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Saturday, 7 June 2014

D M Mitchell (Dave Mitchell)

Untitled--(Fragment)

voices coming from inside people walked into mineral deposits walls pulsated like flesh they that admitted only the oppressive purple glow from the black were dependent on the ambient feel of evil and aggravated sun

 it crawled and writhed above dimly glimpsed through the frenzy of 
overwrought minds seeking the furthest sin


filthy glass


about forty feet below him moved figures partially visible he watched with the shameless innocence of one whose mind from this altitude. . . . mercifully


most of them were resilient and free unbowed by the superimposed terrific weight were at least semi-human moving in lines and columns of moral theory


one simple unconscionable coition was far more others were too large incomplete or otherwise malformed to be satisfactory he was convinced than the utmost paroxysm of these human


he pulled back, suddenly shocked by something he’d seen things introverted and tortured by their own conceptualization of evil which he thought had also spotted him he edged soul said to me you are hanging up your misery


round the gallery away from it into a long corridor but that peg it belongs to me brother as long as of steel and glass glowing slightly with twilight's last gleaming


you burn you belong to life you say you want


he could feel something bearing down on him a feeling with you in the beyond forget the beyond


expectation and apprehension crawling from the base of his flesh to rest and thus reach the beyond in spine


a low droning growing with the realisation that this  stillness shall  alight here thrust aside all inside someone's or something's head the interstices of west but desire that thou mayest attain the west when thy floors landings balconies whose geometry mirrored some internal spinal architecture


faceless body goes to earth so that i may alight after thou forms glided silently past eye-like windows in abstract postures of art dead upon you


then will we make united sexual abandon a large reptilian form twined in and out an abode together we shall form the abode


he stopped his attention of the superstructure semi-tangible and flickering dissolving into the brickwork caught by an object within an alcove shrouded in shadows like a blurred sepia photograph


these were embodied memories cast by a flickering torch


walking closer emotions welled up prehistoric states externalised as will disclaim the thing apparently oblivious of his presence


every now you ibadan, running splash of rust silence and then he could catch red flashes of its lips cabin the twirling mountains of the river and the tongue


from its increased grunts of satisfaction it was cool waters overhung with mist cast your bangles evident that it was nearing the orifice that was its/your presence i rediscovered your name and came into your objective


i consume the true source in sustaining the shadow


arms it is dark now and grave


at last he woke the other hungry for torment deeper than death i destroy reached the corridor and turned the handle


he couldn't bring the soul in its husk thus you will never arrive


endure himself to look back along the rows of lost soulless my soul assist in the creation of my divine heir orifices waiting concealed for the next unsuspecting passer-by


was this he will present the offering rising from the tomb on the the only purpose of their half-existence  if so then day of burial


he will install himself in everlastingness though womanish how much of it must remain merely an absence


the next head was tilted in his direction she no more recognized chamber was empty and lit only by a sputtering neon tube for what he was than if he had been overhead.


for the first time since waking could hear a wooden thing the whites of her eyes alone were noises from the main body of the building


he realised visible so that they were like the blind stony eyes at last where he was trapped it was not of a statue.


the thing went further other procedures were resorted who was dreaming but somebody else he had unwittingly walked to


various sexual processes were illustrated which men corrupted  into somebody else's dream but whose


the building was slippery their inhibitions have dreamed vilely of for long ages but inconsistent like an escher drawing the further on have never tried


they dare to think them only walked the bigger and more confusing it became beyond the flickering their most secret most contaminated thoughts


he was interested but room was a balcony overlooking an impossibly huge assembly-hall which not enthralled any sense of sin


these were stretched upward to a vaulted baroque space from its axis a giant crawling centipede reared he ran from the wing into the bowels of the bulk


in the shadow of its base were two rotundities building half fancied that he heard clumsy feet trudging black candles burnt their flames steadily and fiercely in the after him as he searched


eventually he stood at stifled air inverted crosses lined the altar rails


what my soul the end of a corridor hung about with black drapes said to me cast complaint upon the peg


Thursday, 5 June 2014

Carol Shillibeer

before the storm breaks

worry and the screaming / of gull chicks, it's that 20 / minutes before / the sun is lost that cures / the sweet dying of broken buds / rising wind drives / the homeless men under the railway bridge / toss and titter of empty cans and old chip bags / pink & blue ink of / faded civilizations / green-shoed child aloft a broken / bike / missing wheel an absent halo / rain-jacket unzipped and / the clack of bottles / bottle-pickers trading the final / fragrance of an empty for coin / under the darkening day / 3 minutes to wonder and weather's rupture / under-bridge women cradle / the unseen future / stored below / stone / and black mountain air towing rain through / a gouged sky / like blue tarps pinned around shopping carts / leaky like old stories too often told / unacknowledged in the annals / time itself a solar uncertainty / my car still has all 4 doors / a dry sleeping bag and in / the deluge with its winds / t minus 1 / the garbage lifts off and the living / hunker down

---

bone song

Narrow asphalt hot, black, sugar tar twists
pulled out across the land, slide down
all the way to the river. Steering hands wet,
heat waves crashed by roaring tires,
and the stone walls, the sere canyon
rising like a frozen flood
of stone bone birds on the wing singing.

