An event horizon (an extract)
Sylvia puts the
kids to bed
tucking them in
with that last goodnight
kiss the
story told leaving a little light
to struggle in
the darkness
the hoot and
swoop of the owl
the licking of a
salty lip
the closing of
the hatch the click of the latch
each action
nondescript and final unnameable
as such then she
spends time stuffing towels
under the doors taping
round the frames
pushes her head far
into the mouth of the oven
wanting to be swallowed whole
...
Monday
Sisyphus is
looking forward to the weekend
a moment where
the rock jolts and jumps
bounces gets the rooks in flight bends
the air running
to a stop looks back
and then he
smiles and takes his
time as he walks
back down
the indifferent sunlight
dying slanting
golden
on the trees
clouds
flame burnishing
the air pungent
smoke of the
neighbour’s
barbecue
drifting
towards
Monday
bedtime story
the softness of
summer light
late afternoon early
evening
the way it
adheres to solid surfaces
the way it
emanates from leaf and tree
the way it
washes across the grass
the way it
gathers in the air
the way it
breathes like music
and if you
listen
the way it tells
your story
using only the
present tense
gilding the
moment …
then the way
twilight turns to dusk
turns to
darkness incomplete
turns to
starlight distance crossed
and so to sleep
Patience
Sundays
seem to come more often now:
The week a shuffled
deck -
Cut the pack and what do you get?
Another lonely day, after a week
Of lonely days, yet somehow
Longer, as if more silence had been
Wedged into
the gaps to stop the leak
Of violence.
Sundays - the
turning of the cards
And between
-
And the
slow wait in sufferance
For
Monday’s glib indifference.
Prognosis
The doctor shook his head,
The horizon’s coming after
her,
He said. He said,
It’s going to tip her off
this world -
Which, after all, is flat,
linear
When unfurled -
And take a part of your
world too.
Did you imagine that the
Coriolis
Effect was a fictitious
force?
Or that Achilles would never
catch up
With the tortoise?
That life was travelled
along a Möbius strip?
The TV’s on all day, playing
repeats,
A mockery of time passing.
She sits,
A bundle of sticks thrown at
her feet,
Too many to count, too few
not to number.
How much courage do you have
to muster,
Waiting, knowing, looking
over your shoulder?
Gift
Medea takes the lift
each floor a new betrayal
love’s knife sharp truth
across the throat
until there’s no one left
no one getting in no one getting out
no more hearts for sale
and now the doors won’t open
a lid on a box that is forbidden
and then the light goes out
so there are no walls no ceiling
only a floor she cannot trust
she might be rising she might be falling
she just might have disappeared
she puts a hand to her face
touches skin with skin
understands the weight of faith giving in
She’s Psyche perched upon the spire
waiting for the marriage beast
in the darkness for her husband’s breath
for Persephone’s beauty played upon a lyre
and she’s lost all hope of Pandora’s gift
she’s alone dissolving and becoming myth
she leaps upon the pyre
the fallen
on the smooth surface
of the Icarian
Sea
a fisherman hauls
in his net
and shudders to
find yet again
waxy feathers and
fragile bones
swimming with the
muscular
flesh of still
living fish
writhing and
squirming the frantic
mouths the
would-be screaming
the water greasy
with fear …
above, a sky clear
and blue
holding a sun
the light a whorl
all radiant with
innocence
blinding the
world askew
and deep down in
the turbid depths
of a black sea
floor the bottom feeders
are picking
clean the gleaming
remains of a fallen
star that at least once flew
that, at least
once, flew
