As if the slow, meticulous etchings of time, upon any face, consumed also, immoderate flux in its workings on physiognomy and all. It would surprise, to view, disjunctive, brows raised and sallow mouth - oddly conjoined. Nature intrigues with us yet we are in its communion, melded in the cells, to follow, to listen if we care, to eternality at work. What conspiracy outdoes nature's work? To frame us in such lurid light as bleaches her away. Some subterfuge akin to other rules, some aberration yet unknown. It is not gentle, deep, recurring.
Category: Verse
October 2021
To rail is to bore To harangue is to wish domination To rage is to set all afire To boast is to expose a void To preach is to wish choice obliterated To plead is to dignify mercy To stay quiet is to harness despair To listen is to suppress instinct. Finally.
Transition (Working Title)
Thoughts of evaporation never cease, Seeping in, like cold up through the floor, While making a sandwich or cleaning teeth. Drawn into an incandescent fog, or Pausing on a lake, as the ice cracks, Boomeranged to echoing spaces, Seeking warm resonance in the walls, Or rich stories, in orphaned objects; Programmed errors repeating, For all the dawn song, and A green haze on the willow. Sleep is a comfort, still, after winter, To escape ghosts coming up through the floor, The narrowing of life—the failure...to cope. All these things a burden to lay down at last, And fall into the arms of distant galaxies.
Throb
Life is -- a throb, a pulse, a vein. No more, no more could be, A gilt detritus of eternity, You must work or fall to grace, By virtue of slight circumstance. Life is borrowed gold, a speck of dust, Spent before it's valued-- The bane of grief’s inheritors.
Fishing
Torsioned silvered tails Thronged with thoughts, emerging from The periphery, from blinking to dreaming, Whipped, now here, now there, sideward Over coffee and emails, intersecting, In sun-glinted depths, prismed, Lit like glass, smashed in slow motion, A thousand urgent purposes ungrasped. I am the foolish fisher, lost on the ocean; The sun sets and here sit I, still, vast Ambitions mercurial, dreamt tales unsung, Flash past me and disappear.
Crude Spoof on Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis.
Pour forth your tweets, lift up woeful voices; Let the forums echo with sorrowful cries. Grossly falls an island nation once gracious, More than which no other was Greater Not in the whole western world for moderation. Shaggy He, in the fallacious race was victor Over the smallest; he now rebellious moderates smears, fleeces with his lying Missiles those who, averse to cack-handed Government, and urging the honest Headlong, would expose his bloated lies, while Gove-cocks peck away at weak integrity, and Feeble anti-kakistocrats turn their backs. Conqueror he of straw-man ghouls beyond the Shores of Albion's sacred sea: Even the burgundy-passported complainers Forces he to bend their necks to the fetters That Farage forged, and Parliament itself To tremble before blood-boiled music-hall dominion.
Woodpigeons in the Cypress (version 2)
You knew youth, and life too: drifting slowly into lewd bones, gossamer-dross, rank sinew, feathers lost on a breeze. Years of roosting and fussing, bustling turbulence behind a carapace of leaves — subdued by moonset and foxes hunting. Thronged by blood of kin, flapping about nothing, soaring to June skies and thermals, attuned by consanguinity. Above, steel-eyed hawks, scoring complacent circles, swoop, sensing loosed joy, to unleash a savage eternity.
Woodpigeons in the Cypress (version 1)
You knew, youth, and life too, a spark, defuses slowly into lewd bones, downy, gossamer-dross feathers drifting lost on a thoughtless breeze. Splayed on a June garden afternoon, thronged about by blood of kin, flapping about nothing, soaring, seeking flight to azure skies and thermals, twitchy claps and cracks mellowed by approaching dusk and exquisite consanguinity. Years there are of squabbles flippant, roosting love and fussing, flaps and switches, turbulence behind the carapace of leaves- then subdued by moonlight and stealthy foxes skulking, or steely hawks, spying high past noon, scoring a patient circle; we launch and clap, sky swooping, caught up in our joy, brought down by worn puissance, a mourning leaf, dew evaporated, an untethered flap or two, ended noiselessly by predation.
robust
A frequented delusion. Rust. A Bust. A vigour, costumed. Small song of a haggard, bloody moon. A lusty nonsense, a callow shroud, a dud squib croaking on a proud log, a swarthy trunk, bristling with thin solidity, a bloody steak, a bull, a nonsense, a quickening of delusion, a busted flush, robbed, congealed into fat. John Bull, swollen, an insipid deception, ruddy nosed and periwigged, port-swollen, neither soundly derived nor well-placed, a familiar, a cipher, dropped into place, an empty thing, a word, an echo of a forgotten substance. God Save a gutless word, recycled by lazy acceptance, cobbled by plentiful misuse, the robbed dust of English bones, sluiced for sly expedience. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/27/the-government-called-the-exam-algorithm-robust-how-robust-was-that-claim
Untitled #.
While the day dragged, mopping up dropped tears, Evan gazed beyond the trees to where an orange sun bled through the thick white cloud. Swell me with regret, sweet rue of bitter moments, Passed like sweetmeats before my eyes. Let me enjoy their passing. It is a sullen joy. Evan's seat grew warm as the hours wound around. But he did not move. The orange sun sank silently, and the cloud remained.
