Wool

Wool

Hush now darling,
be very quiet, tread lightly.

Always remember,
this is an ever forgiving place:

you stand not with the judgment of flesh and silicone
but among the dreaming souls in cedars.

Chives with their pom poms, confetti coloured poppies
and glowing buttercup faces

scatter wildly,
jut up across the grassy floor.

There is no mad rush to leave this place,

as the chalk coloured leaves of arbutuses
fall like seconds from a clock,

and the fleeting strawberry red hills
hush you to sleep.

You hold reprieve here,
the universe grants some moment’s escape.

The autumnal path beneath your back turns to a soft
umber wool-

you pull it over your eyes to try and forget your role in this the
waywardly stitched world.

Nebulae

Nebulae


Star eyed child.
Each day, you resurrect the sun

it rises under your nectar thumb,

copper to yellow
it is you who brings the green, so on.

Star dusted son
with your childish sigh vivaciously veiling steel stained sky.
You blare insightful poems
with your laughter.

I imagine you- a wolf, blowing down
the blanched paper boxes containing all the lives that others lead.

You, dear young child nation
you are opaque clouds, interstellar gas, you are mindful; full of mind.

You are wordless numbered equations waiting to be worked from within.

You’re figures of future answers, collecting like flowering things,
impregnating the air with your pollen.

You’re calculated and yet amending as you go;
your meaning is expanding still.

You hold questions like torches, hold questions like
the fire itself.

I imagine you all as nebulae

explosions of reactions and actions and gem
light pours so simply, from your every pore.

Lust

Lust

I don't believe
in censorship,
I choose to see it all
and by default I allow myself to feel it all.
We must each allow this
in order to move forth
stepping onto a new path
we must step out of the circle that is history
in order to truly stop this repetition
of hatred,

of bullying, of segregation,
of prejudice, of intolerance, of ignorance,
of cruelty, of crimes against the natural order, of narcissism, of greed, of baseless wars,
of fear minus love.
Of fear minus love.
Of fear minus love.
It's all so plain to see, so why can't you see us?
I choose to see it all as it is, for what it is.

And in this
there are
still sharp strands of light
caught in clear crystal;

snapshots of beauty almost too grand to imagine
anylonger
like some far away dream we don't deserve,
and yet they're there-
as fragile as enigmatic petals to the bruising touch,
beyond our disillusions and hysterics
there are corners to our surprise-
left, untouched.
And here we dwell in the disease filled filth
of our basking,
growing as large as our ego's
as we try to consume the world whole
in unison we dislocate
our distorted and monstrous jaws in one massive bite power
we gnaw it away, burp out the cries,
excrete the destruction.
We're the human machine, can't you all see?
We're just living out our final days
in grandeur,
we bought into
lust,
from the super mass chained
megacorps that imprisoned us with their conveniences,
chaining our wanting mouths
to our transmogrified bellies.
We live now in the porous and cold
concrete skyline
we traded country windows, daisy crowns and bird watching
for plasma screens, porno and smart phones.
We walk under the shadowy figure of a man called capitalism.
We sold him our soul, our hearts, our bodies
our hope, and we took the money and ran, thinking we were made!
And now we're addicted to the toxic smog
of our seductive
and destructive desires,
of fear minus love.
Of fear minus love.
Of fear minus love.
We're all lost, in lust.

Cobalt

Cobalt




Blue.

Blue,
blue,
blue,
blue-

periwinkle,
cobalt,
cornflower,
turquoise- numb,

cool,
arid,
gem,
iris,

the hurt water- is,
the sweet dripping hands full- are,
the pith- is, the bruised petals- are,

the iridescent wing is- blue.

Blue,
blue,
blue,
blue.

The dead heart on ice- is,
the veins in her forearm- are,


the mind like Neptune- is,
the indefinable magic- like a cosmic screen,
behind the universal static is- blue.

Stones & Star Stuff

Stones,
and their fixed ways
carry no superficiality
like we do-
they are elementary.
When we wear rings made of them
our digits become submissive lovers
of the ancient world,
we become stone
silent,
mouthing mutable shapes
porous, facetted or polished smooth-
our eyes like medusa
change you with a glance.
Goldstone, garnet, citrine, peridot, tigers eye-
we become closer to actuality-
to finality,
and immortality too,
we become the ghostly negative shape
like smoke
we furl and curl seductively around
the universe herself.

[present] participle [past]

[present] participle [past]


Whatever you do
Don’t write about me-

us-

like we are participle things
fleshing out the fleshable

and discarding the rest

we fight with adjectives used to describe the state
of our verb

we slide in and out
between the lines

we’re decks of cards
fifty two to a pack

nearly an hour to be
what it is that we’re meant to be?

Each card has a number
and a character to fulfill

a word for each,
and each-

participle that’s- yet.

Melon field

Melon field


I needed to rinse
this of me

this immense sorrow
that I’d been carrying.

It was there
in the dewy pastel melons

under a molten summer sun
over the crackle art of dried mud

after I’d swum
dripping wet

I’d wandered here
wringing myself over the melons

my hair, my eyelashes too

I became dew,

watched sorrow evaporate
into a fine vapour

watched it shimmer
on the wings of red dragon flies
fluttering past

like a susurrus of lovely autumn leaves.

What is left after all the hoopla of rhetoric's dissolve

What is left after all the hoopla of rhetoric’s dissolve


{Take me out of myself,
breathe me
into something that is closer to nothing-
a shape for which nothing can pretend it is everything,
because- it is.}


We sat out
in the long grass

the dandelion seeds
in their pappus’s

like white silky feathered stars
carried,

and tangled in the sea
of gilding green
blades

that moved thick
in rushed currents of breeze, like seaweed-

they’d tangle under the weighted air of salt or water
and eventually they’d fall and settle down,

jut- yellow sunny flowers
coined as weeds.

We’d stay here and watch
the supposition of natural things moving along in perfect procession.

And I envied the way you see,
even in the stark blue daylight

you could trace the outlines
of stars and their constellations

and I almost believed
that I could see them too-

under that perfect veil of powder blue.

The river at the bottom of the farm
like green amethyst

drew from memory, its way
to the glittery sea-

the same way I used to map my way from this modern mess,
always to you.

I remember the day before you left,
you kissed me

in that field we loved.
You kissed me with such urgency

like your mouth was a slip-knot of flesh,
and my willingness to lose myself, surprised you.

You untied my corset lips,
and I felt the rhetoric’s dissolve from my tongue,

I watched the exodus of people moving along in their usual way,
and I felt the insignificance of social contracts, as they faded to vellum.

I felt just how far into the universe
you meant to go

that day,

and how those moments moved
without a word
so quietly

and so impossibly slow-
just to watch you go.