Monday, November 19, 2012

cutting trees

cutting trees

for Rob Plath

there is blood
only-

it is a stain
of gold sap,

so we don’t recognize
it to be just that-

and its acrid scent
too strong

desperate as a sad song-

when everything is gone.

the rings
of time

soaked in blood,
just a knub

with ghost limbs
surely swaying still.
 

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Please support your local authors and artists thrive, and keep art alive...

*important update!*

My new book, impress, from Punk Hostage Press, was released on November 10th, 2012!

It is available at the link below for ordering via amazon, both in book and ebook via kindle:

http://amzn.com/0985129336


Please consider buying impress, and spread the word, share my book around.

Cheers!

Happy Holidays.

-C.V.Auchterlonie
 

Monday, November 12, 2012

of emptiness

of emptiness

What dream undreamt this-
a prickled orb
of rainbow bubble.

I can never restore
this wordless poem
impressed upon
a see through blue-

the farthest it soars
still something,
too true.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

heartily

heartily

depressive spiral/
spinning wheel of lights/
there it goes/nausea into/
certainty/less the sure fire things/
moving like a carnival without
any strands of bright.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

it was a small fight



it was a small fight
bronze dragonfly
o, how you broke my heart.
half drowned
broken wings
you washed ashore
a tangled wreckage
beside my sandy legs
I tried to save you
uncrinkled your wings
and gently dried
the clear taupe
lake water off.
you flittered,
tried your best
to make due
with the one
broken wing
and missing leg,
fumbled along my palm
clung tightly, staring into
my eyes with your
orbs like polished
tigers eye.
you knew I was there
to help.
I pleaded with your small
delicate frame to fight on
take flight! you listened
looked at me when I spoke,
you're a fighter jet, I said,
you cocked your head like a
loaded gun,
the fight was on.
hours went by, you tried and tried,
but when I packed to leave that
crystal lake shore
still you refused to soar
and I tried to peel you from my palm
tighter, tighter, you gripped on.
I kept you cupped in my hands
carefully made my way home
and as I drove you died
fixed, you gripped, you kissed my palm.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

*important update*

impress, my second full length collection, will be published by PHP (Punk Hostage Press) this year! Look out for new updates when the time comes regarding official release information if you'd like to get your hands on a copy, thanks. Cv.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

this sway

this sway
there is a mysterious something
lurking in
even the deepest darkest abyss
of every nothing,
and every something craves to endeavor
the mystique of that illusive nothingness.


we loan and we lend
hands and hearts and wombs
we rent rooms, but we are alone.
divided by ventricular wall spaces.
when the truth seems to say

there is no nothingness just a mad loop
of something, one after another
lightness bursting/darkness vacuuming.
maybe there is nothing to create meaning
but it is full
beyond all of our loneliness
is this universe
this sway.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

pressed

pressed




1.

far, far away/

rooflines.

the language of/

love and fear/

hands folding/

linen inside…



egyptian earth…

indigo pigment/the trade off/was/

moving over gold bar oasis/hourglass spent…



teal paint curls/

another world/another war/

painted over…



sunny side up/

or over easy?



raspberry gelato/her tongue/tying/
weeping willow/rope swinging/
copper country fields/

chestnut/the hair of the first love/

fingertips grazing fingertips/pear sugar dissolving…

iced green grapes/crystallized…



sea grass hope chest/
shades of storm grey...



the grind/vertical climb/espresso beans/

london fog/latte foam/

scarlet kissed rim/

arrival/departure/

by train/plane…



short days and long shadows/

tears and laughter/

old souls and cobbled stones...



striped feathers/

oak brown over birch white....


boiling tomato hill/

violet plums/



2.



goldenrod bramble/

sunday spice market/picketed fence...

pumpkin fields over frosted mud/

bowls of hard candy/honour system/

leaded stained glass…

old doors applauding/

the pitter patter of future monsters/

the yolk moon over seed black/fertile/infertile/

the constellations made of your best utensils/

the dream/the wake/the insomnia/

the repetition…



the pressed wildflowers/slain/contain/

the books we fear/we love/we are/will be

what’s behind us here…

Thursday, June 21, 2012

how the going get gone

how the going get gone

you're hell bent
on striking the last blow.
each severance, each partition, is
a line break begged for.

just words and words and words. 
a swarm of mint moths eating the amber wool.

