The Mystery I Cannot Charge Right Now

SOFTENING YOU AGAINST

2012-03-18T10:03:00.008+10:00

Softening you against a ripe tree,

transferring the leaning, the burden

from my shoulders to one that shall

stand longer. I know your haven from

passing through, flicking through,

two-dimensional landscapes on paper.

But my palm nearby shall be stronger.

My cough and my calm will be at hand.

But it’s your naked cheek that will rebuild

dusty nations well into the future with your

girly giggle and satire stare, piercing the trunks

moist again in rejuvenation of your own experience.

HOW SHE WAS FIRST FASHIONED

2012-03-11T19:26:00.005+10:00

Your name was fashioned on a screen

in aquamarine when hovered upon.

I found you, or you found me, through

some form of underplayed appetite,

with bulbs contrasting colours that

ran on white skin and lips, brown eyes

eating.

But the photos were forgotten, the poems

still prickle, you had Alice’s soft casing

until I noticed the red marks upon your knees

from bending too long in prayer.

There, in the Nunnery of Lace, for one who

I thought the sensual world did not exist.

It didn’t only exist, it thrived.

Through polite words, dreamy vagaries

and summer dresses.

Seeking wood nymphs in tangled trees

to rush to their role as your birth right.

The only thing more alluring than this

is that you don’t know your acumen’s

muscle just yet.

With the window down you are drying your hair

in the air, as your face bubbles and heats for reasons

not apparent even to you, but you feel joy relentlessly

begin.

ONE ENTERING

2012-03-02T08:30:00.002+10:00

ennui’s firmament

mixes like wax

betwixt separation

between night & day

a new one entering

THE STOVE BELOW

2012-03-01T04:23:00.003+10:00

I’ve been burnt here

and not for the last hour

the proportioned figure

ambles past my lust

Here it is happening

but no, she doesn’t heed

what hurts when the pride

does swallow the lower fire

and spits out the prickles

Brittle as her flaxen bones

too tiny for a whole soul

to cling to or to reject whole

No gods to protect

the healing process

of you belly-harm that

skin will compensate

Hoping he’ll never

ask or notice as

my concern must

rule singular

I ask for mollification

for my spleen that burnt bases

so I can repair the rotten riven

like so many never did before

Should’ve somehow known

to have commissioned the courts

but I was six-years old at the time

Burnt on your stove

thinly-veiled, below

beneath the comfort

and the warmth, home

My insularity vocalised

as my biceps sprung

and condensed my heart

to lax and unloaded air

But you’re so slow

to witness your

own moves and motives

it’s no longer repetition

for you or for your killers

CANCELLATION EFFECT

2012-02-27T07:05:00.001+10:00

Valium and coffee don’t work

When you want the Middle Way.

Valium and coffee won’t work

When you want your crotch calm.

Valium and coffee don’t work

When you want the exacting view.

Valium and coffee won’t work

Unless you’re wanting to recall, or

Forget the sweat clasped in hand.

The cells slipping and flinching under

Internal perspiration spinning warm

About the skull is never the synthesis

You’re looking for, unless to replicate

Whatever Valium and coffee may mean

To you, alone, in clueless combination.

STAY UNDER YOUR SHEETS

2012-02-23T02:01:00.002+10:00

all these great poets

were bedridden

beyond and before

Keats and Proust

all sleepy-headed whiners

lying supine

on the whitest of sheets

softens the teeming brain

for ripe foggy thoughts

hair upon the pillow

wide and small

brushed aside

renews the white vessel

red coughs cannot undermine

the snowy world

of rising jagged ridges

of shadowed rivulets

completing the foundation

for rocky, runny thoughts

in this haven for shiftlessness

when to read

is only to write

as time is still

amongst the shafts

of the tiny Himalayas

the squirm

we can call a movement

within the discipline

of hospital corners

and the wondrous white

of no-further

yoked by white

these three layers

the dull patchwork

that sighs mediocrity

and takes no prisoners

of ambition

of fame

only the occasional sock

or a particle of dead skin

a tall order

for the gown

of a virgin

(First appeared in Crack the Spine, Issue 4, December 2011).

