May 2013
2 posts
7 tags
Revisited
From a bench dedicated to lovers, Aberystwyth Castle.
I came here then: November, Or in a light which translates morning Slowly into visibility; the received walks Patiently toward the receiver. The seat anchored me with their weight, I carried my instruments everywhere and their touch Was deftly surgical, not explicit like diagnosis But unearthing the pact they had left to full view. Each of...
5 tags
“I have tried to dream myself back into the other room which is under this one,...”
– Doris Lessing
April 2013
3 posts
7 tags
5 tags
A Parting Gift
You kiss me on the platform
And the world rights itself;
In the time taken for my breath
To escape into yours, the two
Are inseparable.
6 tags
Tunnel
There is an interlude where the trees Suddenly discontinue, the land you had half Interpreted is transferred from behind glass To brickwork, a liminal point The engineer has created without knowing;
Each window becomes a screen trained Inward, our responses reflected for observation, Though we are no closer, Waiting for a cue to enter Back into the shift of ignorable country,
A sloping bank or...
March 2013
10 posts
4 tags
“She’s doing everything she can to make me hyper-aware of her thought...”
– Renata Adler
4 tags
Dividing The Bed
From above, one bulb can measure the zones Left empty, inactivity making them cold to enter.
We tell more than either can know, Relaying signals from one point of intersection
To another, informed of each tremor made By our own scale, the proximity
We focus toward Or distance we accept;
Any night, one might face the blank wall, Following a single crack escalating
Like a fracture, as if...
5 tags
“Art is all in the mind…We invent the art experience ourselves.”
– Iris Murdoch
6 tags
6 tags
We walk together, Reaching a stony watch-point, Unfolding ourselves.
9 tags
“I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour...”
– ‘Miles Away’ - Carol Ann Duffy
6 tags
8 tags
Beachcombing
At intervals along the drained shore, Settled to stasis between tidal shifts, A vacated shell suggests a little Of the life that gave it up,
Materials bartered for a slow flame Exhale finally, having collected something of those Centred around their debris and smoke, Clinging to fibres, singling them out.
A switched perspective lowers the landmarks To a framework, allowing us to isolate The...
4 tags
Viral
I have made my report; And each recipient, in a singular way, Has become responsive to you, Can listen for your breath, Its slow distinctions and variants, Or expect a look I know you by To greet them at the crossing, On the platform, at the door.
You’re circulating from synapse to synapse, The reader using up their guesses To flesh out a detail, to pinpoint you As you were then, rendered in...
6 tags
“But happy now, though no nearer each other,
We see the farms lighted all along...”
– From ‘Taller To-day’ - W.H. Auden
February 2013
8 posts
7 tags
5 tags
“Millions of people long for immortality who do not know what to do with...”
– Susan Ertz
7 tags
5 tags
“Tonight I lie awake and run
your absence through my fingers:
here’s the...”
– From ‘Grounded’, Michael Symmons Roberts.
7 tags
5 tags
Through my eyes or yours, The rain sways above water, Seeking completion.
6 tags
An Opening
I turn my pockets onto the table, Going about making myself transparent; Restless as a book of matches, struck in order, Their bright fulfilment following one After another, or as water in its single-mindedness Turns the rocks onto their backs to see under.
There is no merit in disguise; I open my hand to face you, Its breaks and lines knotted To a cohesion, a print becoming Recognisable; you...
4 tags
“I sleep on the beach,
at the cutting-edge where blades
of star and ocean
whet...”
– From ‘The Drifter and his White Shadow’, Michael Symmons Roberts.
January 2013
5 posts
7 tags
“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There...”
– From ‘Heart of Darkness’, Joseph Conrad.
4 tags
Morning Talk
I listen for the lives acted out above our heads, Loosening the snow into narratives, The sky projected, white on white, developing The city from its side like a print.
I search the arch of your back behind one window, Drawing out its firm certainty, a point of contact Indented like brail, learning each hollow syllable To retrace and repeat; and everything other continues
As it does, on to...
4 tags
“Scholarship is to study everything that is unimportant, not necessary for...”
– Alan Watts
6 tags
No longer an ‘I’,
All past and future dissolves;
We live breath by breath.
“What is art but a selective memory?”
– Alan Jenkins
December 2012
8 posts
7 tags
Identity
Like an instinct hushed under the everyday, It leaves you as simply as anything is glimpsed, Not as reductive as pulling one fractured Suggestion from any other, or the eye We take as an instrument, its gradual decoding Amounting to guesswork; head out, intrigued,
To the re-reading of an upturned mirror, Where the stones mark the shore In their stoic poise, allowing you to fathom Their cool...
