another love poem

from love poems

10 Glass 

 

it’s the repetition that calming entrancement

he feels   he believes   the vibrations on his skin

the shifting tension of plucked wires travelling

through him as if the music were a stitching

at times pulled taut then loosened   unravelling

an undoing    a solving and dissolving   a liquid thing

running underhand molten   resolving to such clarity

the understanding an entrapment of an ephemeral integrity

 

made from natural and abundant raw materials

(sand, soda ash and limestone)

that are melted at high temperatures

to form a new material   a metamorphosis

 

imagine a pane of glass

those grains of sand

made whole    a holon

10 fingers 10 toes  

dropped  

love poems continued

 

from love poems

3 attrition  

they have reduced each other   a sauce simmering seasoned and stirred

for which they have no appetite yet feed greedily hungry out on the town

they have dressed for dinner tucked shirt into trousers knife into pocket

laid a napkin across their laps to soak up the drool   a word a crown the blood on the docket

 

4 paper cuts  

first they folded themselves a flower opening and closing bending over backwards

a contortionist’s origami out on a limb dislocating a jumping frog a nodding dog

next they folded the page of each other in half in half    the creases increasingly erasing 

words

then they slowly reflexively unfolded   muscle memory aching for the shape of a personal 

god

 

love poems

 

from love poems

1 sign 

the juggling of words   balls kept in the air

the silence is astounding   as if there were nothing there

but misheard footfalls on the stairs   the wings of birds turning

somersaults head over heels   liquid rushing towards gas   an iron left on    the smell of 

burning

 

2 betrayal 

he doesn’t leave before the point when he can’t leave

he plays it over and over again wants to believe that not just necessity but that love

was somehow a hand that fitted snugly into that glove

the fingers warm tightly comfortable about the throat   the forgetting to breathe

 

epitaph

epitaph  

unable to turn the page   the light in the room

like salt on the wound of looking and seeing

the heart beating a phone ringing unanswered

   the line will go dead   leave a message   soon

 

there is no grave no weathered stone

where what was unreadable becomes illegible

where time where absence is recorded

there was fire smoke drifting   flesh and bone

 

cursive   written by the wind   ashes on the tongue

 

board game

 

board game – in mitigation (from the trial)

exhibit 14

 

he can’t get inside this family

he doesn’t remember which piece he is

he can see the idea of it but not quite how it fits together

he used to be son   James   and there was mother and father

and the pieces moved to the rolls of their dice

and the game moved along nicely everyone passing go

but on the side they were John and Mary living outside the game

alter egos stepping in and out which seemed against the rules

the top hat after all was the top hat and he was the racing car

 

and then he began to become Jimmy or Jim when he left the house

or even the room they were in    James was good at school   Jimmy smoked weed

and Jim put his hand down Susan Smith’s knickers   John went to work but Johnny

played the guitar alone in the bedroom had a stack of porn under the bed

Mary cooked up three a day   yummy   dozed on the sofa in the slow afternoons 

was a whizz at bingo longing for the snowball a purse full of change for the fruit machine 

the one-armed bandit payout what a wheeze   JamesJimmyJim counting coins   comes on 

his tummy   lies still  steals close to mummy   stares at the ceiling notes a sense a fear of the 

failing of a fix   the loaded dice rolling to a six

 

the car skidding out of control   going over the edge   falling   just a few feet not far   into a 

ditch

the engine running turning over   then stalling   the foot slowly   uselessly   releasing the 

clutch

verdict

verdict  (from the trial)

exhibit 10

all rise   standing against a wall

while the jury look away

or at their blank hands recoil

the sun coming up behind the trees

and the light just so just for that moment

and you know it will pass   seconds

less than minutes   an age

not a lifetime but a life parsed   punctuated

the gavel knocking thin nails of silence into the pinned

paper heart delivering the coup de grâce

sentence

sentence  (from the trial)

exhibit 9

to wake each day and believe its possibilities

a ship slipping its anchor to drift on uncharted seas

or to those mapped and hoped for destinies

not to who or what or where you are    on your knees

 

to know that the past would always be invited to parties

guests and ghosts gatecrashers with invitations in their pockets

a lock of hair a forgotten photograph memories hung in lockets

on rusty golden chains of futures around their necks    of certainties

 

to be yourself   sure, as many epiphanies

as you can take   but a life sentence in the cell of yourself

no remission no parole   enjoy the walls the ceiling

the floor the flaws   and the window that square of sky   a jar from which the light pours