The Introduction by Christine Murray to 'the king is dead' - Reuben Wooley (Oneiros Books)

songs of the redwet bones / the king is dead by Reuben Woolley

mountain poem

put

that idea here

safe. hold

on to it . your life

de-pends

on the next word

the king is dead is a Promethean gamble that pays off for Reuben Woolley, a book that seems to be absurdly minimalist in its expression manages to body-cage and reduce universal themes to striking symbols that set into balance the agonies of existence along with a patient longing for death. Death is a transformative process that has some inherent physical repellence. Its leavings are everywhere, and can destabilise one for moments, or for eternities,

panacea

death came early this morning

I know . I saw her

she came strafing

quiet houses . slashing

infants with shrapnel

gutting the sick with bayonets . she said

I am only here

invited . I limit damage

remove pain . I am

the final cure

The body lets us down all the time. It is the site of the vagaries of coming age that Yeats may have hinted at, although he hardly put the cartilage and the blood-bag into a poem. He put a tattered coat upon a stick and allowed us to derive what symbolic meaning we could from it.

Woolley alludes to medical processes and to bodily experience and perception at the elemental level of being. Necessity advises the theme and subtext of this book. the king is dead is imbued with physicality,

I collect

the redwet bones

of recent unbuilding.

from prey

Here, an Egyptian longing to fuck everything and transform here and now into a sacred and simple animal that does not have all these complex nerve-endings and crosswires. I think of Hughes’ dung beetle symbol,

Imagine

These bone-crushing mouths the mouths

That labour for the beetle

Who will roll her back into the sun.

From The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother, Ted Hughes (Birthday Letters, 1998)

Transformation from the plane of physicality is explored at an elemental level in the king is dead,

we eat

the hearts

of kings we kill . a

curious transformation . are

alchemical gold

black veils

become us well.

The eponymously titled series at the heart of the book explores the rage of human wastage and the necessity of physical and psychical transformation. There is a psychic economy to how mythos and ceremony are presented by Woolley,

& then

the final procession through all these changes

fast & lethal . a song for dawn

when the singer was elsewhere

wasting his stinking mouth

& from his back

fusing

the ritual firebird

in the sunshine crack

from the king is dead (iii)

Woolley discusses his approach to necessity and economy in the beautiful mountain poem, there is little left for the poet but the words that form images of phantasmagoric death queues and unearthly processions.

These are of little consequence when the stumbling bird, the carcass, the news-media act as revelators of the mystery. One need not look far because your death walks beside you at all times, best become his familiar, after all there is no eluding him/it  in the final moments of a life,

guides

my deaths sleep with me

I shall not forge · I

do not step lightly

through bones · I name

all the faces

they are my necessary

ghosts · they fall

like fruit sweet

plenty · putrid

beds of richness · I am not

guilty · I just

survive · just

breathe and sleep

This is an excellent debut from a writer that I have become familiar with on social media. I have read some of his poetry and collaborative work on different media strands. It's excellent news that Reuben Woolley now has a first collection. Expect more and interesting work from him over the coming years.

Christine Murray

#1

now’s dark is a clever

adjustment of the iris

to her not-lightness,

now’s dark is an anguish

of silhouette hidden in

tree’s whispering reed

now’s dark is a white

chair beneath a tree

moon-illumined and

somehow wrongly set

there. 

---

#2

now’s dark is a heap of mottled

silver-black

ashen in its not-light, it could be a

pile of ash,

it's the silver of silica dotted with

miniscule impurities, sunless.

---

#3

now’s dark the pearl

mother-of-pearl interior

is imagined in its streaks

of opalescent, it doesn’t

reflect anything on its surfaces

beneath the black skin of its

bone button, or chain, its

dullness is an indictment

of light’s absences, its cycles.

---

#4

now’s dark is the absence of light-ness

from the action of being / now’s dark is

the lament unvoiced none the less it has

turbulence and it will not stop crying even

the skin /

thinks bloomlight its nothing/ its nowhere

a slip of light illumines the secret shell

that pearly white/now’s dark negates it

---

#5

now’s dark has not caught a cobweb

canopy cornered and waving in slats

at a window that gives back black as

a matter of course and sometimes a

silvered face will float in window’s

mirror if the moon presents her globe

now’s dark shows tree-secrets in

silhouette if the eye adjusts enough.

Christine Murray

from bone silence

#1

the small curved-in feet of foxes are painted black

hidden behind the gnarled chain-clasp of a coatcollar

their small bodies (at least two) were winter-warmers

coat-enhancers.

testing the fur, I blow on the hairs and see beneath

the rich red-black/ a layer of downy white fur / I

twist and turn the fox fur in daylight catching its lit

its /rich.

there is a swatch of coppering satin sewn onto

the flat neckpiece

its all for show/ for delight/ I think the small feet

defeated

there are no fox heads on this piece,

the dangling feet are purely decorative.

