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Gas-mask City
On slate roofs
Terracotta pots
Filled with melted
Autumnal skies
Begin to spill
White washed as
Wood sorrel walls
Hearths swept
And scattered
With sesame seeds
Moved in dancing feet.
18 Apr 2008 12:07
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He held her head, in between the shifting curtains
Her face slanting off the sun you couldn’t see the bruises
That curved around his fingertips whose
Prints were stained
Whose
Guilt, watched her hands rest on the sill, in the split wine, congealing.
Her husband made love to his imagination
The curve of his hands face down
In prickly sunlight, to her whose
Imagination was spent
Whose
Body, made love to his
Promises flaked and fled from word
Their lips brittley unopened
Under tilted roses whose
Petals were still shut
Just as
His eyes remained blind to her stare.
He clutched at her rather, tried to rub her bare of marks
Panic at the spreading spill
Chameleon in the shifting light whose
Lucidity illuminated only truth
Whose
Clarity, stung him.
18 Apr 2008 12:06
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it was under a false acacia. the bin overflowing
i remember it. you left the book on a red bench
i think you were french but i left without knowing
definitvely.
it was just a photogrpah effluvio greve of lillies growing
of two people with a tension but no intention
it was under a false acacia. the bin overflowing
two people that wont ever have stories, owing
to the fact that there was no middle to the book on the bench
i think you were french but i left without knowing
definitively.
we’d read the last lines you see, growing
enamoured with each other, the thirst with no quench
it was under a false acacia. the bin overflowing.
i thought about leaving my life and going
with you to find our ending that was just right.. the little wench and her Mr. French
well, i think you were french but i left without knowing
definitively
but after living opening lines and finding no middle there really was no knowing
so we stopped all that nonsense, the glue of the spine afterall smelt of fish and wasn’t strong
it was under a false acacia, the bin overflowing
i remember it. you left the book on a red bench
i think you were french, but i left without knowing,
definitively.
13 Mar 2008 18:08
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In red acacia drips of dawn
Your fingers tangled in my hair
I roll to where the sheets are warm
I watch our bodies and the shapes they form
Bodies naked, stretched out without aesthetic care
In red acacia drips of dawn
in which the plots for our arguments are drawn
Undoing themselves in morning’s lucid glare
I roll to where the sheets are warm
The wind has changed. You can’t fly kites in storms.
You couldn’t win a thumsy war or hold my stare.
We sit inside, drenched in red acacia drips of dawn.
I try to fathom if this rocking could become my norm,
I ponder you in those elated spotlights, sunlit, rare,
I roll to where the sheets are warm
and lie staring up at where the curtain’s torn
‘us’ and the curtain need repair
But not now, not in this ficticious time of yawns
in these red acacia drips of dawn.
07 Mar 2008 19:50
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pamtoum from gallery…
Black drip drops
Clocks tick tock
Gallery floors tack
Man’s watch ticks
Clocks tick tock
Crowds don’t flock
Man’s watch ticks
School students mock
Crowds don’t flock
Man’s shoes tap
School students mock
Sellotape flaps
Man’s shoes tap
Old woman tutts
Sellotape flaps
Start to speak but…
Old woman tutts
Gallery floors tack
Start to speak but…
Black drip drops.
06 Feb 2008 18:22
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from a third draft of the poem with the pronouns and words from spam mail i slotted the lines into the form of a pantoum to see what happened if the lines wern’t reacting to each other they were already chosen…. and this is what happened…bits work bits dont:
There is elation in this tarmac in my tiptoes
You, under the rain, back-track.
Wet clothes, new lows, in highs, cries of joy
Fling wet arms high around wet necks, skin, cling, together.
You, under the rain, back-track.
The sky dress droops around, down into ceilings,
Fling wet arms high around wet necks, skin, cling, together.
Drips into coffee hinted smiles of lovers across table-tops.
The sky dress droops around, down into ceilings,
Falling candles flick, fire licks, and steeps your sky dress vertical puddles in dripping tongues.
Drips into coffee hinted smiles of lovers across table-tops.
I reach up.
Falling candles flick, fire licks, and steeps your sky dress vertical puddles in dripping tongues.
You writhe against the wave winds frothing around your face
I reach up
Kiss.
You writhe against the wave winds frothing around your face
Wet clothes, new lows, in highs, cries of joy.
Kiss.
There is elation in this tarmac in my tiptoes.
06 Feb 2008 15:05
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Do not let those solid drips stop time
Look up through cobwebs to gold bulb of light
Down, down, through splintered sellotape and grime
Flimsy tetanus tables past their prime
Bend until you see through reflection’s sight
Do not let those solid drips stop time
In mirror fragments, red iron mime
Of life, refractions scatter prism bright
Down, down, through splintered sellotape and grime.
