On Recursive ThoughtsThis curve of bone no more than
a whitened hive. Inside,
legs, jointed. How these feet catch
and scratch and cling,
a claw in each synapse,
a voice for each and every touch.
A why and why again.
A gauze of wings, held up,
a gauze before my eyes, a misted world,
those stick-dry veins blurred and close.
Somewhere the scent of venom,
the sharpness caught behind my skull.
Each needle-sting a thought and thought again,
a layering up, another string of words,
another cascade of loosened thoughts, a buzz
of voices with their tired whys.
One day I may open this hive-mouth
and watch the exodus go by. On Recursive Thoughtsin Writing
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Continental DriftI suppose you call this time fall.
It’s always autumn to me. Your alien mind
likes to speak in a distorted tongue.
And when we see the spinning leaves
drifting down an eggshell sky
I catch oak, and your hands are empty.
There half the houses stand empty,
you say as you watch rain fall.
There the world is bigger than the sky,
with room for my restless mind.
I know you pine for maple leaves,
for bittersweet syrup on your tongue.
The words are waiting to leave your tongue.
This land is small and your heart is empty.
That’s why everyone ups and leaves.
This place is paradise after the fall,
There you can be naked. No one would mind,
no one would see you bare yourself to the sky.
Through the window is my perfect sky,
the places that come easy to my tongue,
If we left maybe no one would mind
but me, I say. But if your land is empty
who would catch me in your wondrous fall?
If your land is perfect, wha Continental Drift
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Two Poems of DrowningI write to be obscure(d).
The depths will catch me like a web,
like your depths, out of reach,
while our fingers like weed in a stream
reach with the current,
flowing north when we should point south.
Even the crispest, clearest of days
will not awaken you.
Autumn sun through autumn leaves
will not reach us all.
What words could reach you?
An embryo settled in silt,
your womb-bed a winter lake,
unconscious as glacial drift.
Your womb-mates are fish.
Stygian things, eyes like stones,
mouths open in soft surprise
at what sank in their realm.
The solitude of death must be beyond compare,
all ruin at an end, all ruin beginning, Two Poems of Drowning
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Something of BreathingWho cares
about your arms,
elbows and knees,
cartilage screaming, worn
down to ghost slivers, lodging
there in your joints? Even
this silence has a hiss to it.
Even the air presses down, soft,
a pillow on your mouth.
Asphyxiation happens slowly,
breath by breath, when you
are alone. Who cares? This
is not about connection.
You are not elastic. You will
take in each swallow of air,
day by day. You will move,
spider-limbed, exoskeleton imagined
in bands. You could make a cage
to keep your wrists, your fingers,
to hold your neck a column, to make
a statue to hold your lungs. You should
make something gold, soft, curved claws
to keep you rigid, s Something of Breathingin Writing
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On a Two Year Old`s SurgeryI.
The waiting time. This
is the waiting time. Floors walked.
Eyes blank.
Everything is a constellation.
The sky is blanked out by light,
but ecosystems grow on flat roofs,
echoing the stars we cannot see.
Lichen is creeping over,
making stone of asphalt, and
in moss, there is life.
We will not speak of death.
The anaesthetic was a soft and sudden thing,
a falling, not a going under.
You fell in my arms, a heavy thing.
And while you sleep, we wait.
And we wait, and think of nothing,
our minds turned from the men with tools.
We think of the ones who cared,
who started it all. Of the peaks
of windows and steeples and trees.
Of how wide and flat is a linoleum floor,
and how, while we are at sea,
we are anchored still by you.
Somewhere near it is snowing.
It is snowing at home, but
here are clear skies.
An omen. An omen, we chant.
We turn everything to good and
roll back to bad. The undertow is vicious.
Our thoughts move like waves,
retracting, catching up new things,
tumbling them, On a Two Year Old`s Surgery
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Bone House, II am an ossuary, ban-hus,
and on the way, no wonder,
no alchemy for my audience,
no wæter wearð to bane.
There are no changes here.
My fingers are spindles,
dry knots, something stacked
inside and left to curl. My spine
a knotted road, metatarsals splayed
as dry mountain ridges, as
leading grounds for pilgrims,
flint-hearts who won't pray for peace,
but only for increase and more time.
They will carve out the relics I hold
in slow, slow chips, and in doing
effect a slow Anschluß of my mind.
When they're gone my walls will weaken.
Only then. And on the way, a wonder
while bone becomes water,
and an eorðscræf I will be. Bone House, I
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StungYou were not a sentinel in the empty air,
a spy-drone dropped by an enemy force.
Just a furious sound. A sense of outrage
caught and unseen, all your anger focussed
in one sharp sting. A stab, a thought of pain –
and then you were gone. Autumn sunshine,
conkers gathered in my hands,
splitting from their skins. Gold and green
and the sky a platter of blue. My heart
rising into my scalp, my senses narrowing.
Nothing but a drum, and a thought of getting home,
and then giving in to gravity, grasping the ground.
Perhaps you made sirens sing to skim my ears,
perhaps wove a gauze to cover my eyes.
Perhaps you hardened wax about Stung
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Sta.sh
. I'm going to send you an invite for my new group.