#2

a red herring-bone skirt clasped with a bone button

red u-loop pulls in/ holds-to the purpling skirt silks

a scarlet silk underskirt/ maybe swish these animal

mementoes garnering my thighs/ descending to my

ankle-bones.

#3

a jar of buttons/ stray threads/ rattle my bones

they are coffined in a blacking tea-boy/ urn/

a green-scented-coffin for discarded things,

I take them out/ the bone buttons compete with

jade and red/with gold/ with black/ some cloth

covered / old herring print/ these buttons/ gilded

were for wintering coats/ elaborate dresses/ gold

sequinned to catch and disperse light/to bring the

eye up to the embonpoint or down to flashing skirts

there were shoes for dancing in. I threw all the shoes

into an old skip and kept the bone-reminders instead.

from skin silence

#1

shifting colours are discernible on the periphery

of my vision field

white is broken up

into a minutiae of amber/turquoise/shrives sun

spell of unconscious not-caught-thought

there and then light finds

a new skin of multiple hue

lizard-shuck/parts discarded/ shadow bought/paid

for/stepped out of/ and left there

an old dress or some jeans dissolve

water drops onto grass

shine momentarily like glass as if the

growth of a new skin is a matter of sun-shucking

without the pain /

the flay.

#2

bone works through my curved back bruising flesh

haltered at my neck

is almost scored in black and red/still the ridges will

melt /not scar/ those

those are hidden from view in places where no healing

will suffice the sun/ they

are coloured mauve/ satin

sheened/ rivulets/threads/a spider-web

no matter how many times the skin shucks

scars are present in its liquidity

its glistening sweat/ the violet ice of stitched skin

stays white(ened)

taut/ fresh as baby skin

while round it a moveable feast/ light shards

and new glittering/ new me

#3

old boning of the whalebone corset/ its rivets hold/

only illuminated in the dark

dark night/ moon-bled flakes lie in the black of soil/

my silica layers/ silica shed/ and

their dust/a dandruff/ shed already onto (...)

making me a comfort-bed in moss and root.

 

 

Christine Murray

I.

moon crashes through her phases

blacks revolving/ whirling on pages

one month bleeds into the next and

world brings meat as

spider silently kills / silently wraps

summer comes/ red threads heat the

stones/ birds weave soft mosses into

nest beds / fledglings fly to steal the

larder fruits

her weaving holed / she needs heart

things to patch and mend / the only

sound in this silent room is that of

frantic death cries / flies'

dying panic /her lardering is small /

it provides

II.

silence at the window

spider silences the fly

silent spider /silenced fly

the great tree ripples a nest,

it is full of the grappling of birds.

and when did it green when

did the leaf blossom out the

blossom drop off?

I did not notice it.

III.

I am heavy as weighted roof tile

tile weighted with black stones

stones rounded and polished

by sea are weighing me/down

I am heavy like weighted roof tile

roof tile weighted to bear a storm.

IV.

It has gotten so quiet

I do not know what to do

I am waiting /a dignity/

back curled to protect

from deranging from a

point

a point

here

I move to this point daily.

It isn’t roomy /it has rooms

 

 

V.

king is dead.

silence / now

yes / silence

now.

my next move

a chess move.

Christine Murray

Post-Interlude

‘Once

　

I heard him

he was washing the world,

unseen, nightlong, real.

　

One and infinite,

annihilated,

ied.

　

Light was. Salvation.’

-- Paul Celan

　

　

a gift of Bataille's poems

cock balls spurt penis-eye

　

rubbing up

a / vulva

　

his great brass bell ringin'

as he attempts to tongue

woman(s) soul/ at her hole

　

his own (...)

a transference of

the empty eye/ I

　

of

penis

into the i

of ied,

　

and cold through.

　

to arise

skin-to-skin

maybe,

　

but there is no more

blood - cock it !

--

Scene I : sphinx

　

cat properly addressed as riddle is a sphinx,

toothed warm fur claw (ed)

　

nobly in-dreaming he (of heads?)

or of mice maybe (and not silently)

　

lover not properly addressed

too dreams (elsewhere from here)

　

he dreams gold or red heads (emanant)

emanant: for their reddish auras are tumbrelled

he fingers red…

　

yes.

　

sphinx cat lies on my egyptian cottons,

I find the heads.

　

& my lover’s red

is a wish-tree

--

　

Scene 2 : the goldberg variations

　

that indestructible piano!

the undestroyed Goldbergs are playing (again)

　

wending their tones above a skatepark of bullet-glass

the melodies play, yes

　

I see that :

the romans had left their life-size eggs and urns below the city

my stitches pull and sting on the underside of my elbow (pain)

　

softening the blow here and here you tell me that

　

there is no stitching (as again) there was no magician -

he is always the hanged man (stasis)

　

or as you (may have) whispered, mercury -