Epitaph

Could today be the day

when I reach into my soul

and pull out a live one?

‘Nay,’ rang the soil

thudding down.

//ends

tightly wound

             like clockwork

like clockwork they asked

they asked me the way

the way to do things

to do things like clockwork

like clockwork they asked

they asked me the way

the way to do things

to do things like clockwork

like clockwork they asked

they asked me the way

the way to do things

to do things like clockwork

like clockwork they askedlike clockwork they asked

they asked me the way

the way to do things

to do things like clockwork

like clockwork they asked

they asked me the way

the way to do things

to do things like clockwork

like clockwork

//ends

School

taught me
the sensible ways to dress, spell, add, write
the sensible ways to research, play, eat, climb
the sensible ways to kiss, laugh, love, hit, colour
the sensible ways to ride the bus

forgot to teach me
no sensible way to contentment

//ends

Representation

I wrote a little something last night
You read it before I woke
Asked for clarification
Written large, you did not like it
I made a small gesture
You misread

That brings us to now
In limbo
In a circle


//ends

Portrait of a person who washers

In my mid twenties
I began engraving my name
Ornately around
Three-quarter inch washers

On lonely nights
I open unattended equipment
Machinery and constructions
In deserted public places
Install a washer
Close it up and move on

After nearly two-thousand washers
I decided to engrave my phone number too
No one calls

//ends

i & ii

i

________________________________________

                                    f
e                                   r
n            wbe
i
k                               de
a                               om
________________________________________

ewbe                    fde
nika                    rom
________________________________________

newbe  fde
  ika  rom
________________________________________

newbe   de
  ika  from
________________________________________

newbde
  ikeafrom
________________________________________

new bde
  ikea
      from
________________________________________

new bed
      ikea
  from
________________________________________

new bed
        fromikea 
________________________________________
 
new bed from ikea

ii


Judging people
in return
at Ikea.

//ends

new things

new things
like a stick
in the strawberry mudcake

//ends

untitled

in the morning
the litter of kittens

loved

by too many
too little hands

was gone

//ends

gleaned

'my pants' rhymes with elephants

my head is bigger inside

our cat is restrained in company

your laces are untied

the size of a square is ambiguous

you will sit opposite me

break the silence and pay for it

the answer to much is brie

stuck on the fifteenth floor is a myth

true randomness hides from the mind

the dead of winter will rise soon enough

what you need is a tape to rewind

deep in an owl is a shadow of a mouse

a gunshot rings in the night

one thousand tonnes of rice was required

pressed for answers I darked a lit light

//ends

spring loaded

the thing that mostly happened
was a night on the town
and beer and pasta and
smokey
late night
deep eyed
guard-dropping
hand-standing
twisted polished words
and look at me
and don’t look now

what happened a little bit
was the omission of
the actual location of
your sinister
subtly betrothed
heart


//ends

Standing at attention

You’re looking straight at me now
With sudden complete comprehension
Of what I’m doing

The days are gone

When I could point over your shoulder and do
As I pleased

I am the kind of person who develops
A self-propelling panopticon and
Installs it
In their home

Shows it off to others and
Inserts them in its gaze

The key design feature is the limited battery
Malfunctions horribly in the thirteenth hour
Reliably shuts down for four hours a day

This is a relatively minor reprieve
On reboot, it scans the environment and
Infers solidly from limited data

I’m taking a photo of you
And you’re winking back

//ends

Domestic

we’d been out somewhere and
sophia lurked around the house somewhere
I was in the kitchen sink
obliterating the labels from jars
glumly hearkening the hollow promise
of a summer of preserves
scraping and scratching and tearing
catching dull thoughts crossing my mind
in the dark window refusing to represent
a genuine portal


//ends

the dreams that abound in a city in spring

from the tram I dismounted
on the street there we met
on the banks of the river
I took all I could get

just a smile in your eye
and the sun on your crown
some murmured observance
a flight across town

a pool and a party
a decade, a wink
a hipness and hapless
an unreturned link

from a phone in circus
a tear rolling down
and hopeless and hopeless
and hopeless, that clown


//ends

ten lines

crossing the bad lands from
one line to the next
with one hand
and a sweet heart
and a weak force directing

the next line leads the whole way
to the point of exhaustion
wallowing, mellowing, shuddering
halt

//ends

COMPLETE: Month of Poetry 2013

An index of my Month of Poetry 2013 output. A poem a day for 31 days.