YOU WILL FLOAT ON YOUR PRIDE

2012-02-13T15:40:00.005+10:00

Being very much from the old school of ‘I’:

I beckon, I plead, to see your multiple flairs.

I call back to what is chiselled on my heart

And report the findings for you to undermine

Yourself with. Ugly avarice is given cheap

Garments, by speaking the world’s truth in

Unfiltered air.

Now open up your head, let the breeze blow

Past so many failures of betrayal, leaving wild

Vagaries less distorted. But you have already

Jumped. Although you will float on your pride.

LINES TO A CAT

2012-02-03T08:06:00.005+10:00

barefooting on the greenest grass.

swirling, to tax your new manager

over the shortest distance of fibre.

between you then, and him now,

but nobody expected it somehow.

wash his feet with your wet hair.

don’t spend up big or you’ll polish

the expensive, monopoloid square.

TODAY SHE IS TWENTY-ONE

2012-01-28T07:10:00.048+10:00

you drew in from the wrong side

huffing & puffing to collapse

my ribcage & the hollow tones

of the dulcimer ache reward

the elder was no help at all

bent on saddest resignation

that made fun of my efforts

like silence on a battlefield

your tantrums began

where she did trip

two decades earlier

cleaning the stain of tie-dye

from the clever books

she held insecurely

and now we're here

now we're there

handcuffed to the idea

that if I wanted you

I'd simply kidnap you

a story for beer & chips

no steps forward

no steps back

stuck inside a room

with underworked dream-catchers

with nothing to grasp at

but soft pants in the only union

we could command

underworked limbs

underworked tongues

brains that couldn't feed themselves

crucified pride introduced us to

the degrees of pity in love

but left us begging for alms

from strange tenants & twins

your single bed

your single notion

your single act

not planned

as eyes roll, reverse

in no distinction of life

fingerprints on a babe's backside

they all shudder to talk sense

but I rise in anger to accuse

and cry, 'murder!'

at the death & extension

of a child's soul

twenty-one years ago

today

DWELL LESS

2012-01-19T05:46:00.001+10:00

Dwell not so onward into the night

Dwell not so on cracked hearts and women’s thighs

Dwell not so on the undressing of cocktail rump

Dwell not so on the several states of the elect

On that combination so rare

Potent because it’s not really palpable within an hour

Dwell on the airy

Smoky conversation

Smokier love affairs with women you have not met

Inspect insects on their pilgrimage across this page

Before the egotist’s eruption

Dwell not or your wounds will never be licked

By Lamb or Time

(First appeared in S/WORD, Issue 1, Fall 2011).

VIGNETTE IN BLONDE

2012-01-08T08:30:00.016+10:00

O for the impassioned gaze

Of your discourse without

The ‘me, mine, I, this, they’

O for your cheekbones

In silence, your body

Alive sans bouncing

Not electrified by desire

The family, the protest

Not by an invidious jealousy

Of all who communicate

Clearly and with purpose

O for your unripe dreams

Of style, your awareness

Of beauty, that nasty verbal lust

For what is on screen, what is hot

To prepare this all to nothing

Thighs tied together in self-respect

And your new explicated life

Which will give me five minutes

More to teach you chess and lose

THE ONCE BOBBING BOY

2012-01-05T10:49:00.009+10:00

The once bobbing boy is hoary in his resolve

Of sickness owing to his chainless scholarly conduct

Alike to Faustus and his presumptuous greed,

His irritability and ever selfishness that got him so

Out of the world

Odd mornings he is saved by a temporary recovery

Withstanding hazy goodness held high by None

Surrounding him, simultaneously seized, and then

Piercing one of the smaller clouds of unknowing

To reveal the not entirely unrecognisable keenness

Clarity of acres and acres of light that remove the body

Slowly by shafts freckled into squared smidgeons

Of salt and grain

His playful companion is old yet young in her

Tailored precision that speaks for her, overriding

Even the conception of the poorest plights

She does not even notice this transformation

But she would help if aware, in her way, anyone

Who dare ask something of her, so agreeably

Out of the loop

As long as such beggars have room enough

To stretch-out in her small but common world

Whether dimpled-faced Mephistopheles or

The swagman we claim to long for but pass by

Daily

SPLASH

2012-01-02T12:11:00.011+10:00

splashed

with the truth’s

glistening

I want you back

like a straight line

(First appeared in Cottonmouth, Issue 29, August 2011).

