His mind sparks explosions in four cylinders, maybe six,
pistons rise and fall, connecting rods turn the crankshaft,
clutch flywheel disengaged a moment, gears shifted and
torque in the wheels altered. His engine purrs; he mulls
turbo with or without variable compression, and always
finds quadratic equations and poetry hinder performance.
1. Juggling splintered sunlight
head lost in that globe
2. Walking on a sea of fallen leaves
kicking up happy days
3. Stringing them along a daisy-chain
seeing them wink as they pass
4. Tuning into starlings
up and down the short-wave.
Issue 11 featuring 32 poets at http://survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm and submissions for the James Tate Prize for a poetry chapbook accepted to the end of August. You can find more information about it here: http://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm
I look at her,
childlike
in her distance;
a curl
dreaming.
Recognize
her solitariness;
the dream
a wall
around her;
a cold
realisation:
this primal
distance
between us.
I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.
When I turn forward again my face has been gouged,
there are splinters from the corners of my eyes,
my mouth is a mean line.
My eyes are pools;
their former blue submerged,
indistinct as dapples are in the shallows.
I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.
When I turn forward again I have my father’s face;
he is staring at nothing;
life has grown quiet inside him.
Watching you on the pier
as the ferry moved out to sea,
your face
your waving arm
you in a cluster of people
the cluster of people
the harbour
the town
the headland
the coast
and memory
like looking into a lighted grotto
seeing the tableau receding,
becoming distant
becoming a light bulb
eventually a star
among all the stars
identical to all the stars.
People:
we may, indeed, pass each other unaware.
Fish:
be that close, but almond-shaped sleekness,
pass on, never know.
Murk:
in which we swim and do not see, search
but not find what is all around.
Rows of empty seats, regimented,
plastic, steel legged,
but one, my mother watching me
signing books
with pride as I continue.
Years on, my mother among
those empty rows of seats,
smiling,
dead
but her smile remembered;
memory precarious as steam;
memory that fills purses
money can never reach.
Parched landscape;
a sandy wilderness
deeply gorged.
The geologic processes
ended now;
his eyes,
dried up water-holes,
partially filled with
some long-gone personal tragedy.
I found his heart,
a rusted old truck, abandoned,
curiously distant from any road.
All the days that have ever been;
the flowing rivers,
the dried-up rivers;
the old bones,
the new bones;
the grain of all our songs:
with this map you understand
this is the place that we are,
topography of our souls;
we tramp it living and dead.
Her body is pain;
birds flap inside that mesh;
she won’t entertain it, but
a facial alphabet pinballs momentarily.
Her eyes give her away;
corundum-hard crystallised agony;
beautiful too,
bullet-like.
Snow, it seemed to me, had the power to take away the sins of the world.
With that dazzling perfection, men’s minds could only be turned to the glorious
and beautiful; their hearts becoming salmon, medallions reflecting magnificent
light, must surely leap from the curve of their every-day lives.
Snow made the world pristine as Heaven is. Shining, peaceful, flawless;
to walk on fresh fallen snow was to walk an unsullied landscape; to walk in its
unearthly glow, which had the power to make even winter’s pitch black nights bright,
was, to me, a miraculous restoration of sight.
When the snow started to fleck the air outside our classroom, we all ran to the windows;
it was to be expected, even the teacher stepped towards it, allowing himself to be
mesmerised by the slow climbing down of billions of spiders; nature’s most astounding
coup, as the earth was prised from the doings of man, wonder restored, the opportunity
to write ourselves afresh on the empty canvas of the world.
A track into the woods,
turning out of view in the distance,
dragged me from the road
to the mysteries hidden in the shade
beneath trees,
in the darkness of tunnels.
That still flickering excitement
of childish adventures,
those reached only
through almost invisible entrances,
lightened my steps,
trimmed my years,
diverted me from the endless trudge
along those roads straightened by habit,
paved for safety.
I haven’t kept mementos;
memories decay with time’s mildew
and warmth becomes cinders eventually.
Love does keep calling,
but its voice ever more distant
is faint now.
If only your face was beside me,
just for this one moment,
I could chase away callous time forever.