1	Knowing so little of what is unknown
2	Extensible
3	atomic
4	The stairs in the corner, or the party that ate
5	I have heard this before
6	Happy new ear
7	hypothetically destroying the language
8	teenage assembly
9	liminal
10	having you felt this one
11	you could be perfect but soon I’ll hate you
12	Two then one
13	three long filled hours
14	not just
15	as you were
16	untitled limerick
17	untitled
18	Hank’s thanks
19	Contingency
20	Mitch
21	eggs, flour, light-bulbs
22	The pea in the museum
23	marred with children
24	Plumbing the unnamed eddies
25	The Copernican Revolution
26	found poem
27	sunrise
28	Fragment
29	the banality of angry things roar
30	not thinking alone
31	untouched

See also COMPLETE: Month of Poetry 2012.

untouched

every comfort i took from you
left questions swirling flooding too
engulfed in madness painted blue
getting bearings from off the chart
imprecise measures to set it right
anticlimactic rhythmic heart
counts the sadnesses into the night

endlessness that i took from you
nearly swallowed departures too
darling creatures drastic in blue
inhabited lucid moments numbered
nightly excursions to sacred space
gently warmed as others slumbered
seeing sadness in solace’s face

frustrated tears i took from you
orphaned thoughts once collected too
rummaging through the darkest blue
listing a memory’s catalogue
opening files untouched in years
reaching entries in a sullen fog
now cutting off fears with the blankest tears

//ends

not thinking alone

You're watching me standing here
at some sort of crossroads
wondering whether it is an abstract turn
or my heart in a mortar that will win the day.

So, I hand you a pestle and encourage you to tell me what I’m thinking.

You say:
You’re thinking about all the decisions
you’ve made before this one 
how they’ve grabbed the very thread of life 
and torn off at some tangent 
eventually unravelling to a point
ensuring the entire catastrophe 
continues to resemble your life.

You say:
You’re thinking about how soon enough,
the thread passes again through your grasp 
always making you wary but hopeful 
this next decision will be the one 
will imbue meaningful control.

You say:
But you’ve decided no more
never again will you fall for that
but as I say this 
it dawns on you
that’s just as ineffectual as anything else. 
You think the decisions flee. 
You think. The decisions flee.

I take the pestle back
from you and gesture at the
unscathed heart in the mortar.

I say:
You’re way off-line.

I say:
I’m not thinking that about 
regret and absurdity and 
the marvellous devious things 
we are confronted with when we’re alone.

I say:
Instead I’m thinking about 
how satisfactory I continue 
to find this arrangement 
whereby you go out into the world 
and poke it 
and prod it
and tell it where it hurts 
and laugh in its face
while I go about
my little observations 
and precise manipulations
and then we come back here 
time and time again 
where we find something that helps
it turn around 
and roll over
the very next day.

//ends

the banality of angry things roar

today was a long day
after a long weekend
the house fell to pieces
while we rested on our laurels

you won’t hold still
and let me get a good look at you
you are so full of will and joy
I am exhausted

too much so to know
whether that’s depleted
or plain old tired

nodding off
at the sink
and on the floor
in a game of
angry things roar and then everyone runs away and then by some mysterious calculus there’s either a daring rescue or a retaliation, but usually more angry roaring and repeat,
occasional developmental coda

obliged to carry on, and sublimely
happy to carry on but
wondering all the same about
what might become of the world
if even one of these thoughts was
given space to fledge.

what if [finitude]
and my idea generator gets [sick of]
the considerable lack of [follow-up]?

all I get is a kid
who doesn’t need me any more
and a pitiful stream of
de-contextualised snapshots

I am exhausted
and rewarded
with the thought
that all I can think
is banal
thought
is banal
with
or without
line breaks

//ends

Fragment

Today
“whatever is important”
began as:
how many girls names were
the titles of songs
I knew the lyrics to?

Later
we drove past a
garage sale that was
hot with pink.

Fabric and plastic in
eye-catching concentrations.

A tween bower of transition.

//ends

sunrise

on a day when I feel
like a role
like a machine
like a one-dimensional man
you make me feel
like a symbiont
like a hero
like a worthwhile heart and mind

//ends