new directions

for anybody who has stumbled in here – be careful, the gases can be toxic – i’ve moved on to a new space. i am now hedging my bets.

 

return

the once a day blog will return. obviously, when i am standing still. i might move it though. stay tuned.

 

birds of paradise

lilac eruptions move upwards and
i can’t help but think of us. this
is untraceable. like moving backwards
by words in a phrase. on the return leg,
footprints create a different arc. it is at this point
that i realise that the flowers are opening
so quickly that it is frightening. birds of paradise
take flight. we harpoon tiny creatures with
new buds, and cut the stems like shallots.
we sit in front of the vase and cover our tracks.

 

going na(t)ive

i write passive aggressive notes for leftover food
and wonder if writing will do its job. you
have to focus on the writing itself. pork
in the belly of the beast. no sweet. suckled pig
and honey-sweet blossom. deep in the stamen,
the stem changes in each repetition. leaves curl
up around the neck. do we go imported or do we
go native? if you leave for work food is fair game.
rabbits paw at our faces, but i touch yours and
my eyes close like cycles of the moon.

 

balon

a ladder has worn in the thin rubber
skin at the back of your head, like
the walls of a balloon. balon.
who does the baby even belong to?
is the mother the daughter or is the daughter
the sister? laughter echoes louder with each return.
the body is trim, the body is taught to remember
movements just as it recovers the uncovered.
we all pull the hems of our tops
over our baby’s bumps. but baby’s are all bumps.
all of our lines come out in time.

 

englaissement

with your hair like that, your shapes fold out
into lines of flight. not out-folding, they elaborate.
semantically of course that is off the mark.
movement is different to expansion. dispersion
is closer, but with the sound of the word lavender.
Though that isn’t the right kind of softness. And
there’s an oily sweetness there which is probably
important. not cloying though. this is the sweetness
that comes at the back of the mouth, so to speak.
I think of french, or at least of english words
pronounced frenchly. of hard ‘a’s. if englaissement
were a word that might be it. and franchising might seem
a cheap way to get hold of something, but
the hard a at least is germane. in that moment
of engagement, with your hair like that,
as you look at me there is deliverance.

 

egret

i revel in the space between revile and revere.
i file things next to thoughts and take a step
back to take a look at the bookcase. A bookcase
is a thing like any other thing in that it resembles
a number of things. the first is its own reproduction or reflection.
The bookcase, insofar as it believes
that it can believe, does not believe
that it resembles its reflection, as it has a self-sense that cannot be
withdrawn from interiority, enclosure, from shoulders
arching around the frame of a torso, and the resultant hollow
on the reverse side. flatpacked, a body is a body, but a shelf
has more to it than that. taking a phrase at face value,
old flames take to a fence and say: now who’s old!
we walk out to the yard and lift our palms to the heat, but know
that tomorrow this will seem bad. tomorrow, our hands will
still ache with cold and the neighbours will be out for blood.

Letting down the shutters, the cold air seeps from our mouths
and we huddle in the corner of the room,
now fools, drowning in regret. we stew an ibis
and take to the table, as egrets fly past.

 

landscape

with rain in wait, sun drenches the tree,
it’s foreign needles hang with rust highlights.
water oxidises instantly on the fingertips.
reds so gold they are silver, the green
so silver it’s blue. dimensions have washed off.
there is no attempt at realism. I once grew
multicoloured trees on cardboard shapes.
two planes were spliced together at the base,
hands make a time-out signal, and
another child is sent from the class.
how could this have happened though?
as one rainbow looks down on its echo
– i always think of sunday school –
we’re looking at this in the wrong light,
or with the wrong eyes. the way we might
read petit as petty. a small mistake, to be sure
but while we walk home quickly, the
thick sky can see difference
between greys and pinks.

 

call and response

to get our heads around resistance and loss
we pass our hands through gaps in fences.
my french may be rusty, but oxygen fills
our hearts with lungs and bugs have adapted
to computers now. But show me just one case
of lockjaw and I’ll cave in
like folding milk. We have outdated files
hidden in attachés that in time will
be released to the public. Our teeth 
clap shut from the force of repetition, a word
we say over and over until we know the 
spelling of it. The most redolent, of sense
and meaning must choose a direction and
take flight. But more, it must hear itself
reflected. Reaching through a frame to touch fingers,
fabric lit up imitates flame, just as margarine
once was pink. The smell settles in our memories
and pools. Gutted, we write our names
one beside the other so as to pick them out.

 

movement in motion

but language is silent
on the joint matters of desire and vertigo.
It is the position, or the movement
that gets closest. It is the sitting down,
the this is serious take to it.
The motion forms a form. And now
we see there is too much matter,
not enough shape. When things echo,
we come back to all those things,
a mirror-image in a mirror,
a story within a story,
film within a film. word within a word.
forward worlds push on again though.
we look a set of twins in the eyes
and say you’re tim (for example)
and you’re eric. we don’t like this
anymore than we like the thought
of the end of desire. but we have one word
for park and another for sky.
and even that may not be true, but
the shape is better than the sound,
the motion better than the arc it describes.
my foot is pressed to the floor, yet
the car keeps on sliding lethargic, inexorable.