HEARTH

2011-12-17T13:47:00.005+10:00

I can't light the hearth

the poker is blunt

I can't see her now

been living on junk

but call her I do

without any shame

the most hollow heart

remembers her name

and to her alone I bow

kiss the sweat and the jaw

ah, I’ve forgotten the name

but I’ll never close our door

CIGARETTE BY A CITY BIN

2011-12-07T17:18:00.011+10:00

A cigarette by a city bin at 4am

is a liberating experience due

entirely to my placeless wastage.

Six tiny spheres join the rising sun

concentric to Alexander’s Gordian Knot.

Or if there’s another interpretation

of the sculptured mass I can’t pick it.

I’ll look up the artist one day coming.

I just take a stab instead of untangling

names, dates, and hey, it worked for Al.

TO WALT WHITMAN

2011-11-26T09:13:00.006+10:00

I cannot travel within your hours

Your seagulls don’t resemble the ones I see

But your large perception

That eccentric, strong, silent swagger

Your words could sustain an ox

Regrow a thick pine that had lost its vigour

Your glory was thinking aloud

Thoughts floating in your frisky bearded smile

Reducing or enhancing all angelic cherubs

To appear like cheap Christmas decorations

Blessed is your heart

Your iris spit infects your ink

Leaving no defacement upon our common air

Though I have never folded your Leaves

And need not

THANKS TO THE THIEF

2011-11-19T12:28:00.006+10:00

The right man has been cornered.

His freedom quietly lost,

not five minutes hence

he enjoyed the smoky frost

against his cheek

as a devoted wanderer

of dime stores.

Pocketing the arbitrary trinket,

he strode crookedly towards the exit.

It was an item that no one cared to spare

a thought towards.

He did the proprietor a favour

by purloining such stock,

by offering space

where the customers did

but wince.

Now the browsers did not miss

the garish contrast

between the poorly-carved cherubs

and the opulent chandeliers,

as they noted the distance

between trash and pomp.

The foolish man gave a value

that superseded the stolen item

with its counterfeit charm.

GIRL MISTAKEN PASSING

2011-11-09T09:43:00.008+10:00

O how I wanted to dive from the German car

graze on bitumen and leave you floating

as I pad your not-too-tanned flesh

fall into your cheek

without hinge

of sound

Your pearly foal teeth

Streisand nose

and you recalling

that you’ve never been

someone’s Muse

before my stake

and probably afterwards

CENTRAL THROB

2011-11-06T13:04:00.014+10:00

not quite sure

what against

my head did crash

or what did shift

my equilibrium

to bitumen

or sand

from pickled wakefulness

to shifty drink dawning

absolving people

to become acquainted

with their knees

and to see their faults

as if another’s

to see their girl behind

in another’s dress

hair and rings

FELINE FEMME

2011-11-02T18:16:00.003+10:00

The skinflint needs conversation

without words of warning

or warmth.

Her hard-won second-billing

leaves her unsure and guarded,

despite no competition.

Anger is the crux of her power.

Her slouched shoulders corrupt

random acts of kindness.

Her cats taught her everything,

but the hunt and tactful reaching.

She is often compared to them

by girlfriends.

Their purrs mistaken for adorable acts,

not as requests to open doors, be fed

or hail vanity.

Constrained threading takes place on her lap

with no patterns realised by the action

she undertakes.

Finding a common centre in the pillow,

her aim is thrown off by petulance

and the cat again.

The cat asks for a caress from her white friend,

with its head’s address beckoning

to her tiny jaw.

