cacophony I (november, 2011)

blood and bone
and an age
of skinsoft decay and disease.
the taste of skin
and the foreign fear
of your own body
as something alien

the dreams where
reality doubles
when the mirror
is all of you and more
and you're left
with a tearsoaked clutch of teeth
rampant
in your ransacked, messy halls

sweat finds you awake
still somehow different
older
and made less for it
by the driving divide
of anarchic alien flesh
that fills you all up
when your bitter brain tries
on the real, helpless world

never cold in his life until recently (november, 2011)

though
I'm sure
is the most hateful clause
breaker

and so, you sting it out
undoubted
in the crushing freeze
and cancerous rush
of a cigarette
below freezing

sting the letters out
syllable by syllable
until your fingers turn blue
with ink and frostbite

you treat the silence
as seeds
sow spaces
with craving
and fill up the empty
with the hint of potential

perhaps it's a lie
the comfortable fiction
you gladly glaze
over
tell yourself
that old lie
again and again

all senses become acute
in the crispcrusted moments
of realization
as the slowdown
inches in
and takes it all away

this time
I'm leaving nothing behind

stormchaser (november, 2011)

and I in silent wonder stood
hove as a storm-splayed tree
swaddled
in the black breath of night

"Oh, there you are"
as the line
slid into silver perfection.
quick.
too quickly
for the ember and ash
for the hissing crush
of words forcing their way
down into my lungs

grasp those phrases
snag the cord
with branchflayed hands
hammer the reflection
of light and heartbeats out
into that canopy of clouds

it's there.
just there
in the breakwater crash
the firstflight of birds
returning to other places
and the shatterdrum of ice
lapping at the shores of a lake
like the fiery thought of peace
on the frozen form
of a stormdreary
never-thought-it-would-happen
troubled dream

and even as the cloud passes—
the chaos of a fresh-sewn idea—
the drawing-in dark
whispers back to life
those daylightsaver seconds
when the sky was just the sky
and no embers creaked
in their gyre and gravity
or flickercrack fissured
the simple silence
of a second of a skydrunken night

interspace (october, 2011)

her body tenses.
hold that moment
clear in the golden light
of floorlit beer and memory
and there's music

it's not so poetic as it appears
this isn't a case
of singing spines, rib rhythms
and the tempo of her heart
no
just a song

piece those stitches together
and it's something
about memory and forgetting
time, sadness
and perhaps continuation

claim all those thoughts
as your own
out of the lamplazy windingdown
dripsplattered table times
with their coffeestain thoughts
on old folded napkins
sealed with lipstick smudges
and the remains of the last sip
—the one that near spilled in reaction
to a voice or a look
but solidified
as the drip down the side
to be caught instead
in serviette seconds
at a dimly lit bar—
take it from them
to your booktrodden walkways
and secret altars of failure and fame.
keep it.

she'll remember you
as a quiet and distracted lover
and she'd be right
unless she could hear time sing

memorial hall (september, 2011)

a wall
take a name
transfer the sound and person
to a scratching on paper
and fold it into your pocket

one, two, three steps up
that column, no. just to the right
four or fourscore down
near the bottom, between some longer lists
and it's there
in the safety of distance
far from the unknown others.
take it.

unfold that penstain
into a space
that's a first thought
give that name a life:
birth to a mother and presumably a father
some formative years
probably motivation
choose from:
duty, love, fear
or all of the above.
give that name a life:
fill up those hours
with the hum of a happening.
give that haunting a ghost

the wish of a whisper
hides under the calling of a name
that has forgotten who its person is
while it scratches at the proper nouns
and claws its way out of the substantives

take a name
and unfold it into a person
make the ghost
into a series of memories
and press that paper down
down to your blood and bone
down to your nerves and neurons
down to your syntax and soul

maybe you're the same, after all

attic (may, 2011)

I want to talk about light
that ponderous
pendulum time
when the rays run golden
yes, I'm sure it's sunlight
but it's also
a kiss
suspended in a room
filled with dustbecome cobwebs

listen
you can see the seconds
creep on around photoboxes
in this late attic instant
as we fold down blankets
and lift the dust covers
off of a last summer

turn, smile
eyes
beat
and that, with lips,
is that

open a book
and it will run its fingers
through yours
like so many strands of hair
trapping the blues and greens
and shining out with the colour of time
kept close by the whisperclasp of the cover

it's an invocation
a glimpse into a present
removed only by the different pathways
of neurons and synapses

candle-small
little voices peer into that idea
and fill it up with a symphony
of sneezes and stubbed toes
and etch each panel in the walls
with echoes and heartbeats

we were young once
but this is no lament in the key of grey
young once
just once
but
again and again
we pushed deeper
into our unknown common store
opened that kiss
and each spider-spun second
we rescued from becoming the past
or future

it was a dust filled room
that taught me to love
the secret moments of potential
suspended
in a once
and only once-again
suncluttered memory of light

whitecaps (june, 2011)

sing to me
of summer and spring
rain or cloud to the detriment
of the sun-loving
and I'll say
that the storm-struck waves
were almost like
flakes of fire
on the sea-surface skin of your eyes
beautiful
in the rainstruck windowpane light

and when you're away
I pray for those storms