitive creatures
with black and leathery hands,

moist reflective eyes.
One hard birth

on this good world
heartbreakingly moving

without going anywhere.
The Willows weep

and children weep
as the storekeeper sweeps

their empty cones, the sugared milk
melting on the Star-named stones.

Who would we, groan and smile,
lying with a smile…

Not for all the ill funds in
the Neutral Bankers’ Till,

would we give up, the losing smile,
in plain words, thank you,

cluttered with an ancient misadventure.

 

 

Hearing, in the flat, bicycles fired
at the house, the same like the way the boys
and I used to, pushing off the peddles,
full of prank and sass, the voice of the
leader, puberty beginning to lift the
first skin of childhood, like a cicada—
clear like the clapping of waterfalls,
wet force of being Life, in the first torrent
of spring, in the desert, from a
hundred and forty miles away, or the
dry thunder of magazines dropping their
shells, the hot spent cartridge scent.
I haven’t had to count up missing hours,
or form, for years, or locate the source
of an unknown scent and I look around my
rented space, no bottles, or wine-stains,
no broken glass, no ashtrays on the floor, or
mattress airing– drying, no shat smell, lingering
fingers, above the keyboard, steady; sober
over anything found like money on the lawn
in the morning, dewy, decimal after the shindigs,
piss-ups, sessions, the lost nights given squelch,
coin-cold sober over anything; fame, wealth, love;
consistent, resilient, spontaneous, ordinary.
I’ve over-used the snake analogy, but how
uncomfortable, to see men and women carry
about the stuck skins of childhood, not completely
out, hanging off them like polyps, like undischarged sleeping bags.

 

 

 

1. Dreso.

I was eager, proud, and resolute
and I had yet to recognise
that
only very little
of my Will
inhaled talking, filled
the breath
with words exhaled

like moths
or wasps or worse
the ear made
polluted
by
the dirty feet of flies.

I did a lot I guess
I thought it play
resolutely eager
philosophised
on subjects made of aether

and behaved, like oneness
was undoing his zipper
behind your back.
You can remember

standing on a stool
while you changed
a light, bulb
in your mouth
standing on a chair
on a couch
to reach the fitting?

Such thoughts were I
found nudging on
their unstable platforms
thoughts which made you
grimace, I simply
did not realise
this branch of mankind bandaged
held together by an anguish
of monopolised protections
and the unsaid relied on by Denial

to condition, shape, craft,
mind superluminal
conditions I said mind-control
to low flying estimates
of Ambition great and detrimental.

 

 

2. Al-Fur Altitudes.

Small furies, nothing major,
in a way Society was a method
to achieve an altitude
in which the ‘I’ of all participants
could let in understanding of itself
relative the ‘yourself’ in others.