I see you clearly
there you are, under the warm warp
of summered lake skin.

you're seducing me to swim with you, when you cannot swim.
'come in' you say, 'it's not as cold once you get used to it.'

you push me under.
I bob up, I am pulled out like a paper boat to the middle.

the writing's on my back.
you cannot see where I went to or what's being said there.

woman without a landscape

woman without a landscape


1.
she walks barefoot in the garden
never minding the sharp edged leaves
occasionally they cut her toes, jamming her
like the razor sharp tongues and boulder fists of cruel men
who scarred her.

it startles her, the way old pain does
she remembers it well, every hurt that tamed her irises
hits her like a thousand paper cuts
to her fragile vellum skin.

those blades of grass on the backs of her calves
whooping her like her drunken father with his leather belt.



2.
she takes great care here in playing pretend
she's become something
not quite a human being now; exactly else.

she lives with the glow of tiki lamp light
and kerosene oil perfumes her feather white hair
so does the jasmine

and the dirty piles of carrots
reeking of her own sure death,
she bends over, wildly pulling them

like a doctor tugging a breach baby
from a birth canal,
the pressure of the shoulders
and waiting on that scream she notes-
'it all was so rushed', she pushed too soon
and the silence was so startling

that her heart nearly sank when they smiled
in that consoling sort of way that she recognized right away
as being far too calm to sustain new life.

she looked down,
confronted with blue eyes, two sky blue skies

alive, yes, not a sound, just tracing the world staring it down
like he knew even then how criminal it had been to his mother all along.


3.
and the fish bowl gasp was heard even down the hallway from all the nurses
and the doctor too, calmly tucking his grief pamphlet back into his pants pocket.
they wrapped him; never one sound came from that child
it must have been months before he let out a sound, she recalled.

it is in that silence reclaimed, that she remembers the other children she lost,
as she pricks her thumb,

a heavy clot of red gel reminds her of her hand between her thighs cradling small deaths
fainting in that long emergency hall, too far to walk the yards that surely come and come
without wait.



4.
her quietness craved silence.


5.
years came and went,
she wetted the lettuce so carefully, each leaf by hand with a damp towel.
amnesia set in like a misty spider web creating an impression
of her former faces as she walked through it, it became a nylon mask she tore away.


6.
she forgot her age again.
no matter, it’ll come to her later on, with the epiphany of
what day of the week it is.

she sprinkled the heartier plants from a watering can
drops fell like small clear grains, amounting, and slipping.
not a bruise

not a bent stem nothing to disturb
the proud rosettes of frilly green,
she drops the can, panic sets, it’s the last day of kindergarten she finally remembers him where she left him,

time to get the boy ready, big day, he’ll be performing in the gym
'each of us is a flower growing in life’s garden',
she whistles the song as she fades,
and the landscape becomes more and more obscure.

once upon a time ago

once upon a time ago

maybe they were heirlooms
once upon a time ago
half buried now
china fragments
broken chains
a rusted skeleton key
old lace from a doll's dress
custard white,
it strikes out under
the mustard coloured
dry straw bramble.
his tiny peach hands
 distorted blur under
lemon white
the glow of animate
life.
his, the digits of newness
still, over worthless relics
broken ever storyless.
he carefully cleans and collects
them from around the yard,
gives them some meaning
as the metal of his eye sparks
in reflection of all those jagged
misshapes he carefully stows
away tucking them into his wooden box.
he wants you to know, the meaning
he’s found


treasure.

he whispers:
'I have treasure'.

feast of figs

feast of figs

ravens are rare here
I find when I fumble stumble across one
should I be so lucky
I fall onto my knees searching for
the stars, corvus!

I think of the greeks and babylonians
the hydras tail, the raven and adad
the story of apollo's raven
and the feast of figs,
the punishment
of being stuck in the sky, thirsty for all time.
the cost was high, I recoil.

I immediately search for headstones
marble carved eyes
cemeteries
that’s where the stars
live these days
onyx forms
perched and crooning over
named and muted pale stones
under storms of rusty steel wool.

cellar door

cellar door


1.

a bit like foreplay
the creaking hinges
charcoal drawn walls
lines of hips pressed
on its concrete floor.
soda pop of satisfaction
lime fizz hitting the back of
your tongue.