4 tags
“Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They...”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
6 tags
Two Winters
We set out into the an altered geography, Reclaiming terrain with the imprint Of our broken down shoes, their steady caution, If only to show someone had stirred, That tracks could be followed, Then or later, to the same place.
Our feet took to the firm bonds of its surface, A white density packed tight, Except at a contour point, giving way To the pressure of human weight, Leaving your gloved...
6 tags
The Picture Reel
‘The proposition is a picture of reality.’ - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Pinpoint the readiness of a public place To extinguish us from its habit, Noting how simply we are removed From its changing register, Our inferences preserved longer Than we were ever there.
* Have her leave, again and then again, Fabricating a response to that final Fitting release, before the slammed door, The...
6 tags
3 tags
“It may not always be so; and I say
That if your lips, which I have loved,...”
– E.E. Cummings
6 tags
“It was lovely in the nights and if we could only touch each other we were happy....”
– From ‘A Farewell to Arms’, Ernest Hemingway.
5 tags
Everything Afterward
continued as if photographed; A light had grown steadily at the window, The outlook blurred by rain.
The birds furthered their exchange, Their dipping pronouncements Understood as belonging.
There is a trace, becoming tactile enough That it is almost held, or brought out, Clinging to the lives of objects.
All the time, our movements indicate A separateness which is never grasped, But stretches...
November 2012
8 posts
4 tags
“here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the...”
– E.E. Cummings
3 tags
“Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the...”
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
10 tags
Afterthought: A Sequence
We are laid bare, waiting for renewal; I collect the receiver, finding the line Hissing and discontinued.
I take the intonation as circumstance For something redeemable; Your hand, a look, an utterance.
* Exhausting the minute, I gather myself, having left The pavement to its disclosed symmetry, A reliance as exact, having no one guess
The lacking which splits us irrevocably, We group as...
6 tags
The Other Woman
It’s become simple, it starts like this: He leaves early, collecting his coat From the wall like a shadow, his hat Centred with authority as he bends To my cheek for the usual courtesies.
What I do next is something he would struggle To guess, or any of those self assured characters, Trading their stories across a desk, Wearing the same handed down motifs; We know how each one ends.
I...
6 tags
Starlings
Something rouses them In a language no onlooker has brought To fluency, all the same,
We watch as though their motives Were our own, their tight factions Splitting ground ward;
An order is given, a sudden closeness sets A host of limbs into their strict arc, Signalling an intent we have not guessed,
A multitude stretching themselves Into flight; we follow them As best we can,
Our heads trained...
5 tags
4 tags
And your head on my chest/ Is what it means to co-exist.
5 tags
Capital
If we were to view the thing in itself, We might wait for the shift work Of occupied windows to begin their Transmission, signalling an ‘all clear’.
Though they are startled into a limited biography, We are left to our assumptions, any lasting confession Issued from a pavement slab, one light revealing a face Now only half recognised, introducing level after level;
Delivered by...
October 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Leaving
The weather breaks, an expected unsettledness Entering its consistency, and the rain is urgent; Represented in their material weight, my effects are gathered, All signs that this room once conceded to an ownership, Now ordered, so that they might be understood.
The bareness of its surfaces grows striking, Reclaiming themselves from scattered objects, Their soft imprints lifted, and the space...
6 tags
5 tags
4 tags
Many Miles West
I
While the shore plays host to its onlookers, A surviving hoard swept to solid ground, (Though unafraid to look back),
We adopt vantage points to puzzle one another out, Fixed to an immediate question; Whether another’s half absence, half awareness,
Has concentrated the scene into something We had missed altogether, Or have looked too long to recognise.
II
With time, after the first...
September 2012
7 posts
4 tags
Wintering
The poles of daylight draw closer to one another, Our progress emptying from dark to dark In the vacancy we are left to contemplate.
The eye comprehends an otherness Remaking landmarks in a sinew of frost, All roads outward alternating direction.
After the work is complete, we head out, linked, To see it loosen, the land laid bare for renewal, Its hard totality catching us off guard.
5 tags
Fortune Telling
Settled into a discussion, we are drawing up plans And speculations, learning that whatever the day Lacks can be replaced, though we are grounded At a shared table, a self, aged by years, Is claiming its own habits, and asserting
Preserved arguments, remotely distant, Or is as close and perceivable as in the next room, Staging itself as successor to an abstract, a projection As clear and ordered...
