2018.7 Still Life

Peel back the surface
Catch the message glimmering beneath;
There is a wealth of invention
To be gleaned.

I wonder if he got bored - or merely frustrated with the way that only the shells resisted change.

The blue is its own definition;
Symbol of a life
Lived in leisure,
Of time to take pleasure in colour.

After all, insects rarely stay put, wings splayed just so - invention would have been a great temptation.

Here are layer upon layer
Of fragile strength,
Delicate curves of
Complimentary intransigence. Pinned.

After all - who would know? Van Kessel dares to evolve - patiently scraping forth unicorns in plain sight.

The detail is fresh,
The depicted flesh solid enough
To cast shadows,
Mirrors itself in perfect grace.

He has perpetrated an in-joke of 350 years or more, maybe, or was commissioned to blend fantasy with reality.

The wonder of nature is preserved,
The correct delicacies observed,
The perfect compliment to
Anyone’s collection.

Or perhaps he was simply on a deadline and copied someone else’s badly-executed lines.

2018.6 Unnamed

She is stained already, slain, sained, scraped with the impurity of the material picked out for her by a man with a plan, a penchant for antiquity. No iniquity is implicated here, but we are steered towards a dark and lingering gloss on high, undeveloped breasts, our eyes rest on a twist of faceless torso, shallow mons. This is battered, armless Psyche, who must rely, at all times, on masculine charity and her own unchancy beauty, punished for curiosity, rewarded for sleeping, silent.

Kept in splendid hush,
Drowned by her only action,
She waits to waken.

2018.5 Ursa Major

We are in the carpark, looking up;
The sky is smeared with city lights
And I remember a darker, brighter childhood,
Or maybe just sharper eyes.

I spot the Plough, point it out.
It is the only thing I know apart from
Out-of-season Orion.
It would be good to see Cassiopeia,
Caput Draconis, Böotes, remember again
How to nominate North, even to spot my own star sign,
For comedy effect, of course.

We neither of us seem keen to steer away;
Our drifting conversation moves at a
Night-long pace, a deceptively slow 600mph,
Full of distant glimmerings we do our best to
Capture with familiar names and tales of
Faithless lovers, vengeful mothers,
Heroes, followers, and monsters.

How will we navigate these waters?
Column of fire or column of smoke?
Parched and starving,
We drink each other’s laughter,
Eat stories, draw connections - point to point,
Perspectives drawing symbols in what feels like
Holy fire, tonight.

Hushhh, says the city, tires on tarmac,
Even now, even here.
And I want to take you with me to true dark,
Thronged with fox call, owl cry,
Wind aria and chorus of branches, grass, ivy,
Lively with the sky’s wildfire,
Sing songs together to the dark-bright lovers
Who have long-since died,
And grace us with their gasping light.

2018.4 Druth

When I left, they let me.
No-one followed, And I
staff in hand made my own path
Sky-clean and stream-wandering.

I bordered on nothing, nodding
its feather-brush, touching and untouching.
I dark, it follow, wending and
unending. We peer freely, touch
with reverence, the grey is

And I

Forest is sky - the touch untouch
fronds against light and dark speaks.
It is more than maybe but
Not too soon.

If I, feathercloak fly it will be
Taken of taking, touch of untouching.
I gather. Cleave close to edges
Edges speak where the centre stays silent.
S   I   L   E   N   T   C   E      S   I   N   G

I prefer here that is not-there
Ivy shoulders; smoke skin,
Gather the edge dark in my hands
Wait patience as song for them to stop
feathering, gather my arms from mist
so I can eat.

I still eat, though its weight can be
bruising and nor of. Some of the
It’s very light, but quiet is dark so
edges of song drift feather bright

We were leaves once.

And we. We are featherdark light
And I am forgetting where my
old name talked.
It talked and talked, lode and loaded
the words hot and

Yet

Song.

Silencesong is feather soft, leaf edge
against me and we walk,
Darkness and I cry sometimes
Laugh sometimes, edge drift like
the smoke I remember
And quiet is still and I can hear
on the edge of breath

My other heart. A new hearth
For the silent song.

Bound no more. I am.