2.

opening chasm
unknown figure
tempestuous moon garden
a bud core
unraveling arousal by touch
orgasmic shades of white green emerging
conceived,
into childish colours
lemon poppy seed cake/ sour opium dream.



3.

the dark spill, silky at first
the coarser contrast
perfected only by
the sexes compatibility fitting just so.


4.

o, the permittable entry.

say it.
say it more.

fistful

fistful

this is not waste
this is not failure
this is not lazy
this is not
what it is not.
it is what it cannot
begin to claim
to name
because,
to know it-
is to
become
that other same.
there is no fame
that is real.
o, gets you to your destination;
where accolades take an inch
and every blame takes us only partway,
dropping us off, dead of night
at some seedy turnpike
with no one to call upon
we walk alone
swollen and bruised.
sloughing off our bark.
we're street fighting, still.
we are fists of potentiality,
of poems weeded,
actually.
smashed out teeth with their roots dangling
an electrical fire, graffiti orange,
speaking in tongues from birth on.
they are still
born.
the hypocritical
bureaucracies
making lumber
out of the numbers.
but we're fists of trees,
every ring, is
every marriage,
line after line
there is no escaping
what we are forever loyal to,
how can we leave, when it's-
how can we stay?
Where is there worth going,
beyond this fistful of rings,
goldening, goldening, us
like a fistful of summer ash.
where we are really
worth more than our
weightlessness,
and then some
against that hardening mass.


dreamscape

dreamscape


1.
how do you give back the gift of your reinvention? when the invention was somebody elses intentions. 'no thanks.. (it comes, frail as bird bones...) no thanks...' (hollow unfulfilled shells, crumpling like a tinfoil cloud aborting foreign yolk...)



2.
I found a crow who had fallen dead beside the road. wings still spread like a compass sure of its way.
it was laying over the gutter grate and the way the water moved around
the current of its black without sound, was a sign.
symbolic of what startles us out of that hazy sleep, of what we have not begun to touch on.
but somehow carry it in the backs of our minds,
without a discernable form.

3.
what is worse than crow death?
how rare and unjust...

to have in your hands, that drenched sour air
in that flight of death.

drained of colour; the vacancy of black marble eyes, lifelessly looking squarely into life.
just one last swell of wakeful breath...

I have a murder in my breast.
I have a murder waiting to soar
through this soreness.

 let me plummet,
let me dagger into earthbound air until I burst blood red
as a thousand, onto that field of jet black flowers.

honey/comb

honey/comb‎

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6/cross
sting/
anaphylactic shock/
the walls are your throat/
closing in/
on the words you're strangling to say/
the clinical tone/
is fevered flesh/
clammy skin/
petals wilting in/
the ooze of a neglected/
vase/
meant well/
1,2,3,4,5,6/cross
you're still here/
your voice a canvernous echoing/
no one hears/
1,2,3,4,5,6/cross
you said I do/
and he said it too/
1,2,3,4,5,6/cross
the silence is here, you greet it well now/
invite it in your door/
you lock the honey in the hive/

inaudible

inaudible

if only the hand
could keep pace with the mind;
it cannot.

I hold a pen
translating tough lines

it reneges
reneges

and falls behind like a fumbling drunk
following me home from a bar,

like a bereft dog tracing train tracks.

wires spill from their ears, everything becomes
untranslatable, inaudible files that keep looping.

I am their every mother/
they are my dead father.

without sense
I cannot run this yard,
or the next.

dust to dust

dust to dust

in the end
we will be some
eerie winter wood.
standing limbless, alone
in crooked rows.

this insistent curse/
moths flying to the cobbed light
of our thin and papery mouths,
screeching poetry
to whoever will listen!

heartland

heartland



in the deep arterial cracks
through the yellow green meadow

crystal water loudly rushes
in a facetted smash

carving through thick slides
of burnt orange clay bed.

the stink of decaying flesh, tufts of caramel fur
slipping down nude bones of wild deer that became trapped there

now molded into the land.

the water snaking through, hissing without pause

past root exposures and weighted puddles. you can hardly
help yourself from wanting to reach in

and massage the exposed heart here, like a cardiologist does
in an effort to revive,

the feeling of that soft gelatin smooth organ/
blubbery like whale skin.

its hot red/rhythmic muscle,
the obstacle course that sustains simple life.