JEANNE

2011-10-24T15:10:00.004+10:00

scared & skinny

scare-crowed undercut

mandraked to her horse

like an erect clot of mane

taut & terrifying to her officers

her country

her king

stinking freemen
in mirrored puddles

of dank mud

rippled face upon face

her sole beacon

but she is outside

her democratic horror

HER HEAD ACHES

2011-10-16T18:15:00.002+10:00

Her head aches towards mine

Within blind, unabashed idiocy

Charming in its aim

Pathetic in its plight

To be enough

To be soft and small

In finger-sprinkled placement

Upon the driven touch

Enough

AXE

2011-07-25T10:13:00.006+10:00

axe may grind

slip away slowly, smoker

broken tiles of the stairway

meet barren earth of the hedge

take it out upon illusion’s wife

another for the complacent, crying baby

root it together

for your mother-in-law’s shawl

she didn’t like, was sent back

for cheap and caustic tobacco

your mutable wife did not feel your

pain

until you’re hedging the hedge

you pray

axe-in-hand

for rain

MY RIGHTS

2011-07-18T03:32:00.012+10:00

You’re yawning up way too much

of this life

I’m just waiting for your death

so I can cherish your words

in another matter

I’m a reflection, rather than a thief

when it comes down

to syllables

What is needed is taken

What is taken isn’t yours

to begin with

What is ordained

remains the glowing ash

before the sweep

Stop your moon-trafficking

and dissolve

MY HAND

2011-07-05T04:45:00.001+10:00

My hand is not active or stationary

My room is neither clean nor dirty

Following the words of a special book

My mind laughs hysterical that

Different parts of the vessel exist

Perhaps for the very first time

LET'S GET SORTED

2011-07-01T04:54:00.011+10:00

She is neither woman nor child

but she makes my gut weep

for suspenseful solitude

An abridgement of our life

Sorted, signed, and agreed upon

Shackled to the heart but not to the arms

FESTE

2011-06-12T18:24:00.006+10:00

With every sensation you spy, you want.

You want all the devices:

the screen, the porn, the sneakers,

to thrill and backtrack your middle-aged.

Think before you fall to your psoriasis

in self-disgust on the eve of another

overdose, blamed on your only child.

Your vacant teeth will get fixed first

if only to act as barricades to your

rocky wheeze and hyena saliva.

Turn in. Crave not the discipline

of the army but spin with the joy

of your impish heart, as the alcoholic

Feste of the world’s imagination.

TUNE TO ME

2011-06-10T22:48:00.010+10:00

tune your chord of silence

to my feverish song

not cold and coarse

but as if we were swinging

on those powerlines

in full-voltage silence

now dance to the chord

of my fever, not our fret

the one we knew best

if you recall the ways

turn away as a milky calf

pigheadedly mute, laugh

throw down your instrument

and kiss my unwashed cheek

ENGLISH ATTIC

2011-06-10T20:00:00.005+10:00

Peeping up to the attic high
looking for children
left by discarded romances.
Instead finding misshapen dolls
neglected in a phase
of uncertainty
about being broken,
needing repair.

The light breaks through
and shifts the attention
to love-worn figures
in need of the charity.

Maybe these things deserve dust?

Why are they up here at all?
If they were worth preserving
my sister could've asked for them,
for her kids.

They are like little adults,
these dolls.

As though they were painted
richly in another England.

Then they were real
dolls.

Counting their steps,
conscious of their movements.

A slow dance.

Tailored to be a trinket
for the Queen.

An apple in the eyes

of the men.

Remote and strange
to go to the effort
to be unheard, unseen.

Paying a crooked hyperopic
to translate their Greek
as he stamps out the fire
on his wooden face.

ETERNAL BOYHOOD

2011-05-23T20:27:00.006+10:00

they’re all blameless

in their laughter

I should leave

the door

slightly ajar

so I can rejoice

in each and every

crummy cackle

for they have such glee

to recoil intelligent men

in their efforts of recovery

half-assed

jealousy

sludgy lust

contains

these men

enduring the silence

is as draining

as the absurdity

of bubble-gum piano

in the courtyard

and sci-fi monks

shattering

my eardrums

and walled stillness

a ginger-bearded man

requests a surprise party

for himself

without a hint of irony

rather sad

but sadder for I

listening openly

but on guard

due to my own schemes

I’m not so vocal towards

these hidden holidays

in this prison

WHITE SOLITUDE

2011-05-22T09:40:00.002+10:00

I don’t know about strength

but the sweetness of solitude

is all in my weak

empty

sponge

of a heart

with the Book of Longing

floating nowhere

on two well-worn pillows

BURNING DAYLIGHT

2011-04-19T08:28:00.003+10:00

We’re living for very little

Moulding my buxom love

To fit snugly upon your tiny shoulders

A replica never realised

In your patience and blind following

Of my wild, stubborn notions

Why do you continue to cast wishes

Upon these fickle eyelashes?

