cloud

V.71

Waiting to explain the contrast
between the blue of the night sky
whose soft storm tufts sail past the star
and the crisp orange of my lamp

and it’s now midnight exactly.
Trying to avoid the back pain,
I describe the warm oranges
and defined black shadows against

the world outside which is not crisp
and rarely defined. Then, onset
of paranoia regarding
that star. It slipped into the text

with no fanfare, but its crisp haze
zeroes in like the silence when
almost deafened after a bang.
It’s watching me, from across space.

Maybe it’s trying to warn me.
The specifics of range and tone
doubtless contain enough data
just to fix this pain and be done.

On the shores of the white star, sand
pours and dreams around blank oceans –
a lone deckchair waits for me there
and a coconut with a straw

V.49

We are not built to think of space
of true beginnings and endings
when the book becomes less and more
when cups and paths and horses fall

off the registry of items –
yet we do and it brings a break
in thought to the page. The blue roar
of water as I’m arriving

at work, draws back concepts like a
curtain / The sun on the water
is scintillating like a proud
child. Light blue eyes encapsulate

me and the red waters rise. Rain
on the air after a storm, rain’s
ghost captures small insects on its
silk. Far off a head of thunder

attempts to drag itself out of
the blue. As I’m leaving work, I
become tangled in the silver
linings. The car is hot, I put

Takk by Sigur Rós into the
CD slot and feel antiquate.
The end of things is far from me
and the cool breeze. The sun blinking

V.46

I sit and play around with you
like a dolphin enjoying the
water round a quiet ship – ice
soon takes the water and I leave.

A buttercup has been crushed here
all its petals are gone. I want
to find the key to unlock you –
not to know you, just to see a

smile break. Then a dog wanders up
oh holy dog. Accomplishes
with presence what I had failed at
attempting to stand on my head!

Sophie the dog gets scratched and I
see George Trakl’s pastoral field
scattered with corpses and blue mist
over the nebulae of grass

evaporate under our field
borrowed here on Hampstead Heath, sun
is altered and wizened by the
clouds that pile like a rock slide.

The entire sky is the open eye
of god, examining us
up close. And so few conclusions
are drawn. The eye begins to close

Pareidolia

The sky was the first prose poem. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that someone sent us a message. The sun hung behind the clouds so that I could see it perfectly without pain, this vibrant circle-source of light that haloed the atmosphere. And a dark cloud passed in front that was shaped like an eye, so the pupil of god watched me without judgement, and I closed my eyes and two perfectly synchronised tears fell from them, and this sky-gaze watched as I drove towards my house. Then the yet darker part of this cloud passed in front, and obscured the sun. But I knew then that the sun would appear again when the cloud passed. And of course this was a beautiful thing to know. I drove home and parked and listened to the rest of Jon Hopkin’s album and felt somewhat calm despite the other tears which remained constantly ready to fall.

Maybe this was an instance of spirituality, the ancient eldritch bare-experience of things which is felt sometimes in the night, like a kind of dark squid that bumps up against your soul on the astral plane, its eye wide and black and all-seeing, something to be borne with gritted teeth ’til we can absorb ourselves once more in tasks and life with those whom we work to love. You can try to ignore what latent symbolism you notice in the big fluffy sunofaguns that just play in the sky. You can try.