Blue cotton reels suspended try to climb
Go, go, race on with all your balanced might
Do not let those solid drips stop time
But quiver in the water’s ragged rhyme
Rest in rusting ripples of mirrored light
Down, down, through splintered sellotape and grime.
Your tattered face taped down, outside of time
To shards of floor that struggle into flight
Do not let those solid drips stop time,
Down, down, through splintered sellotape and grime.
06 Feb 2008 14:22
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I remember you
I remember running after you. It was December and I didn’t take a coat.
I remember the first time you made me bleed.
I REMEMBER WHEN MY BLOOD WAS BLACK AND I COULD NO LONGER SEE YOUR FACE
I REMEMBER WHEN YOU TOOK HOLD OF ME AND I COULD NO LONGER FEEL THE PAIN.
I remember forgetting
I remember not remembering. Frantically.
I remember the ceiling, and the walls, covered in dots
I remember counting those dots: for hours
I remember being numb
I remember being scared
I remember losing my memories, and regaining them, one by one.
I remember each second following the next
I remember losing count, dozing, starting again.
I remember becoming unattached
I REMEMBER WAKING UP
I remember falling
I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THE BLOOD CAME OUT OF ME
I remember when all that blood was on the floor
I remember my reflection
I REMEMBER WHEN MY TEARS WERE RED. They clogged my eyes.
I remember when I had no face
I remember breaking
I REMEMBER LYING ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR AND SCREAMING, AND HOW IT MADE YOU CRY, maybe made you break.
I remember agony in your eyes
I remember counting
I remember shame
I remember the humiliation. I couldn’t make them understand. I couldn’t make them stop
I remember the blue above her face and all the words I couldn’t comprehend
I REMEMBER THE CITY LIGHTS
I remember moment by moment
I remember the city lights
I REMEMBER WHEN YOU READ TO ME AND FELL ASLEEP WHILST I LAY AWAKE.
I remember crouching on the airport floor
I remember your hands
I remember you pulling me closer when I’d rolled away in the night
I remember the sky seeping into the room
I REMEMBER RED GERANIUMS
I remember not wanting to look
I remember the way you tried not to laugh when I tickled you
I remember how I made you stay up with me, how we didn’t sleep, how you held me and didn’t ask, HOW YOU KISSED MY EYES AND WAITED.
I remember choking
I remember shaking behind the door, how I couldn’t breath AND I COULDN’T TELL YOU
I remember when everybody wore my face
I remember when everyone lost their face
I remember when you made me calm
I remember those cuts I left in your back
I remember when you tore my skin
I REMEMBER MY BODY BRUISED
I remember cigarettes in wineglasses
I remember the way that from the train window it looked as though the street lamps were running into the pavements
I remember the sea at night and how I CLUNG TO YOU
I remember with what tenderness I trusted you
I remember waking up covered in sheets of writing
I remember when I read what I had written and was scared
I remember burning my fingers when I burnt them
I remember the froth on her lips
I remember when I tried not to think, when I tried not to be, and when I failed in both.
I remember when I tried to understand
I remember despairing
I remember the nothingness, the blankness
I remember the isolation
I REMEMBER OVER AND OVER AGAIN
I remember when there were no words just depthless pain
I remember hiding under your body
I remember BEING HAPPY
I remember bubbles.
I remember your tummy
I remember the way you used to try and put your fingers in my mouth when I yawned
I remember how your whole face crumpled up into one grin
I remember the way we pushed each other too hard
I remember your consuming ambition
I remember all those mirrors
I remember suffocating
I REMEMBER THE WEIGHT HOLDING ME DOWN AS I CHOKED ON MY BLOOD
I REMEMBER HOW THERE WAS NOONE THERE
I REMEMBER HOW WE STARTED PAINTING A LITTLE BOAT WHEN I WAS FIVE: it’s still unfinished.
I remember how I used to know you, and the you I used to know has killed a girl.
I remember when you came to me and told me what he’s done to you
I remember when you wrote me poems
I remember when you cried against the WINDOW LEDGE, for your life.
I remember when you cried because you couldn’t stop him dying
I remember when you tried to tell me without crying
I remember all the times I tried not to cry, and then those times I COULDN’T FIND THE TEARS
I remember when they opened you in the corridor, with people drinking cups of tea
I remember being exhausted and laughing and crying mixed together and the confusion hurt
I REMEMBER WHEN I SAT AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS AND HUGGED MY FEET AND BEGGED THE MEMORIES NOT TO COME
I remember all the nights I tried to find excuses not to go to bed
I remember all the excuses I used to find not to go to bed alone
I remember all the nights that finished with me sleeping and all the morning yawns
I remember the horror of my sleep
I remember when I’d call just to tell you about my toes, just to push away my thoughts.
