Poem experiments from one divided mind at four points of the world
May 10, 2013
You have eyes for me, with laugh line sunbursts at the corners. They draw me in.
Reeling, I realise I cannot step away. We are wound in the metal of ourselves, hook wire warriors each growing chains into the other’s chest. You draw me in and where you go, I go.
My ribs bend you slide like lead retreating down in water drawing in, too darkness
I can’t want to unhook my chains from you. My desire is all to draw you in to me, but I feel my feet slip in my own unsolid mud slick clay
I fill my lungs with air suck hope like buoyant gas; gasp as though love were anti-gravity; as though one could be a cup inverted over water, pulling upward from the depths
The air above, seen through water is all light spread, broken and beloved, rising away
She raves
She cannot speak
The fear in waves.
In fragile breaking peaks.
and sullen surging troughs
she speaks, her words are froth
where in her eyes is Lear
she speaks in sound and nothing.
sound and fury, nothing, fear.
Is washed in fear and fear and fear
that never loses meaning, clear
inside my heart, with hers,
is glass. She fumbles, slips
the glass
half fear, full, foe, awake, awake
- past breaking lips -
- I cannot speak -
- it breaks.
Neil Gaiman’s australia day poem in the Athenaeum in Melbourne, 24 Jan 2012 reminded me of this September 2010 Poem - Pulled from the archives in response to that one.
Time moves in A Certain Light
Moment on moment, building nothing
as stairs sketched into nowhere
each step takes focus, just
as the others drop away
As light coursed through the eyes of Cook
standing on a new land
yet to be speared by hostile shadows.
Light swept into his clenching eyes.
He came to gather, with white hands,
red dirt in towers,
to cut in honey coloured sandstone
with the dark sweat of convict men
The snaking lash; made over paradise a hell,
or pulling out of hell the earth
new life.
Or trying to revive, like Orpheus.
looking back,
below - across the sea and losing home,
the hulks and slums and loam
all coal fog smeared in black
this squinting white
limn-lighted waves
the way that shreds of glass cast scraps of bright
over deep dark depths
a sheet made out of trembling;
particles of water light
pricked out - small pains - the watchers flinch
as flicked refractions spray their sight
also the sun here
is not the same
Don’t look -
observe the qualities of sun from what it rests on.
The scene reframed, the same same panting
multitudes in oil repeat. Amidst the crowds
of dazzled spectators where painters set
triumphantly, despairing Christs,
And see, the skeptics object is the urgent
mystery of overflowing power.
Overpoweringness bound in mystery
Will fling some wild eyes silent wide, to
look medusa in the face or god, and
standing stone, cast off the mill of sin
fling out alone
Some romantic said
Newton ruined rainbows by pinning them
as prism-ghosts, Distorted thoughts of light.
Described as curving sight,
the ethereal arc was physics fingered
– dimmed.
Keats wallowed like a scientist in mysteries, within, without.
The pitiless realist will hold to fear
Refusing to condemn confounded doubt.
Observed wordily the seen attains
its realness. By stating states
They’re phrasing into certainty,
Both by and for degrees
the sorts of sight
While language-wise, Translating is pursuit
Of truth. Or is in its purview
purveying meaning too?
Or is it either or instead?
Is it paragraphs of paraphrase or
more in seeming like; in feeling through.
Take your choice
Of truth if truth makes meaning just in word for words
Or of truth as the truth of beauty, if more beautiful than true.
Viewing, the skeptic’s object is denied
The urgent mystery of overflow
ing power. Seen, unseen, blind excession
this brand of relentless transcendental
demands to be past understanding and.
This, thus, flings some wild eyes silent wide, to
look medusa in the face or god, and
standing stone, cast off the mill of sin, wheel free, fling out alone
ALICE FRASER TAKES TO TASK ANOTHER BLOGGER WITH FACTS AND JOKES. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT COUNTS.
Okay - this is going to be both late and an overreaction. Kate Hunter, who is a fine writer and journalist published an article online in early December. The problem for me is it repeats a form i…
You have
eyes that bury themselves
in the middle distance,
and in thought,
and sometimes in my eyes
they catch the light
or pull away from darkness,
thoughts like some sleek seal
pooling up shining wax from deep water.
Your sweet words
Like the squealing styrofoam
Of spun sugar in your closing teeth
The slick heart thumping wash of blood
That rises unnatured and unasked
floods as
pink and lurid hot
as sharp as sugar spinning
wildly & in veins
Such blazing optic fibre threads
too much took in
made sick with longing, I
In hands tacked and tacky with the stain of my own grasping take
the taste upon my tongue
*********
Lick dry lips with a dry Tongue
Stand in sand below a man
He licks wet lips with a wet tongue
Your joints are hot and gritty from the walk
Your skin is pricked with fear
You bring bad news
I take your words
In my hands like your face
It comes away like a mask
I found the city beautiful with you though - without you I lost it lost the city and was lost in it. I felt the streets slip through my fingers and the silken threads
of telephone wire, web-slender feeling white with electricity. smooth sharp and violently contained
The shade of your eyes was like a shade over my eyes, like sunglasses that are too cheap and shading greys and blues can make your day seem sad.
I once had a pair, so russet tinted that the world was glorious, the sky sprang into a thousand colours and I called out loud at sunsets that no one else could see.
since they began to talk - to spin that weave,
that spiderweb of bullshit to
a net for catching monsters
It’s snakes of longing
spiderwebs that catch her in the face
sudden clinging thin string strands:
that slippery tender slide
jolts her into the night-sweat-swearing
passion, fear and lust and terror make her reach
for the normal range of
gasping horrors
for spiders, snakes and public speaking
falling from cliffs.
Beware the deadly fear of speaking truth
or hearing what is said.
Don’t check the date
it’s an anniversary anyhow - it feels as though
he has been sliding in and weighing on the edges of her fisheye thoughts these days
a blurring into visions of those things
vision gone long
she doesn’t want to see how long
for sure it would imply defeat
to hairshirt herself in that regret,
regret a scratching label at the back of a cotton dress,
regret discomfort breathing down the back of her neck
that trick he had her play
pulling snakes of misery in and out and back into her mouth.
It’s a temptation, she won’t deny it
to hold those snakes, loose mouthed and let them slide across the roof, peel and reel them off her tongue with word snakes like sticky living string, with her breath to stir that pot
That should stay
still, I suspect
under the meniscus crust of dust
don’t find out how liquid all that muck is underneath
or how much sweetness cloys in it.
Let it evaporate
to cracked clay lining an old bowl
let it all be washed into the garden with
the quiet beasts
