mirror, mirror
they’re sending me away to the edge thinking something will be learnt but the mind is unyielding a
locked door to the kingdom of attention there’s little to cling to I long for long grass open
hiding ground not desks chairs breeze block walls painted future grey fuzz not the smell of brain cells storming
triggers for panic
me, the emperor naked at the thin end of the edge wondering what next what
next has been explained and I should know everyone knows but that door is bolted
too wood is stubborn once it’s chopped forgets its purpose instruction with its
iron fists keeps knocking but the logic of simple sequences is untranslatable
I’m already tripping before the litany begins
e) finally c) and when that’s done j) an echo b) Firstly d) the aim a) next (surely
not again) e) thirdly, but before you do that
pretending i don’t really want to scream my teeth sink into my jaw fun is the first and last hurdle
the zebra on my t-shirt will hide my terror distract someone and my skin will temper the tension
of every muscle no one will know I’m not all here weird behind these stripes some of me
the bit no one sees spiralling into a crater I follow keep falling my face grows flatter there’s
despair carved down my cheek loser tattooed on the insides of my eyelids
all wrapped in pjs we are as if strapped
to ourselves camouflaged not daring to breathe
among seventies fibres carpet that looked
insensitive felt like grass but was not
harbouring battles up up the steps to where
secretly the children -us- struggle for sound for a glimpse
through the banisters of adults perfumed
at the front door being led following
bleating into the dining room
evenings of polite
politicking over pork apple sauce was glamorous then
a glimpse not of the adults but us futuro-fat
guests in our own fiction wondering
who/what are you or will you be?
pink rinse with long cigar fossilized codger
saying the child is impish seen AND heard
not silenced like now adult falling off
the leg of the spider diagram into inequities
insolvencies sludgemire unsolved erasing the innocence
on those faces that were us peeking from quicksand
before the sandman
what did we expect no really
what
echoes
i
year’s end and we’ve all grown
thin dodging gloss in the streets
and you choose your path guided only
by the dry patch
the way you chose your toys once
by quirk
ii
ahead of you is the splash you tried so hard
to avoid a slough of limited responses
someone shouts your name
but you’ve no idea what to say it’s probably
not even you your tongue
keeps chaffing off chipped teeth pearls
in need of tracks
iii
comfort is a thing
of the past to behold forget perhaps
now all you ask is a shelf to curl up on the offer
of closure
or a kick-start buttons to press so at least
your fingers are employed
(the 3 poems above are from a forthcoming collaboration called JAM, with Jennifer Matthews, to be published by Seven Towers, Winter 2013)
I sharpen the pencil because I’m blind
its mark travels places invent themselves
as they encounter lead
a shard a spire Calatrava’s eye
and the page begins its search
in the tangle of sound
slapsloop
in pools where your deeper half
can drown
the old words strut past poodles
on the promenade unrecognisable with their nose
dialling the sun they’ve forgotten
what words can be now that they live on a leash
in fossil homes glass cased
surrounded by rewards
I drill the page obsess unschooled
like a dung-fly on steak before it crash-lands
on the window ledge thud buzz buzz
morse for drunken blood vessels
bursting
it’s the out-of-focus fuzz that’s
unsharpening my revisions
ακούρδιστο ρολόι
I am the clock that ticks ying-yang
myxolidian phrygian
an innocence that allows
all shades of syllables
even monochrome just about
the way you tolerate salamanders
living behind your bed
when I was a child time would come off
in your hand if you tried to catch hold of it
i still have the seconds dangling
from my fingers their tenderness
rolling down my face
μικροαπατεωνίσκοs
down on the beach you can catch severe antioceansanditis just like that
it happens when you play frisbie and the discus hovers over your craft out of reach and you have to
swelter skelter several meters after it that’s when the hot coals begin
in a moment of apathy a discarded banana skin is too much you become a slippery slop melancoholic
fevriolic seagulls start to drill your mind hi-ho hi-ho rioting as they go babies make you froth
at the mouth flies blaze your eyes scroll back
you are consumed by the pram no one gave you for Christmas and the exam you flunked and how long it was
since your last orgasm while the women next door upstairs across the street reset your clock for 5 a.m. day in
day out and in and out and the valley of tears is real
characters
on the periphery of your love lose their shape just as the higgs boson is found higgs himself appears on the
front page of the newspaper indistinguishable from the man beside him as they trudge formless lowrie lamdas
through the melting icecaps of your consciousness
you become dyslexic dystonic dyspraxic distrustful discover you’re predictable and this is nearly worse
consider arson wish for the world to upend
a guitar hums rock and raves in a closet hidden from fingers that must never distract it
cause for more weeping cause for full moon
you beat yourself up for the waste and the want the wind pick fights on parallel universes aim
to never come back till something is done about the slaughter of innocents the smell of fish in the fridge
it has to end somewhere
(both of the poems with Greek titles are from a different collaborate collection, still untitled, with Nina Karacosta, to be published by corrupt press in 2014)