You can support yourself in the industry

Forget the loud requests of the heart

Teach your trembling to behave

Teach your tears to manipulate

Not flow unguarded

Know your tax file number

Like it was someone who hurt you

Burn the plush toys

Before they suffocate

Your nascent womanhood

Yet I have convinced myself

Once I follow these disciplines

You shall follow suit

And I will destroy all these scrapbooks

And turn to one

ON COMMUNICATION

2011-03-18T07:06:00.005+10:00

Why should I ask what

you have not written now

when I know what is written

in your lines between discourse

Please send envelopes

I’ll send you what I can

Be it for your society

or for your lifetime

I’ll keep you amused

so you won’t note it

until you’re bereft

of paper

CHAINS

2011-03-18T07:05:00.003+10:00

Leave those chains in your childish purse

They can only be fixed to my wrists

With subtle manipulation

Sexy underwear

And pretending to listen

Now I’ve said too much

But I also know

Freedom

By Principle of Compassion

Acknowledges no manacles

(When conduct is second cousin to blamelessness)

The Pathway of Departure is ever open

But the gate swings open and then it shuts

VERY UNSOUND

2011-03-03T09:47:00.001+10:00

When so much of us will penetrate the air

Between thoughts

Quick as financial exchanges

Slow as the ibis’s scramble

Every which way but straight

Whether your prayers are heard or unheeded

Never made any different to your sense of song

Provided that kneeling is involved

And the soul is griped

Bounded by blue sphere or red earthed

Always aware, however

That the broken man’s prayer gains more attention

From humanity than the strong-hearted man’s claim

Bounded by faulty roof tiles or bespotted concrete

PYGMALION

2011-02-25T08:01:00.010+10:00

Not long after I had first replaced the sheets

Pygmalion was seen darting in and out

Of mannequin’s busts

Clamouring selfishly

Claiming dictatorship would enhance

Your sleeping beauty

“This dress with its conservative lines

will soften her pride”

Cash slipped from my palm to the ground

“Only a doll could exist within

this one”

Like arranging the limbs of flowers

To seek equilibrium and balance

My former laws of beauty

Swallowed by the white deer startled

My good wishes fell below mercy within your eyes

My outcomes now prearranged, bent

From now on I strip away knowingly

The bark I can and cannot replace

ANGEL, PLEASE

2011-02-21T20:17:00.001+10:00

I drank with one and all today

So send me an angel of compassion

To colour my pale cheek

And refund my happiness

Towards thee

The angel arrived swiftly

And told me to record

These little lives

Or the bigger ones will shatter us

Like an expanding balloon in a china shop

And everyone’s too proud to sweep

WIDE-EYES

2011-02-21T20:07:00.008+10:00

First I slid there knowingly to infest

for bodily atonement

the inner thigh

that is the comfort and passageway

to anticipation

and the pillow of the household gods

Snuffing the candles

I rose to smell your cardigan

Henceforth I look through

women in the magazines

for my ideas of glamour were animate

and could breathe and sweat

better for being half-crazy

‘Wide-eyes’ amused your vanity

in such a small way

That skipping spirit was my sole beacon

Your love a rehearsal

for greater conquests

You lent a hand

by the light of the tequila moon

but indifference does not sit so well

on tropical islands

The contrast made bitterness vent

You reached out for me in my vacancy

The photographic history

longhaired with makeshift staff

amongst the tall swaying grass

was popular with all but you

Incessant sunlight could not relax

my clear-shining disgust

I could never read your mother’s book

but those flowers that you stole for me

still grow without nourishment of recollection