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Wednesday 6 June 2012

Candi V. Auchterlonie-

Ghost Hands

I faltered at the ledge 
searching for the words
 
 
a map of how 
to follow or lead
 
 
the pages spilled over 
felt as though it was never endingly
 
 
white over white, the shades of it grew impossibly light, 
sheet by sheet
 
 
pinioned wings, angels 
in gulls
 
 
relativity,
 
 
the spilled honey milk of feathers 
of that pouring, letting down,
 
 
foreign, 
made even more foreign.
 
 
the squid ink furls like smoke 
the ought to have said words 
stinging the hived breast.
 
 
luggage lost, silk and pearls, 
gold bars,
 
 
wealth sinking under the salt  
weight of this pacific blue,
 
 
more,

 
meaning to be 
herring bone 
sharp
 
 
the man under the sea 
so thoughtfully
 
 
writing the world above at a desk 
some wreckage, stone dead, no,
 
 
he wasn't,  
only dormant.
 
 
Some lodestone, polarity 
collecting
 
 
to the eyes of him 
the metal of her.
 
 
nightmares, ghost hands 
hers,
 
 
are-  
mannequin dislocation
 
require re-assembly, the digits do.

 
type written love poems about april  
and death's blossoms fill the velvet green air
 
 
above the suspension 
of air over ocean,
 
 
impressing pregnancies, along the hills, some turn to stillborn 
grief, amber light over ashes, and yet from this, still comes some life 
some joy..
 
 

They wonder what it is like 
to touch that red, watch it leave 
where it left, sticky bittersweet, the love, the longing-
 
 
as the invisible ink does go, from the pages 
unwrought
 
 
flittering freely over that ledge 
this surely is all the pulped tree ever hoped for
 
 
in all those rings of unrippled stillness,  
a sea to carry it out a while...

 
...Startle the idle sway
 
some verve to kick again.
 
 
What waking awaits this? 
Was it just a dream all along...
 
 
Before the ledge.
 
 
Not under, not over, not in nor out 
still there, we're still there, impossibly 
delicately, still.
 

1 comment:

  1. oh how i felt this pouring..such engaging movement..unto stillness

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