new geometry by Michael Hobbs

new geometry

Chair

Forgetful in the shadow, falling

across my shoulder,

from the remains of a villa in Tivoli,

while waiting for chance

to unlock a door,

I've evolved into a stack of bones

soaking up electric light.

Patched into a horse-hair chair,

I can see the approach of autumn

gathered in a column of clouds

never quite escaping

the boundaries of this ceiling.

The Road

A glade of shadow

you walk through but

arrive nowhere.

An indecipherable

space of walling

too concentric

for words. Beyond

we hold our breath in

a scaffold

glade of chevron

shadows held

up at bay.

Wet Days

Wet days. As empty as sky.

A solitary clambering

hide-and-seek over

the timber stacks on the quay.

A slime of seaweed over

my jeans, in tears

I wade homeward

without finding my way.

Full of school

rigors, I embrace

no one,

walk through deserted

streets, catch up

on my own, fall

into a blue,

defenceless day.

Branching

Across a drowsy even plane of grass

grazing on dream-time pheromones

caught on the tips of leaves,

hover-flies

hunt.

Browsed by information retrieval

a machine - unable to think

for itself - will unearth leads

plugged

straight to ground

exposing a litter of hardware,

a collection of miniature catastrophes

lost to some future regret.

Cobbled Path

We move forward - we think

of a path to somewhere.

Not a dividing wall

ahead of us,

breaking our hearts

in two

over which way holds

our best chance.

It's comfortable enough,

reaching up

to the solid stone.

Warmed by the sun,

we forget, spend too much

time here,

and become parched.

Can we see a way

over

further down the side,

or is that simply perspective.

Either way seems to curve.

The lines stretch backwards.

Bone Tree

Scoured knee bone,

exposed,

shocked by light

inside its gaping skin,

fearing movement,

blanching

dyed cotton,

holding back tidal air,

and white death,

freezing

a life time

inside a wedge of night.

Secret Garden

It's no more than a narrow entrance

to a secret garden,

inviting me to view a glade of

silence.

But step over the hesitation

and I'm scratched, crouched down,

nestled in brambles, unable to

move.

Like a child falling off a raft

into deep water,

thrashing, urgently in need of

air.

I ram forward against the ruin

of my thoughts,

brutish loss of love, brutish envy,

lose sight

of a way, lose grace. Holding only

frenzy and self-loathing.

I stamp out into a dead end of

vegetation,

only to move back into the ripped

undergrowth

to find my spectacles, my safety,

the well-worn field.

New Geometry

We seek the answers

swallowed whole

when we were new.

How we wound up the flight

of green birds,

bound up the geometry

of crumpled paper.

Puzzle

The man upstairs

voicing his concern

has again turned out

the crux of his aggrievement;

the right to reply

spilling his empty room

down over the rim

of our ears

onto the black

and white squares

of the crossword

at our table.

Fallen Angels

Several weeks ago I opened a pale blue map

of the outlying area.

With my rucksack and a few belongings

I deserted the city

to try and find objects of light.

I soon grew tired

and resolved to leave things

as they were. Only then

did the stones around me

become white hot.

I became

a vast flock of birds;

flying, wading,

flowing for days.

A path forward followed by another.

I lost sight of land

scattering species below me,

staggered, varied.

At first

we were almost identical,

standing on the high ground

out of the water.

But one species grew

to such large numbers

that they darkened the sun.

Empty Room

We have difficulty

in talking.

We should make things

more clear.

In the summer we said nothing

like coming across an empty room.

I washed away the floor

so that I could choose

this room

to be with you. I lay down

and dreamt

that my eyes

were two fishes. I awoke

and saw pools of water.

Around us

walls change.

In between

they collapse into daylight.

Book of Endings

The view from this room

where I write

these last lines -

a straight road

drenched with black diesel,

a flat scar-line.

Around our special place

pages now litter the site.

Smooth flowing drive -

downstream

dead fish look white

like night clouds

bathed endlessly

in our dark spill.

Only dead roads

crossing here

reveal the truth of this view

as I leave this night

to stumble on metal ground

where there is no air,

no tree, no light.

Outside In !

A group of trees

has shed dark

ovoid cones.

Joined in pairs

to a black twig,

each cone has split apart

to become a cluster

of tiny wooden leaves.

She gathers

some into a plastic

carrier bag,

ripping up patches of grass

and needles,

to sprinkle

earth

over her

living-room floor.

Buddha's Smile

Symmetrical folds

carved on a jet black

Buddha

describe a draped gown

fastened by his hand.

Perhaps now

his only possession,

as he has given his smile

to me.

Boy Abruptly Awoken

Boy abruptly awoken

in the world. Lop-

sided hand-

painted

photograph exposed with the sun

in my eyes.

Damp asthma by

dark rooms.

The house next door

during the war. Attacked

each night, a tight chest

calls cloy

in the trenches

my father worked outside. My needs,

my mother worked inside.

Boundaries set by the frozen

lavatory, dank

with spiders; the rotting front-

room floor; the bedroom

fleas, locked

my shoulders round, shielding.

bombed

! !

Pinched, like so many,

I found it difficult

to imagine colour

beyond

wet days.

Hiding Places

Clasping the others

in silence

he hid under the quayside

tarpaulin, while the last boy

clambered over the timber

stacks,

seeking the same comfort.

Instead of school,

hidden

and curled up under a blue sky

he lay in a cut away

on top of a ziggurat !

bricks

cradling himself.

So much dust

shocked

his skin as much as the cold floor

under the bed. He hid as the girl

was slapped around. Still catching

her breath

she later helped him to dress.

He was confined

against the machine

which packed up his meanings

into bleached white

boxes

leaving only brief daydreams.

In a dream

he cupped his hands

to drink again

of the refectory wall in the abbey ruins,

the unspoilt carpets

of grass,

the purifying wellspring.

Playtime

He is careless

of my whereabouts. Come to nothing

behind a false acacia,

my house is derelict to him,

as he broods intently over a flat stone.

We both hear the distant road

drilling, the shrill playground voices

and the boy's own blunt mimicry

of machine-gun fire

(an interminable annex

of terrorist activity)

over the dislodged

stones of my rockery,

where light,

dipped in shallow water,

has formed a spectrum

inside a smooth white shell.

michael hobbs