and, as the eye measures height
relative to the ground, and males
take their bearings on horizons
of ‘women’ relative experience,
in this instance, on the occasion
of the poem, and only for the transverse
way a Poem lays across the page
relative the actual occurrence, the ‘feminine’
here is represented…or hairless,
as the memory takes it, in Males, bodiborn,
dancerlean, altered forms of men
in divisive, sad mathematics,
that, if used to your advantage,
you will better comprehend
the femiNine, the oddness of it
has the mystery of a number
which returns an individual to itself:
I was the one less hurt, a type
of zero multiplied by nought,
so I gave them rounded Hermes
health, so I thought,…well, stamina, at least,
taking her into these hands
to do the math, to smooth the mended fur of foxes
who had fought amongst each other
for the Cock. I filled their pantries,
picked their locks, I trimmed their tails—
it will mean more than it should
once it is written out, and dismantled,
wholly many crimes full of strut,
but I didn’t give a toss, or else
I was a mutt, arriving unannounced,
in me gel, blotto, ditto stolen flowers,
who sniffs you through your pants,
leaving that distracting imposition
of impression in your field
of thought, they were Taxis at a Club
where androgyny was the norm.,
all stiffs, and butts, the dotted eyes
and cuts, and nothing was recorded,
and with all kinds reported, on the side,
saddle, ride the males, cried coming
to the femi-nine, a schemer, things…
to know ya baby, born to sooth this wound
of gender, it will leave a lot unsolved,
a lot of extra pudding, padding pushing in your crotch,
leaving raised the one I had to carry;
the single bone…gawd, cd u imagine
if they married? other strays pawed away as well
at what you had us bury in your backyard, you widget,
you MeaTapp, you weigh us palm to palm; you run
engraved forearms between the buttocks,
crevice to the novice, I’d entice you visit
me, to slip you one alone, and, in a way, Society,
to slip you one as well, I’d say I showed you all
my scars; one to one, I had my wavelength—
who doesn’t, I ran things, at least I thought myself
the boss of smallness hurt, you could loan
me to your friends, I knew just when to leave,
shame would take years to recognise, now
it’s only there as something happened, a
curio-college to my insight
development; I came right, eventually,
over-ratio to begin with, so I circled
like the hound of thirty three
lines ago, unsure of where the trail led,
poet/looter, after pure emotion,
hungry for your feelings, the ones
distort our thinking,
like cluster galaxies bending
with their gravity combined the light
of other stars, the awesome natural self
emoting, but in groups, and the interfering
intellect messing up the transcript
like massive aggregates of institutional
conditioning, entrainment, keeping us
all a-taxi-ing, refuelling on their runways,
changing your mind without you, and that
was where the stool-kicking happened—
which is not to imply, not to admit I knew,
and took a pick and mallet to the cornerstones
of light cemented usable as ‘true’
thoughts, composite usually, alloy
-dented foundations Balance depends on—
but so many, so often, everywhere, resulting
in my solitude at parties
celebrating that very ratio
of expectation and reward, for now
sniffing around the room alone, a small radio
will do, tuned to the furry edges
on a spice rack playing obscure quartets.
And as one Age kneels down, dying
—& forget the little plane a moment,
and forget the shemen, the femi-nines, it is you,
in your own time, making touch
at the feral point of being yourself,
alloys of bone and photon, I can see this
Society as she had seen it, & I wish it more
than a common taking, a thing
to want to live up to, but I’m cool
with it now, today, and tomorrow.

VII

Small odours hold in the walnut-
panelled Glory Box, in special coffins
for the life remembered, lined
with pale silk; there, that’s your face,
bent around the convex plane
of the unused silver spoon
commemorating royalty,

succession, continuity;
that’s your name,
on the ticket stubs and programmes;
a poster with your fame,
almost overgrown
by the main event,
which was always you,
stopping to roll the rich grass,

an inch greener near the river,
as you lay there, beside the opaque
cooling flow, thinking
deep and slow.

VIII

That’s you, needs a polish,
the infinite complexity
of patterns, the massed
and wriggling trillions

upon trillions of intelligent
yegling squiggles Particle
Colliders accelerate for:
the Moment— is pattern

and you are followed
for programmes of Prediction,
and all which seeks to manage
and control the chaos,

as it domineers
in its return, always
to disable the despotic
software systems

of genomic mimicry.

IX

Id, I.D., Rfid, IRD: can anyone
this known truely be unique?
happiest the moment, is it Movement?

E.motion, as you ripple or splash,
and dependant on your entry in the barroom,
your presence, in the mirror, in her mind,

to admire, to align, the stroke,
along your top lip, to show you ride
that wave, a joke; you’ve a memory, or is it:

a Manufactured Presence?

X

The Ages, as today, as days before;
yes, you are, all day, and all night.
In sleep, and not at fault, and no remorse,
because there is no blame, and no,
no you’re not, as you went, bearing
your heart upon the granite columns

and stub-crushed alters of the pavement.
Saw in each the same
hard mad trouble we ride
ahead of ourselves, in designer
luminescence.

A thing worried on is a miracle forfeited.
At this place, of Now, day or night,
in such a way, as you are able— grab
the wild situation, until each moment
clears itself. That’s it, happy are we truest
in the courage of no future care
to where we end, exactly where we are—
a pressing in the light from underneath.