murder glass

I'm on the glacier early enough to see a body drift by
two feet down
splayed and twisted
in old red nylon
and a rictus of frozen shout
drifting down
to the snout
like that
a piece of death from 1980
or whatever
just going down quietly
the grief long over
and his karabiners all froze up silent
so I reach down
grasp his head
hold it against the current
for a few seconds
his cold head
with its frozen brain
just hold it
then let it go
and I rise up
into the sunbeams
over Montenvers
on wings of pure glass
thinking this
is a fine moment to be a corpse
in a red nylon cagoul
swimming into the blue deep day
so damn cold and lost

porn addiction

went to see the new Nick Berg beheading movie and Christ
I had to sleep all night
with the light on laughing
like Linda Blair's head spinning
like a east europe

whore with a habit
and a clock running
fucktime
some level of ooze
you know
is okay close up but

I watched the first two minutes only
of the apostates stoning fuckvid
before I knew there was no love

out there
between planets
the wrap was like this:
like snails stripped out of shells
and waving writhing
little slimy asses in the fearful
then Linda Lovelace says
she now a nun

chugging on God
and I agree
some things you don't wanna swallow
all the way
for this
I declare the CIA
the motherlode
of pornography
with the ghost-McCarthy halfway down

the Bushthroat gaggin shotgun
and I sit up all ill
listening to the scratching
dunking dead cookies in the milk
Linda your bright clitoral rose soars
like satellite coma fire dunk

Poem about nothing

never like this, Andy Warhol
avoided your eyes, looked away
for the summer the kids came to
as though all along
there had been a problem

of unconsciousness, a passing out
parade in which
they shuffled
and fell like aces Wild Bill
cocking the last moment

he would ever know in the ring

of fire and ancient of days
fell like flowers from the burst
balloonmen, wee cummings and
Montgolfiers like captured clouds

of breath on cold mornings still dark
the old house on the hill lit suddenly
they dropped
to their knees grazed
as bullets that took flight
over the lake at dawn
chorus of wolf voices
that cry in long dreams
falling all around
their faces
looking

look at them looking
for it as they fall
look at them the swallows
the swallows

wheeled back
in balloons
for the spring
.
.
.

robot draft

robot stretches out
runs through his circuits
feeling for sleep

lights play
across his shell
dance like tension tics--
a humming through subcutaneous
membranes--

he is cavern
carapace, plastron

flashing crystal
pool of black within
rigid, liquid
sol/gel
lights going off/on
everywhere voices

animal sounds (something is coming
through) as though his circuitry
is looping
he feeds

choral music
into his night
(grunts
bird calls that come
of their own volition)
music to heal and soften

Christ, he thinks
I'm stiff as a damn board

stiffasadamnboard!


.
.
.

homophora poem (an ayeaye langpo)

the queen in the mountains
could not see the clouds swirling
over the capitol
the fountain squares reeled with pigeons
the turrets and balustrades
sinking in leaves
whirling leaves
in autumn
under our clouded sky
our frame
of light
ours
here
us
.
.
.

Poems about nothing. Number 1

These are filaments of light
or perhaps plant tissue
or flesh--cellular rods that grow
in memory at least and defy all

definition all attention all description.
Even here, even in the cracks
and the darkness before
the waiting ends they grow

like this, even flourish after
a fashion. They grow
with vigour and urgency, even
performing under these conditions

the stark acts of mating
or propagation, whichever it is,
however it can be described.
These filaments will never

swell into redwoods, or giants
who stalk the earth into myth
or shock their way into dreams
but even here, even here

is a life attempted. Even here
is a sort of brazenness that we
can admire, begin to know,
and reach towards.

Baltic lover

the Baltic loved one who sleeps - Jeremy Prynne
might in fact be a submarine skulking
and "echoing" in territorial waters - John Kinsella

We Dive at Dawn
Orzel left the Gulf of Danzig
for open water
Just think - submarine night
Dive! Dive! Dive! Baltic Gal!

