GLOWING ETHER
CONTENTS a hole to crawl through koi carp whisky & toothpaste self-portrait (morning mop) when life gives you super-absorbent polymers the cake is just for show binsey like a goldfish in a bowl night-season dreamscapes reindeer heart soup sour fruits
A HOLE TO CRAWL THROUGH 5 am siren wakes you, sits you bolt upright into the bleached-pink sulfur-yellow sun birth. crooked arms reaching ether, extending hooked tree-claws, bed full of muttering feathered shadows. unseen pavement glitters with remnants of night (stacks & accidents & lost things). that unknown distant roaring; same in every city, provincial town, on mountains; morning earth chant.
clouds cream up curved walls of sky stirred by the sun’s golden spoon, poured into shining mirror-windows through two layers to be absorbed by your eyes; upside-down and distilled into one stinging fluorescent needle. sound is clearer, brighter in the hours between, reserved for being round-edged and murmuring. lie back on pillows, drinking soft brownness from a chipped pastel cup light slowly crystallising your form into something harder, less prophetic; likely not to witness an accidental sunrise.
KOI CARP
just under the surface a show of shining perfection tranquil pure beauty it is a shame scales as on a dragon puffing fire, brimstone in myth fairy-tale cover your flesh it is a waste face rearing up for air oblique bubbles breaking surface water streaming tears
miraculous girl growing from nothing in warm wet culture of cells and glowing this makes you it is a myth you under the surface groaning in silence uh uh uh shining your beauty: is only shame.
WHISKY & TOOTHPASTE
i want to go sit somewhere up high and smoke a cigarette, the quiet relief of being the first person to exist outside of space & time. i want to become old and eccentric, without being outwardly considered to be old, or eccentric. i want to go laugh alone on a tall hill or in a low valley, and relish the obvious fact that i am the funniest person alive. i want to go lie on a roof above a buzzing city; a position in which it wouldn’t be too presumptive to festoon me with CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. There, on my back, i will stare at the stars, until their image is cigarette-burned
or indelibly magic-markered onto the insides of my slick pink eyelids.
SELF-PORTRAIT every morning. mop myself up off the kitchen floor; there’s violet & lilac; azure & indigo; turquoise & teal. running down into the cracks, between the floorboards. i am all mess and no substance, as certain figureheads would probably say. my dreams are not this weird. usually i teeter on the edge of the unreal; the frayed rope between neon and grey clouds pregnant with rain. rain falls & replaces me. i am only untidy due to hue; clear water is
not troubling. (perhaps only the sink leaking?) it is when violet is involved that things become worrying (for purple is the most vexing colour; unsettlingly close to bluethe easiest colour to see.) things are always most alarming when they are only not-quite right. but to return to the mopping of myself; the splintered wooden pole, with its soft malleable feet, is my partner. we dance the foxtrot (if Hesse is to be believed; this is the easiest of the dances). twist, twist, twist. the mop is a beautiful thing; by itself it does not clean up. merely collects the dirt & preserves it.
WHEN LIFE GI YOU SUPER-ABSOR POLYMERS
it doesn’t matter how many times you punch a pillow. it always takes the shock. I wish I wish I was like a punnet of milky feathers like a luminous orange mouldable jelly like a gym floor mat
IVES
RBENT
like the rubber tiles under swings at the playground like things exhibited at science fairs like a crash test dummy I wish I wish I wish it didn’t matter how many times you slice a lemon. it always cuts me up.
sleeping in silk for safety; a nest i only wanted to give you a name buying in suede to win a night’s rest dreams of glitter drip through my brain i, ever searching for this pearly sheen fairy dust stuck to the soles of my shoes take weight off my shoulders, lighten me but i’d rather shop than sit watching the news where do you keep it, this faraway song latex and lashings of shining faux fur i’m always wishing, drifting along unwrapping, unboxing, a shimmery blur i only wanted to warm up my feet cash in your cheque, spend all the dollar dressing correctly just / off the beat velvet and lace, lush from hem to the collar give me a shelter, tell me my star sign it’s on my tongue, oh it’s just on the tip of it i only ever wanted what was mine i only ever wanted what was mine i only ever wanted what was mine.
THE CAKE IS JUST FOR SHOW
BINSEY
i stood in that hollow once before you raised me well taught no feeling bound up in tape resurrected image projected on concrete wall dug out by shovel gouged by fist i’ve been away too long what made you cold? who made you all angles and darkness? just a scrawl running down cave wall, vowels open at the mouth windows, unhinged hanging white plastic wings on stucco birds what held you apart? pushed you together in the black? broken now into blue grey face burned out
of the picture standing on the other shore how do i swim to you through this water two whole feet deep? i stood in that hollow once before neon tubes flickering too far can’t reach bring me up to speed now; who did what, who died? i’ve been away too long fibreglass boards for eyes cheap salvage from bin bonfires gas leaks cards in wheel spokes deal after deal, loud, dressed in red, yellow, blue colours running the sun gone replaced by “THESE HAZARDS ARE-“ i stood in that hollow once before i’ve been away too long
LIKE A GOLDFISH IN A BOWL i am not stuck fast but i am glue-slow wading through wet cement circa 1970 i drink sky and what’s funny is if you build glass where it never stops raining life will be as grey as if you’d never bothered, and just used concrete
you have to see that shards are just as sharp when they fall from phone boxes as when they stand erect and pierce the roof of the world’s mouth “and this world is the one”, we shuddered as we sped towards it along the DLR tracks of the darkest timeline history taut as a tightrope
NIGHT-SEASON as stars reflect in this still pool my imagination-self declares a night-season of witch and ghoul a distant ghostly nightjar call through dripping branches in the mist as stars reflect in this still pool a heavy cloud, a velvet pall curls thickly in to covet, shroud a night-season of witch and ghoul
and spiders weave with frosted spool suspended in the stagnant air as stars reflect in this still pool the forest creaks, electric, cruel, as purple lightning cracks in two a night-season of witch and ghoul at last defences fray and fall; I give my mind to stranger things; as stars reflect in this still pool a night-season of witch and ghoul.
not pastel wonderlands full of mythical creatures, or nightmare dungeons full of my deepest darkest demons. grey places with no real direction or meaning, flipping past like the leaves of a discarded copy of the yellow pages lying in a railway siding. flat landscapes composed of high hedges on either side of silent country roads, long-crashed cars with the headlights punched out, a low distant unexplained roaring, ominous but strangely comforting. my dreams are s l o w . they form parts of my sub-conscious i never bother to explore during my waking hours; as i believe i’ve stated before, my dreams are not this weird. life is stranger. but dreams are moreish. ever wake up from chapter one and try and relax fast enough to catch chapter two?
DREAMSCAPES
you are a delicacy here. your silvery hide like a dusty mirror your fluttering lashes hide eyes like windows; hoping you are seen but not watched. save your appetite. you are a platinum fixture in a golden ceiling. alive but not moving, willing but not hopeful. no word is too long for you no heart too closed. they must pour boiling water down your throat.
REINDEER HEART SOUP
SOUR FRUITS x ray earth ray window to sea spray a waterfall in negative dust me with sherbet then tell me just what you want to do about it. i would like to say you are the same when seen through a frame but it shows me another layer. there is more to you than you would like me to know. when you tell me to go climb a tree I will; a pine; I will scrape all the skin
off my legs leave them raw purple-pink like meat like the underneath of you. you are true. you are stalactites, a tall salty wave in slow motion. crash down on me. you hide in the corners of yourself, eat an apple, viciously, so it makes your gums bleed makes your sweat squeeze through taste buds
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