Poem-A-Day #303 : Aisle 3

Aisle 3

There is the idea of a person who builds a bridge - an architect of spans
but I am not sure that these crossings exist

Here is a fire starting at the base of a tower - and there is always someone dying in fires
always a fire in need of someones to die

At the grocery store the faces all look like milk cartons
I scan them for expiration dates - fine the barcodes on their irises and tick them off my list

An overwhelming sense that this is a toy unwinding - collapse in aisle three
it's devoted to cleaning products - I am rolling on my back - a dying beetle

There are picnic supplies and they are all about keeping food away from things that live outside
and there is a canyon opening and closing its mouth between one shelf and the next

Legs to the sprays - arms to the plates
allow each cart to roll over the spine - train cars going to who the fuck knows

I do not burn bridges so much as not bother to build them in the first place
this suits - ill-fitting - but it does

Poem-A-Day #272 : On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

The sound of train tracks cooling is a baking sheet in the oven clang

These are house noises - the world
is a house making noises - the cooling
is the world making house

The pie was delicious
                         at least everyone said so
               why is it so hard to believe those sorts of statements
          conditioning - because - praise is ego and ego is inflatable

And no one can float on it alone

The oven cools it has a stone in its belly and the stone is blackened

On the first hold the collar close to your neck night the world sighed deeply and said that the years are getting harder to come back from

It closed up itself
curtains and all the doors
were resealed this autumn the windows leak still but...

Picture a train track popping - the back
of it breaking and curling upwards into the dark sky

It shatters into ravens and they
shatter into a rain of snow hard as glass
glinting like fresh asphalt

Jacobin Pigeon

Poem-A-Day #230 : Stray Cat

Stray Cat

I have felt not at home
within
and without

The universe is not a cold dead place

It is just cold
and mostly not alive

Our matter
coalesces around us
it speaks to us at night
in the sounds of houses settling

If I have a hand to hold
let it also be my own

Poem-A-Day #209 : Cold Fireplace

Cold Fireplace

I am the fourth person in this room - lost already - the overwhelming sense of purple - the rooms are entirely inside rooms - insistent - hospitable - the night will be fiercely clear will be a fire in a cold fireplace - I am the fourth real person in this slippery room - insistent - I am real in the fourth person -

Borley Rectory Fireplace

Poem-A-Day #206 : Blue Room Green Room

I haven't talked at all about how I'm working on these poems. I'm reading one chapter of The Haunting of Hill House each morning. At some point I sit down and write about the chapter using quotes from the book.

In theory these poems will track the narrative. Though I think they will probably just track the creepiness of the world Shirley Jackson created.


Blue Room Green Room

Stillness is a vial
of thick cloudy liquid

There is no evidence that this
belongs to the rest of the world

               It can hear us

               Don't be so afraid all the time
               it's altogether Victorian

The sound of glass breaking
the clouds no longer suspended
they ooze along the floor

               Do you have an Aunt
               a comic Uncle?

               Was there always a bull in a field?

The blue figured paper
twitches in the dimming light

Stillness seeps into the floorboards
stains itself

               What fun it would be
               to stand out there and watch it burn down

Poem-A-Day #201 : Eleanor

Eleanor

At 32 who could see the shower of stones
the calcification of small guilts

The universe inside becoming one millimeter smaller

I have been spending my life waiting for a house
to open its doors and eat me until my molecules separate

The fantastic reproaches both small and gigantic

What if you flip cards over and I guess them all right
the  windows wouldn't shatter - that will come later

Or not at all

At 32 the hall of portraits of faces that are known
becomes a hall of empty frames

It constricts like an eye in the bright light of day

Youth is binge and age is purge
it is the sound of air sucking into long locked rooms

Poem-A-Day #108 : Sure / No

Sure / No

Think back to that time you felt safe
then back further

What sort of primordial space are you in

Has your tail receded into your spine

Or are you where you are now
staring blankly into a wall

Are you safe ?
          Do you know what safe is ?

A hammer to the head
will only bring the tweety birds

You are safe as houses I am sure

No flies on that shit

Take my hand the horizon is on fire
with sunset and I am in need of touch

Poem-A-Day #59 : Dungeon Crawl

Dungeon Crawl

The table laces itself in the bodies of ants - the smell of peppermint

It's because of the food - the cracks in the wood - the cheapness of the apartment

He wants to watch a movie - the embarrassment of him over - of even thinking about opening this sealed room

          Roll a D20 for an armor check - you need above a 15

Outside the cottonwoods begin their fluffing - and thoughts could possibly reconnect to the idea of sex -

Though the mind is not really there - and frankly - that's fine

Hearts are caverns - so deep - so so so

          What if everyone dies this time? - if the surface tilts just enough - everything will slide into the abyss

You just want to be able - but - there is not much to build upon

He asks again

          The map is 2D is a stick figure is not accurate to scale - the figures are pawns

Not cavern enough - insert some metaphor about spelunking here -
- Insert some terrible pun about insertion here -

          The roll is terrible - you chop off your own hand are bleeding all over the floor the goblins in become ravenous at the smell of blood -

           they swarm - they swarm

Legend of Zelda concept art by Katsuya Terada

Poem-A-Day #51 : The Broken Column of Light

The Broken Column of Light

The broken column of light across the bed

          across your face the look of warning

                    that this is the moment when –

I take off my clothes

I trace the perimeter of the lake

I walk into the water until it reaches my knees

At the end of everything – I don’t even

know when that is but it is

                    Here is the water lapping sunset

          the tide swallows the stones we placed

when we picked up the bones of trees and mice

Poem-A-Day #50 : The Skye Terrier (Queen Mary)

The Skye Terrier (Queen Mary)

What was the thought process - the former Queen walking to her death with a terrier in her petticoats - was the dog so normal against her legs that she didn't think to leave him - and how did it get by the guards the man with the axe the crowd beyond the scaffold -

And after - when the dog wrapped itself in her dress and refused - and became bathed in her blood - the royality of that baptism - a terrier saturated until the color of her sleeves - after - was the dog able to stare into the faces of politicians and not flinch -

They burned everything that her blood touched - the block her head rested on - the gold-embroidered mask across her had to be hacked off twice head - the dress and the wood of the platform - all in the fireplace until ashes were all that remained -

And it makes one ask about the dog - they supposedly washed it - they supposedly kept hold of its trembling loneliness - one can assume - until it died from the chill of living outside the coats of a Queen

A Skye Terrier - Source: Wikipedia

Poem-A-Day #12 : them/arrows

them/arrows

I wonder about the people who design iconography
the mindset of simplification is foreign and mysterious
like night time streets in a city I've never been to

There is a path along the canal from Canada Water to the hostel
and the group of young boys is tossing the ball between them
it's probably mid-day and warm out but could just as easily be night

You - I - We - are walking far enough behind them
that we can't hear their words jut the periodic laughter
and the sound of the ball hitting cobblestone

The first time I came to this canal it was 5 in the morning
it was in December and cold and dark and wet
and there was only quiet and water and how do I know where to go

We could pretend there were signs with a little house on them
arrows ---> pointing to the path to the hostel doors

There were only windows reflecting darkness
the sound of luggage wheels catching on brick

Source - http://ppv-london.blogspot.com/2012/05/rotherhithe.html