star

V.126 To work//and back

The Past is a Dream – it recurs
exactly as thoughts from a dream
as droplets from a cracked clay vase
in a forgotten desert spring –

drips from a rusted waterwheel
in a green abandoned valley.
Pigeons courting on a warehouse
in the golden morning let see

the past through this hectic event –
Always bowing, no matter why –
bowing to each other – honour
of one pigeon to another//

Isn’t it mad how supernovas
burn in incredible vibrance
and leave civilisations there
in their path like a residue

All the material on streets
of red brick trentes glorieuses
is the debris from a power –
Strange things happen to the star corpse

I make tracks out from the city
and hear fireworks in the cool dusk.
Ribs of light. Le Petit Prince walks
alongside me with his flower

Ships and Stars IV – Alter

Precisely seven suns fall into a bright studded ring and orbit in a long dance. Some loner catapults through the bullseye – its a hard trick but you have to impress all the space lovers some bright way –

why not that? Or gain some time by close orbit to the black. They said you were too old – well how about now, years in days. If you cut a black hole clean into two it behaves like a worm and grows thick and full

again. My world is half sea and half mirrors – it is hard to notice as it barrels around you, floating darkness unless for one small moment you notice the eye open, as it reflects my home sun

and it simply stumps gazers as they scrabble to note it – but by then the new star’s gone. My star is so bright you must wear sunglasses in the dark. My star is sentient – and sings, we note, one long, clear, beam

V.73

Above the black wool of the clouds
zoom out. Towards the star’s viewpoint
and see, the landscape draped in blue.
A few blankets to help it chill.

That weight of the atmosphere helps
the city to relax. That sift
of wind down the blocked up chimney,
over the rooves’ angles and plains.

The heavy sift of planet size
shifts in the air’s fabric and tress,
the definitional smoothing,
the abstract results of great mass.

The whole hill that house is built on
rests on a plug of congealed land
in the throat of a giant. How
easy it is to see that now…

Whose teeth ring it like oak and ash
trees in the shifting darknesses.
If I were down there I would fret
the whole thing could be swallowed up

with the slightest movement. How quaint.
The giant has been dead for years.
I would worry about that other
threat, the one creeping behind stars

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

Dark Dogs in the Morning

The darkness fell onto me like a fever
stirring – stripping and dressing in the cold
I picked up my phone, and wiped breath from it.
Weak coffee. I left the house, slid doors,
the dogs pressed against me – flickering
buzzing, sparking – something was up
but I didn’t know what.
            I set off

seeing the shoals of mist swim
in morning dark where day is forgotten
and the choral synthesiser drone of stars
shook me, made me shiver – I drowned it out
with my headphones. Walked out
with my pathetic torch across
the wood and farm-land in the mould black
morning – marvelling at the absolute lack
of magic, there in the dust-clump wood.
I glanced around me, saw nothing
thought ‘but wolves, but wild boars’
I smiled, took a fast pace down
the bend to the flood-plain
where I imagine the flesh-fade
of dawn began to apply itself to night

***

Later on return – I left tracks
in the forest frost grass from the mansion
to the servant’s quarter –
my breath was even more eager than I
to get to the house, it ran ahead
but stopped suddenly – a dead deer
half, half-eaten, eyes open
as the ground is open to the falling
sat there, on the cold patio.
Poachers only want the hind-half
I later learned – I felt the cold fur
brush past, long hair of the black dog –
thought; you were excited for your find
I left you behind. I’m sorry.
She took the skull between her teeth
and cracked it. From the cavity,
the night came flowing back…

Two Poems

Sillhouette

The sun makes silent
all the small planets
of inner orbits
and we only hear –
when they pass in front;

The stars have planets
which tug the belly
of their nuclear
mass explosion – soft
but more than enough;

In the lower tones,
of the dawn rise – there
the small star, has grace
for one still moment –
in the day soon lost;

The world compels us.
We are charred by void
when its emptiness
eclipses ours – but
soft glow the small stars.

Memory of Florida (Helplessness Blues)

What I used to be, and now
what I am, as we drive down
motorways through forest mass
listening closely with my voice
align like an eclipse moon
and the past blooms in present
rapture – I love this album

Old as I get, I will not
forget the forest drifting
drowsily past the window
this rain sifting tambourine –
and damp strung up on song lines
for this perfect alignment
in time and of void cultus

Zodiac

I

Your week this week will go off
like a rotten egg. Such is life.
This fragment of a year will crack
and spill all over you, achieve

new heights of boredom and disgust.
Why? Do you ask why the fungus
grows at the tree’s base and grows
rotten? Come on. Just accept it

like you accept that your eyes
will look where you decide
and not just swing around like
billiard balls in a washing machine.

Next week brings with it new challenges
as exactly the same thing happens
for the hundred and eleventh time.
But this one, this is the one, I can feel it.

II

The stars are spread out in the orrery
like thick yeast extract on toast.
Things are everywhere finding it difficult
to connect. Take Bellatrix

for example. A salty taste on the tongue
just don’t let it touch an open cut.
Inside this emptiness of pain feeling
there is another expanse of tiny stars –

from each new star, we see new constellations
and the red bloom in Orion
is aching to reach them.
Close one eye for a while and things look flat.

There are an endless array of bears in the sky
clouds, atoms, birds, planes, galaxies –
all of these are bears if you look closely.
This week will bring bears.

Continue reading →

A World

Wavecolour

There is a beyond I want –
It sits in the bay – swelling
and parches colour from skies
If it were to flatten – I
would hover in galactic
clearness and whale-scar rolling
through depths of flat darkness

It is a mess of futures
I want to feel weight holding –
not pulling me down, not crass
If I were to dive, would it
help me to feel this soft truth?
All its cruxes, circulate
into my skull sockets, pour

Skycolour

In the original slow
blue-shift on crystal axes
and the cloud-plane’s flat chatter
which gulls inhabit – It strokes
our lives with rotations
so unnoticed – like a spine
holds us, cranks us all onwards

This thing, this vast thing thralls me
with the subtlety of Space
I want to live as slow as
this thing is, the thing itself
as uncaring, swept distance
that it unfolds me into
A greater care, the air itself

Earthcolour

When I stand in the peach-rock
plain – hear cicadas eat sound
and grind my soul off on sand
using just my feet, my flat boots
– I want to hear the pattern
of sun-dry olives falling
of mountains blowing in wind

I want to smell the dry cracks
splitting the earth and the ants’
cacophonous rustling will
The sweat which drops from my brow
– can it birth a cold spring – no
It crackles into the dirt
and a sun bleached toothless skull

Suncolour

Once, the sun was in my urn
buried, half-buried in sand
half in air, then it poured out
and the corona blasted
a hole through me, I smiled clean
I fell and my body spread
in a floating slow dissolve

Light was everywhere – light swam
in oceans of light, pearlesced
in the centre, a headache
a burning, a green cactus,
bee mantra, a pebbled floor
and a pale darting lizard
The gull shadow sweeps within

Starcolour

A fell day, a final drive
Long journeys open cold doors
and out – look upwards – yes
There is the ancient cave wall
where myth crystallises – whites
and all reds and bright far dawns
brim softly with absolutes

They are eyes, palantíri –
Vectors indicate some truth
– whatever, the darkness fades
from a pale light to shimmer –
Orion’s heavy shoulder
It ripples, this fabric lives –
swear it was not known ’til now