Sunday, March 27, 2011
Green
That wine was once a solid
reminds us the world is melting.
The CO2 gas puffing out of our blood
makes a smoke stack of the merest human.
This isn’t entropy, it is a journey
flapping its air quotes against a closed window.
The mushrooms at the tree-line are edible
evidence of a morning shadow, as we walk
into the field this afternoon. Grass everywhere
in beef and milk, staining your dress
when we kissed, leaving you with a white moustache.
That wine was once a solid
reminds us the world is melting.
The CO2 gas puffing out of our blood
makes a smoke stack of the merest human.
This isn’t entropy, it is a journey
flapping its air quotes against a closed window.
The mushrooms at the tree-line are edible
evidence of a morning shadow, as we walk
into the field this afternoon. Grass everywhere
in beef and milk, staining your dress
when we kissed, leaving you with a white moustache.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Carbon Dating
I put a wood cinder in my mouth
and it tasted like shoe-polish meringue.
I tried to chew it and it felt
like my teeth had gone off-road
into a ditch of powdered glass.
The aroma of a gutted bedroom;
of paint chemical recycled
into the dangerously edible,
gave way to the thick air of the valley
from where the wood was harvested.
Fire had deforested the room
and loosened its black topsoil
revealing nails and copper wires.
What was in my mouth had become
some new type of mortar,
and when I spat it on the ground,
it bubbled and furred in the charred
floorboards, and crawled away
like a snail.
I put a wood cinder in my mouth
and it tasted like shoe-polish meringue.
I tried to chew it and it felt
like my teeth had gone off-road
into a ditch of powdered glass.
The aroma of a gutted bedroom;
of paint chemical recycled
into the dangerously edible,
gave way to the thick air of the valley
from where the wood was harvested.
Fire had deforested the room
and loosened its black topsoil
revealing nails and copper wires.
What was in my mouth had become
some new type of mortar,
and when I spat it on the ground,
it bubbled and furred in the charred
floorboards, and crawled away
like a snail.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
My Previous Dogs
Higher-up at the vertical limit of sight;
caught on a flake of rusty guttering;
hidden in the leaves of a Californian walnut;
pressed in the middle of a waffling summer;
diphthonged at a flange in the upper-register;
flayed at a paint-crackled curl in the canvas;
alone in an attic like a cork in a gene pool,
who can see further than their next vacation,
past the landfall of mornings when you’ve awaken
out of the Valium of three am?
Derek and Brendan are laying the sprinklers
piling up the lawn down the side passage.
Professional gardeners
standing in the graves of my previous dogs.
Without my network of skills and debts
and capacious fridges that zip-lock air,
the afternoons would drag their marine-life
up an octave into slack-key,
pitched too high for humans.
Higher-up at the vertical limit of sight;
caught on a flake of rusty guttering;
hidden in the leaves of a Californian walnut;
pressed in the middle of a waffling summer;
diphthonged at a flange in the upper-register;
flayed at a paint-crackled curl in the canvas;
alone in an attic like a cork in a gene pool,
who can see further than their next vacation,
past the landfall of mornings when you’ve awaken
out of the Valium of three am?
Derek and Brendan are laying the sprinklers
piling up the lawn down the side passage.
Professional gardeners
standing in the graves of my previous dogs.
Without my network of skills and debts
and capacious fridges that zip-lock air,
the afternoons would drag their marine-life
up an octave into slack-key,
pitched too high for humans.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Plums in Honey
What has become of the dating game? We’ll see.
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her much treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire, but we’re not discussing Pompeii.
The Plimptons have consumed their third packet of Student Feed in this epoch of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in a cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group, cupping their hands at the edge of the pool. A fourth stood off playing a button accordion. He sang of perspiring empires and nights beneath the Mario Plaza.
We got jealous.
When you’ve nothing to say sing it, when you’ve nothing to think … … and so on. Plums in honey.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino. At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini. Here she is.
The years only leave us with speculation. They are our touch judges. Our concreters. Filling the gaps where our bodies had been.
The olive oil skin, the acacias, the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.
What has become of the dating game? We’ll see.
Ernesto revels in his love-beads as Angela bakes her much treasured lemon-cake.
The entire den is subdued. Leo warns of his rising ire, but we’re not discussing Pompeii.
The Plimptons have consumed their third packet of Student Feed in this epoch of wasabi-coated peas.
Bernard slips out with Pat for a joint. Pat comes back showered in a Roman triumph of soap-stone cones.
Poetry is the object here, but are we really motivated?
Bernard lounges on the porch dreaming of a steak and beer night in the Ardennes, the two children asleep.
Leo names them in a cheap move to bring down the house.
This morning Eve saw a small group, cupping their hands at the edge of the pool. A fourth stood off playing a button accordion. He sang of perspiring empires and nights beneath the Mario Plaza.
We got jealous.
When you’ve nothing to say sing it, when you’ve nothing to think … … and so on. Plums in honey.
Otherwise, there’s shopping with the Bin Ladens in the Via Barbuino. At least we can tag along, unlike the no-show Pope.
I promised mum, with her crook knee and mean tortellini. Here she is.
The years only leave us with speculation. They are our touch judges. Our concreters. Filling the gaps where our bodies had been.
The olive oil skin, the acacias, the footprints on the beach like a Bolivian heiress.