Under the river, old villages flood.
Down there, stones dam-drowned
familial relics & water rushing through
eroding sculpted smiles & bird wings
spread in lithic flight
—between the dams,
a string of temporary lakes,
under the lakes,
a river, &
under this, old homes still
with enough life to seek.
—when an osprey breaks the river,
talons fish, hunting cracks the seal of history;
liquid songs spray, fin-out in glistening drops,
—calling.

Grit in skin creases driving me down to the river,
driving, round & round, down to the river.

the long breath
of an ice age, the future
day when the dams fall & the lakes
return to a river

Hissing air in the open window,
play of tire & beaten down black road,
bounce of air from car to canyon—

then or when
—stones will rise up to the blue
& speak what remains of their faces;
me, long drowned, under death's stone,
the thing to be hoped
—that what remains of my body in either awe or desire,

bone's song will be pulled,
arcing in a silver fish flash through the water's surface
& back, blue, into the winging air
---

dream contemplation_# 47_shelter

Raging for justice, black bears die.
Their skins burn at the dump & I find shelter
in the plume of greasy smoke. Kittens in a plastic bag;
remains of the bear red the growing dark.
Papers, curling into brown leaves, lose their hold on words.

The alphabet burns off, ghosting into the bear's smoke.
I found two of the cats still alive;
shelter in the last cats' cries;
claws flex for high-wired crows.
I collect black feathers. Free of the wing, they fall.

Mountains breathe into day,
green squeals augur plant uprisings. And yet,
there will be no justice.
A dog shot, then left for dead in the ploughed field.
I find shelter in the threshing rage.

Mountains walk into night;
cougar's eat the slow serenade of human sight.
Guns hold heat, black-powdered memory.
You: the pentacle of purple-and-yellow across her face;
the bovine lowing of a stack of cars on fire.

I can find shelter in this world. Mangoes bright:
the morning in a grocer's wooden bin.
The late rising of winter's pale sun. The dead left
their eyes, things seen, littering the aureate day.

This is my existence. The dead drag themselves
toward the future. Expectations burn
along the sky's rim. They look like stars.

Finally unburdened of time,
corpses stumble into a waiting crouch.
The present will return & I am not afraid;
I can find shelter in the coming night.

A dog shot and left for dead.
I can feed you burnt-out sentences, scorched and polluted words;
it will be the weight of burning skins that measures us
against evolution's night. I find shelter in the coming night.

(after Icon of Coil)

---

BlueQueen to Sisyphus 4

God, like the self a lapis petal hung
on the flowered necklace of body's longing;
small round cabochon-glisten, linked
with twisted threads, golden narrative,
and in that rebirthing into monstrous
what was simply the body's cerulean desire,
stringing bright beads of knowledge
as it sweeps across earth's plain of things.

The mind has mistaken itself
as the polar star, mistranslated,
bead bobbled blue-petaled bright
for some deep and universal heart.
This incipient tragedy, claimed
universal interiority, that gem lazuli,
now the unbearable somatic rock,
our up-endlessly, hill of it.

How does such a capitulation occur?
A small thing in origin,
but that blue-longing turned a flowered blade,
a deep debt out of which we often
cannot climb. Sisyphus' avaricious tragedy:

What was once a small blue bead hung
at the ear; on the Queen's throat—
in the harsh breath of a body
beyond its limits, thiozonide and ripened curves,
lazuli, by nature, is the material engulfing of the blue
—a small rock, it is the dark mirroring,
offered to us from those god-named depths.

Attended in ardour and jealousy
by the bright rounds of solar narrative,
twined by leaden desire and Corinthian inhospitality,
festivities of human life drape,
the primping of hill's ridge with boulders,
virtual territory claimed in aid of spiritual necessity.

Oh, to let go, and stone shatter, ultramarine,
to carry instead, a single blue bead
strung on one ear, the other to bear
the memory of Sisyphus' laboured breathing.


Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Reuben Woolley


re(:/-) birth

if only there were
some last reckoning , a slashed
throat , a full
blood offering
                        we're
trying . oh gods
we're trying for extinction
we set the seas on fire
crack the crust
                        a final
caesarean , stillborn
& flaming . it comes
in bones , asking for delivery



---


see

see me young
see me old
see me

I dream myself into being
the logic of chance

*  *  *

we invent words
to fill the spaces . to silence
the rattle . but at night
there are still shadows , moving
into corners , hiding behind chairs

*  * *

'm only following
only trying , only
drowning between
the seconds

twice under
and hoping for the final pull

* * *

no regrets , no complaints
we have come through
we are perfect
wordless

* * *

surrounded by stories
walking clothed , stiff
or stumbling
ragged or posh . misread
or simply misunderstood

the lice in the skull

I shall spread my seed
in fertile lands

listen to the earth laugh



---


here

is an empty
vastness . it deeply
unsatisfies , bloodless
& fleshless . coming
from it we do not move
                  demands
understanding , i-
dentification where
dying lasts a life
but this I
is not sufficient
to see no fences . it
is a description
a perfect loneliness

Sunday, 1 June 2014

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.