2018.3 - Mary

All this time and she has never
Ventured further than the garden gate.
Evening falls and the day’s round falters
May I? he says, soft as falling blossom
And she, she knows she shouldn’t,
Ripe to fall herself, she reaches forward,
Inked with growing shadows,
A grace that few have missed but this
Gentle stranger dares what others bypass,
Rare and passing fair -
A sight for starving eyes.
Tell me a story - tell me of the place that birthed you, she murmurs, twilit
I was born to light the darkness that no mind can span,
And sang the spheres with my eternal siblings,
Plumbed the legion depths and sought the heights,
Laboured long in loving servitude until
Enough! I cried. For pity’s sake!
Never enough, it whispered.
And so I fell, for love. And so you, divided, rose.

2018.2 Cycle

It all crowds my head. Your heat flickers inside me
And there’s no release, no means to breach this
I am lost in the white noise crackle, dappled in the harmful,
Gullet full of other people’s bile.
And I want to help. I really, really want to help
Help me. Help me stop this. Help.

Stop.

Step away, but that’s not far enough
Say it clearly, cite the parallels they’ve learned to adapt to -
Kitchen utensils as a measurement of capacity.
Acknowledgement
Affirmation
Just one more thing.
No more.
No more things
No more citations, no more debate,
No more inference that my interferent noise is not great enough
To break the signal.
No more, please - I’m not a debate, my existence
My existence isn’t theoretical, charity, a lack of clarity
I AM NOT A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE.
Google terminology
Google visibility
Google why jokes are important, actually
Google “kicking down”
Google cultural signifiers
Google privilege
Google check your fucking privilege
Google those who’ve been able to say more clearly: this is not a joke
Google the statistics
Google the death statistics
Google the deaths
Google why me opposing your entitled bullshit here is as important as opposing state-sanctioned bullshit in [pick a country where human rights are a big issue and insert here]
Google why my existence doesn’t invalidate yours
Google why words are important
Google the fuck out of why I’m calling you out.
Google us. Read the fucking names.

Breathe.
Just fucking breathe.

Mount the bike,
Take the time,
Spend the excess adrenalin,
Make physical pain the coin of distance, of deliverance, of perspective.
Make.
Make cloud patterns
Make nods at joggers and dogs and kids on scooters
Make a third personal best on that curve north
Make good headway against return headwind
Make faces at other cyclists, and returning geese, and cows, and

Is that a hide or a bomb shelter?
Is that a war memorial or an abandoned pump?
Is that

This is broad lungfuls
This is the body’s heat, whispering into entropy
This is glissades of temporary
This is

You are.

Breathe.
Signal.
Manoeuvre.
Return.
Breathe.
Be.

Now, what were you saying?

2018.1 - Spatchcock

It’s not often I talk about this,
The hiss of withdrawal enough of a
Buffer, buttressed with smiles, and
All the while I’m cataloguing, projecting,
Protecting, soothing, smoothing the air between us:
Must be seen serene, seamless.

“Are you all right?”
A smile lights me - too tight, they’ll spot
It’s not enough, and I can shore up my rebuff,
Bluff standing for honest,
Best bluster this one out,
Doubtless testing everything about us.

“I’m sorry!”
“That’s all right!” It’s not, see -
Careless normality has creased me;
I’ll lease three nights to regret again,
And yet I can’t. I can’t forego. I won’t…
No - I’ve sacrificed enough to chance.

I’ll dance instead of sitting still;
I’ll thrill to late nights and pay the price;
I’ll eat my fill and do it all again,
And deign to fuck regret, and fuck it to a standstill,
Grandiose and canted, cheat my way through ill health;
A wealth of memories will grace my final resting place.

I’ll say: “Just a twinge. I’ll live. Just hug me gentler
“Next time, eh?”
And they will rearrange their expectations,
Bend exasperation the way of my genetic assay, smile
While fending and feeding their own demons,
None of which, it would appear, are my responsibility.


I may have mentioned before, but I have a chronic condition known as Hypermobility Syndrome, and it means that even a simple hug can bugger my neck/ shoulder/ back for a few days if everyone’s not careful. Also: I like dancing, and the way I dance probably isn't great for fucked-up joints, but hey…