min words | max heart
Poetry of the Non-Prose Kind
In their pristine state
even the most benign-
looking lithium-ion-
battery is based on a
predatory concept. Its
diet is composed of
elements such as salt-
bush, grass, plants; its
mires sequester large a-
mounts of atmospheric
carbon dioxide; it has
always been in a con-
stant state of flux. Tie
dying a t-shirt can be a
scary idea. Carnivory
increases the fuel load.
Discover me in june petal pleasant and
poise fluorescent kneecaps guide
you home i wasn’t meant to sing
gridlocked hymns dragonfly lassoed
on someone’s whim i tell him
there’s a venus flytrap between
my legs he thinks we are done with
that & this indifference to flesh that
droops and eyes that kill my favourite
lover solitary prince demure at
first then juggernaut tongue my
favourite lover hover here where
silence is boredom and sleep is slit
between flesh that weeps.
Always more comfortable among the strange,
prone to jump the garden fence at any startle,
I tossed no flowers upon my father’s grave
as he tossed no flowers upon my mother’s.
From eloquence to secrecy’s sublingual
inconsistencies of faith, I would, like math,
a more exotic womb in which to place
our fathers’ tongues for jaw’s own faults—
that vault wherein we all, gentle as a glass
of thunder in facile rat-skin glory, are born.
Death, that dog best undisturbed, that wonderfully
suffered child, Devastation’s blackened pit bull
enlarged by solvents’ hollow change, will gnaw
upon our moldering names.
this skin traded for fortunes
unknown a nice cake
awaits you the morning
after, an envelope steamed open
by disbelief you are the only
flower of meditation
in the wilderness a fire
that tastes like knowing we want
to have a testimony but don’t
want the test laps up
desire with the urgency
of fate you are about to become
$8.95 poorer, $10.95
if you had the buffet
White gold, time alone, this bison tips over at the idea of actual wind.
Caul of night invades the Black Valley,
crow roams the still-warm thermals,
Gap of Dunloe stained red with stonecrop.
Dundee masked beneath MacGillycuddy’s Reeks,
Coosaun Lough slips low, Wishing Bridge creaking,
groaning as doves keen in the pilings.
Blackthorn spikes horizon’s fire, an owl swiveling
its neck, eyes wide at the coming dark.
Autumn was too close to solemn.
The silent n,
too understated for the season.
When a metallic feeling bit the air,
Americans called it fall.
Let down
the dusk-blue grapes.
Let out the scope of chapters.
Fall was the real deal.
Fall was the way forward.
You had only to look at the light of God
oiling lengths of the rural guardrails.
Or the centerpiece of fuller’s teasel
the kids spray-painted gold.
I was awakened early this morning by the scaffolders next door. They were shouting up and down their construction about Mediaeval imagination and the birth of nationhood. I yelled out the window, What’s with the academic bullshit! Get a proper job, like the rest of us. They told me where to go, then began upon the subject of aggression and gender identity.
Still angry, I put on a clown nose, a red fuzzy wig, and left for work.
Driving was hell in my clown shoes, but I managed to crash the car near enough work that I could walk the rest of the way.
I entered the offices, and as I passed those gathered by the coffee machine, a phrase came to mind: The psychology of hell is strewn with coffee tables. Putting this to one side, I went to my office to attend to paperwork.
Eight hours later I went home. The scaffolders were still there, still shouting—discussing the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. I shouted up at them, Impossible, don’t be so stupid!
My argument seemed to win them over, as they conceded—in surprisingly good humour—that it is doubtful.
Savannah rain a careful glove
on the elephant’s ear, an ah or peanut.
Not a peanut, a chrysanthemum,
cavalcade of horses romping
cliff, a considerable moth
covering the porch light. Twilit
elephant wrinkles. Some more
trees, terrible breakfast aroma
late in the day. Yes, some laugh
like the world is smaller than it is.
The gift of the future was finding out
how wrong we were about the past
We were so open to everything
it was like unprotected X
We wrote words like leaves that fell
and turned in the current
as a rotating wing reducing pressure
on its cambered face produces lift