I love Europe I love its Jungle theme
I love it Mrs B......dive, dive, dive
(it stalks the drowned Brandenburg Gate
the Shoulder of deep Orion—
Hauer and Ford submariner captains

......across the Tannhauser Gate
......sea-beams glitter)

OOoooohhh I love the race! I'm a race fanatic
I love it Mrs B!
I love things you people wouldn't even believe
letters from the Kursk bubble
like tears in rain
clanging on the hull

love letters
and fire (a chemical reaction) 108 metres down
the Barents Sea
things you wouldn't even believe
I love it
I love it
I love it
..........oh

to death
........a sudden irruption

.......silence of the sea lover
.......who sleeps
.
.
.
.
Prynne's poem Rich in Vitamin C can be read here

Other sources include extracts from Rutger Hauer's famous pre-death soliloquy from Bladerunner.

poetry poem - draft

feels like the carving of a nation from new air
or dreams
or the long address to the world
on urgent matters
--the removal of doubt
the resolving of problems out there--
big stuff big as worlds
that we do in private
in our little glow
at the keyboard
in hope that someone somewhere will find our importance
cast up upon the sand
glittering, irresistible
the answer to it all within
is how it feels this thing that we do here in ourselves
and strive to put forth with the unquestioning urgency
of any young plant
like all that it feels
but is only a little thing done in secret
underneath all that
just a hidden shaking of the tree at the centre
(the tree adorned like a wishing tree with bright charms
and spells for the alluring of spirits
and Oh I know most of us
end up snared in our own spell
staring at our own colours
forgetting everything
but really it's a side thing; it is. And it's not that. It's just not.
Those fluttering rags, those drifting shapes
those rhymes and rushes (all petals to bring
the workers to do the work that cannot be done
to act the last part of it the missing piece
the moment when it catches
the final act of the theft of fire--
all chimes and hues and incense otherwise, that's all)
those musics and clevernesses
all asides
all adjoinings
and not the thing
itself (though anyone has a right to dress nicely
and smell good). No, not all that. This! The communiqué, the address
the message the long song in the night
just the singing not even the song
that or something like it. Maybe that then. Just that. A convulsion of some kind.)
the mast the spine the frame
that wants to stretch its bones
just for the sheer stretching of it all
thinking maybe its stretching is unique, exemplary and vital
and filled with the representative charge of all moments
as though this act could stand for all acts
if you would only look into it.

In this spirit, I ask you please to look into it
for at least a few moments
before you move on.
This asking is all I am asking
for I cannot requite myself in this way.
To everyone their little looking in by the other.
To everyone this act of attention this wish this question this prayer
(every poem a prayer).
To everyone all this little vast yearning.
To everyone this little ongoing truth
that the very small
is the whole damn world
and all the teeth-chattering shudder and collision of new nations.

oh a distant seasong that might go on forever

Spots on the crossjack and moonsail flots
make dead leeway toward five stars east
gaff the yards I have not creased
one hand for... one hand for knots
one for the ship
and one for the dip
ah yer lateen rips wet weather
when you see me warpin tether
up Whitby wharf with a bellyfull
of iron-blowed skerryscull.
I'm luffed and laden me screechin maiden
and deadeye wire-stropped
with the monkey fiddler storm-stopped.
I'll wait at the wind's gate
to the wind strait out
to the new wind haulin
and the straight weight yawlin me glistenin singin frigate bird
if you just unchest the holy seaword
till the leech give it up
an the beachin bring me cup
am agog with grog in the barefoot web
like me father swarmin
to the fierce warmin moment
sloopin slough me beat, me reach
no driftin distant doubt.
Oh me farflung frothin fortune to flout!

lerv

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa
like this? Is it?
hold you down?
insert a catheter?
Huh, what? Huh?
I only g
et up like
what 3 times a night
don't even know if it's big enough
to take this mother
catheter
is this where we are
this
this
this
I got nothing to give to this
fall apart
fall
fragment
rain falls all over
and every man gotta right
to hold his woman's breast
at the last moment
just in case
the air start to slow
and he wish to breathe
his last moments
in love's gasping poements.

wail far out in mist

who is this speaking
I'm lisnin up hard
who
you know who
I don't
you do
I went there for some reconciling that's all
yes but you knew knew all along
like no way these things don't work for you you're doomed haha
who says this who
I do You do
who
I said already you know
it was a Crime Scene
or a WELL full of blood
how about that
hahaha you idiot
you're going back to infancy
and you expect what
there were cheeses and chocolate
and a Buddhist Garden
in which we could prostrate ourselves
and we talked like old strangers
and she could hug all she wanted
until the breath flung out of me
and nothing there
would make a tiny difference
still we looked at the garden and the river
and talked about someone's baby got absconded ducted
straight out of safety live into a cloudworld
where we catch our breath like that
yes but that's not it is it
not it at all
no time at all did you move from the clutch
to the cry
who is this
who is this
who is this?