I REMEMBER WHEN YOU SAID ‘MISS YOU’ AND ADDED ‘AS USUAL’ AND WHEN I SAID ‘AS USUAL I DON’T BELIEVE YOU’ YOU SAID ‘AS USUAL I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD’.
I remember red nail varnish. I can’t believe you might have killed her.
I remember when I stayed up typing ‘I remembers’ and couldn’t go to sleep.
I REMEMBER WHEN YOU SAID I WAS AN ANGEL.
I remember when you lay on the tiled bathroom floor.
22 Nov 2007 03:49
| Tags: 7 Icw Week
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i left it to the last minute and haven’t had time to edit it: there’s a guy sitting next to me biting his fingernails: i want to hit him, be sick or runaway.
my mixing of genres didnt work so i just took out all the fairytale stuff -it works better, though isn’t really a story:
The journey
Day 231 once upon a time
Little has changed; though slowly the constant damp of sweat all over me is becoming less irritating: maybe it’s because I’ve bitten my fingernails right down so I’m no longer creating further cuts for the sweat to burn in. The greyness of her skin is neither worse nor better though my fevered imagination keeps seeing a blush in those cheeks. Reality is skewed; maybe it’s not imagination playing but past and present overlapping. Every hillock in this road seems both like the first and the hundredth. I try to hold onto why I’m doing this.
Day 235
The driver has yellow sores all over his haunches from the hillocks. He wants to stop. We have been able to shift position, he has not. We give him the last little bit brandy, we need him to continue. Now there is sweat and insects.
Day 247
He’s always asleep. How can he sleep when the road is so hillocky and sweat blocks one’s nostrils. There is no one to talk to. What if I lose my sanity before we arrive?
Day 248
The air is sulphurous. The clouds are turretous. I think we’ve gone wrong: we’re lost.
Day 251
She is grey and damp. The addition of sweat to her greyness makes her seem more feeble, closer to death; more mortal. I want to touch her but I’m worried about infection. The lack of water is getting to us all. His skin is reacting badly: this kaleidoscopic show provides something to focus on. I hardly notice my own sweat anymore, even the insects have become an accepted part of my view, merging with the black dots floating in front of my eyes.
Day 252
This morning I woke up on my back. Nothing was moving. I was neither in the van nor on that never ending hillocky road. I put out my arm and grasped a hand, cold, clammy. It wasn’t her. I could just see the red tips of autumnal forest. His corpse was polished. There were forty perfectly round white penny shaped scars starring his torso. He had nothing with him. She was further off, where the grass was longer. I wept for our mortality.
Day 253
I spent the day lying in the grass. I saw a ladybird.
Day X
I don’t know how many days I lay in the grass but today I got up. I dug a hole. I lay next to her remembering how red used to move within her cheeks. I said goodbye.
Day X + 1
I put her in the hole. I got into the hole and lay down on top of her. Then I got out and left.
01 Nov 2007 13:41
| Tags: 4 Icw Week
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A girl laughs in a red telephone box that has no glass.
The glass is on the floor, broken.
A hawthorn leaved with sparrows glints in the evening glow and is mirrored a thousand times in the shards upon the ground.
The girl is me.
I am happy. Free.
The other girl watching me is listening.
The sparrows raise a deafening lullaby to the dying sun but it is not enough to drown my words.
I turn my head; she drops her eyes…..
The graceful glide of the receiver echoes the crescendo of the song
_
the birds shiver and rise as one, stripping the hawthorn of its undulating cloth –
_
the receiver reverberates against the rusting red frames and the dust settles.
Held in that dusty air, nothing happens. I’m suddenly very aware of my bare legs and red toenails out of place in that shimmering no-man’s land.
Another bus arrives, stops sharply, unexpectedly, surprised to find people on that desolate track. We get onto the yellow bus. Silence full of noise.
I don’t look at her, I do not know whether she is looking at me and I go on with my life.
That silence becomes a sweat that everyday hangs heavier upon my body, I wake to see her face, and in every crowd, cloud and looming corner.
A girl laughs in a red telephone box.
From outside the glass it looks like she is screaming.
That girl is empty; but that girl is me. Her wan laugh can not escape. Hollow.
Hunched up against the freshly painted red metal stares out.
Through the swathes of people not her face but that politely falling fringe, focused on a bag of apples. She hasn’t seen the tram. Abruptly gasping pulls up. One apple rolls across the floor. She doesn’t see it. I pick it up.
“apple”
“yes”
I know it’s over.
09 Oct 2007 14:33
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