au/tumn

au/tumn

the moment of awe

the moment of awe

it hit me the other night

when I was driving [car wrecked thoughts]

]headlights]brake lights[crumple of foil[and inflation]

and a sudden deluge of yellow came 

at me like lightning

from the trees

sudden sense/awoken

and I remembered the gravity of the leaves

and how that was it [physics]magic]math]math]math]

it wasn’t the action of falling

but of the air in between [pushing up]what is coming down]

[spin]span[spun]

it was the gravity

that is it

the awe is in the gravity

the spectral visualization of gravity

autumn, that’s where my loves lies

it is autumn, always had been, autumn.

I remember now

how my heart hurt this year

I could have died

I could have died

like this autumn was so far in front of me

that I grew numb and I grew cold

and I forgot the aw of autumn

and how without autumn 

I would cease to be

and how one year in autumn I will

cease to be

because that is where I want to fall, you see

that is where I want the fall to be.

helium

helium

who : under the chipped wall paint : soared in the wall spaces : grew cobbed in platinum gauze : anew : a new : dream caught : feather light : light feathers : tethers time : ties her helium hours to his wrist : clambered to her : always clambered to her : throughout the interchange of hands : that empty bed : by the dead hour : calls her to go home : what house : what roof with smoke signal : stigma and, honestly : duty : down the winding yellow lined asphalt : moth plumed : and his heart from the hook is hung : what wait : it dissolves her as sugar in water : particles smash and rearrange : what arrangement has been : all along : clay forms : and the cracks of earth quaking : quickening what form : was formidable : sink or be sunken : all is a choice : all is amounting : is always full and emptying over the brim : what will you do : what will you do : with what little time you are owed : this : this : or that : that : and the green house is neglected : is neglecting : light perishes what pauses : frosts : fray : worn out by their dusts : the fraying of other days : because he can’t have her in the end : and there : in the ionosphere : the helium hours are quickly dark and spent :

bees and bombs

bees and bombs

he says that he thinks he’ll stay : in my ever tumult : my ever storm : that it would be : always : and the same : that one should believe in this potential alchemy : pots of copper of bronze of brass of gold of silver boiling down and purifying strange essence : that it has shape shifted from mine into ours : that he could ride every swell : shock : every swirl : every hurt : with both fear and love constants : that he would do it so well : better than ever before : that I will see : that time will tell : with those star bangled currents of ours : that we might just as well be the bees and bombs : and that still : there : is a thickness to it out there : where something unknown to us : knows it’s us : and completely rewrites us : stirs : a shocking static to touch and touch on : and how it is moving at a faster rate : than my heart is letting down : and all is celestial fuzz compared to his sudden and long ribboned love : 

sugar, darling

s

ugar, darling

sugar hall/

silver gelatin/

a bath full of orange fish

[what words within words]

]I could no longer write/could no longer write

with anything but instinct[

walls tiled with zinc clouds

sense of smell/erased almost entirely

sterile and above that scentless divider

sweaty knots of hair, another room

and the musk of rotting lives, and flies

and things carrying on in some usual rhythm

and pink peppercorns spilled to the rustic wood

and rose watered hips, lemon verbena lips

and dried sprigs of lavender tucked inside of telling pages

telling him she’s leaving him/but he doesn’t notice her/or the writing

telling/and dirt from wandered soles in the corners

dog eared with frozen shards of other time

and a section where the paint peels ventricular red or blue

and there are visible claw marks, a beast

in the belly of a house/a cold shouldered house.

] [

]how is now?

how’s a slice

a small sliver

a rind of

all that we

can ever be

while hiding in

a small green

book.[

the spark

ice holds ages

they say not to hang yourself 

that impressions of you melt into that autumn flood

and I am waiting for you/unbearable

in the coldest room of a strange modern building

with neon white lights that flicker like the moth

my shape heads without resistance like a berg in the sea

towards your future

I am the dormancy 

the disease 

the kept hour of forgettable youth

the beautiful threat of children

and beneath particle fever I am the dust of a thousand 
thousand scientists collecting in your cup of tomorrow’s dreams

enough to fill, so I say

how many times have I come now

how many madnesses will cradle genius

how far into nothing does the heart dive burning many ages

Robert D. G. Auchterlonie

Robert D. G. Auchterlonie




their whispers carried into the gossamer

spun then abandoned by death’s default

caught in the bleached gold

of last year’s late summer cornfield

that are now hollowed out flutes

playing with the furious winter air,

crystal ice collects, slower than we see,

shatters the brittle air of its

sad songs

faithful to the faithless wanderers

drifting somewhere between two meanings

between there and their

between two Robert’s

and neither is him

both with soil from different countries

stuck in the patterned print, clung to the bottoms of their soles

the precise accent, one of a kind, can never be recreated in a crowd

the phone rings out from the grave

before it ever happens, the sweet souring music stops, the voice.

the birds soar into one great swell of grey breath, the last you see,

rushing out into the oak

the curtain falls into a cascade of crystal faceted whiteout

the world, a vortex of rainbow, uncoloured- sparkles, sterling.

housed away from time, never so free as when we are first separate

a woman rinsed away from water

and its liquid to solid sublimation, another sense completely otherly,

what bothers, is, that I cannot remember where I placed you

like a key lost to the monotony of routine

your brass box was lost to the grass, to sameness

and the forgetfulness of seasons turning, turning

like a colour wheel, always out,

I became distracted, I forgot what if anything

the muteness of the dead, like?

was it flowers placed over your corroded name?

an ear cupped to the soil, to hear the faintness

of your story there, like a sense memory

instinct draws my fingers to my nose to smell the

orange petals of summer flowers

that were growing here when we placed you,

who knows where, into a sea

of sameness, of great neon green,

but there are always two meanings for one place,

the one we always know, is second nature, and the other forgotten.

and, there are those that want to teach me to hate vicariously, you,

you could be a bad man,

I know that now, but I soon forget,

when I remember your laugh, and how you held a pen.

rye

rye

where has your desire gone?

into the wilds of willow brows
combing long winded hair
spiral stitched
emerald riven
some spectral enclave
tiny verbal rifts
rafting you, rafting them, against a sea's current
farther out from your humanity.
epilogue
rolls with the marbles distorting what's underneath.
you stay awake for weeks
nothing tells you small everythings
time makes little sense,

 

only the crows feet tell you where you're going to.

a night bird with transparent black eyes
a ring of yellow, too bright
talks you down

You can't help but to listen.

you are not yourself
you have never met, this you.

small joys/no joy
tree frogs, dusted with bronze
so small they linger among the great swathes of thick squash leaves

reminds you
of how premature newborns in mighty grandfatherly palms are held,

how future is held as a starting point.

rye seeds, scatter
makes a slinking sound as they disappear
a corridor of burnt brown bramble
leads you off, to where you take no hands.