Before the Horoscope Nine planets juggle me on cusps And boil flood-chemistry to speed me. Will blows from Geminian ash, Sinks through quicksilver. Out-sensed, earth and fire are lit; Or fears invert that gaunt imminence Thrust all into the gulf. Beyond sear fuller flames – Tempered, reserved, Approved as solid, then abhorred As dark absorption in one […]
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Checkpoint Lurching, they bluster – ghouls into the chasm. Fierce lava, blowing, nullifies their fall And dissipates harsh gravity’s concussion, Forces a seething screen of phoenix cowardice, Leaping to swell Into a fresh, mendacious crust, Tripping and throttling the led Into a smear upon pure metamorphic beauty. The skeleton’s jaws yawn apart; A stranded mountaineer was frozen At his prime […]
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Mid-Life So much happened; So much didn’t – So nice to remember; So painful to recall Now nothing is all, The power to recall Is an anaesthetic – Past strength Is pathetic. In the middle, What’s kept still here What was and is gone, What never was – All levelled. All comes to ground, abrades, That’s […]
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Connections Sheen caps ground rails Soaking harsh sleepers To rattle mud-flounced trains. Drizzle dusts, Grinding against itself, Sparking the tracks’ sheen With casual exasperation; Blinding the gravel Kicking in panic Against the basalt of its being. The lifeline Brine polishes ground cliffs, Moss-padded in their cavities, The waves of muscle buffet, Abrade the penciled rocks, Cowl […]
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Ever River Prime time, swallowed whole Could the universe, just once Have poured itself into a molecule So that, thereafter, Nothing could flow? Never to suckle a broken circuit For sparking life; Never split by caesarean pangs Of primal punctures. Black hole never thinned to liquid Boiling mud foundation pustules Turning all to gas. All words now […]
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Early to Rise In vigour, he did the splits in freedom In free vigour, he did the splits Freely, he did the splits in vigour, With vigour, he did the splits freely Vigorously, he did the free splits – He split vigorously free Between house block and office block Office and blockhouse Real bouncing squeezed inside happy reason. […]
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Tangled Drawing the cross slices tramline nuggets, Sizing out torture’s cavity, Wrenching the hopeful – slashes, threads all. The anchor is split, tossed on a shroud, The elements burgeoning right. The chain is rusted, marking starfish, Shakes in a ticking melody. Calipers rented, mayhem dented, Cholesterol’s bulb fouls the maggots away; All pupae are gelled, numb triplets they […]
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Complacency You had the world eat from your hand And thought you had it made To fade into your fantasies. Nobody came to put you down, And so you never rose; You smiled and sang in blindness And your wine glass sweetly flattered you. Supremely bored, And worshipping the needs that passed you by You paused, to consult […]
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Alchemist Sing, earth-captured starlight Purest light to touch the earth Purest light to flow through day and night To flood our sense-zone; Sing through my blinking tubes and phials, All potions, never poured; Yet all suffused in afterthought. My litmus-jewels, made one by burning faces, turning suns, That charred the fixed eye, the rooted touch. Bodies I gel, not cruelly […]
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Work out of Progress I suppose it must all go on indefinitely – Just when I thought it had all been played out, All become superfluous. I am at the stage of universal discarding; I suppose that many people see, through several decades, What I pushed aside in a matter of months. Discarding is basic to life: […]
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