Saturday 30 July 2011

Strata


Vast bands of sky and sea and sand

layered like rock strata,

the sand’s seaweed veined skin

pulled tight by wind, the sea


welded flat to the shoreline;

white crested waves crumble

chalk into flint grey water,


granite clouds press down hard

enough to sharpen a blade on.

This landscape runs through me

as I run through it, crack it


open and you’ll find me there,

a seam of something different

caught between it’s layers.

Breath

Your breath like snowflakes

coming from your mouth,

as though it were the only thing

you could dream about after

so many days of white horizons.


In the morning I wake before you, chilled,

to see it still uncurl from your lungs,

my talisman, my lucky charm,

my prayer beads I count one by one,

as they rise into the morning air.

Train Ride

The train moves like a diving bell

through a sea of night.

Cities luminous shoals of distant fish,

until all fades in the depths,


the world closes in,

the window shows only my reflected face

orange under neon light.


The train sways suddenly

moves the centre of myself,

away from myself,

unchained to rails or seat

I’m thrown back into remembering


that last hour of the journey home,

when eyelids eggshell brittle with tiredness

closed against harsh amber light.


The carriage a decompression chamber

coming slowly up from the depths of us,

but never slowly enough,


so that when I arrived I still had the bends.

The pressure of your absence

bubbling in my ears and veins.


Now every train ride sounds

the Morse code of our embryonic

love within the rail’s clack.

New Honey

Bees swarm the hive drowning

the skin’s honeycomb in sticky sweetness,


a pulse flutters its wings at my wrist,

dances figures of eight around my heart.


A new honey hums upon my tongue,

tastes of strange moors are on my lips.

Verdigris I

I remember the time

he came out of the woods

with the hares in his hand,

casually, as though they were

a pair of gloves, blood stained.


The summer silence

bloomed on everything,

a verdigris that rusted shut

the clamor of my thoughts,

I no longer recognized myself,

the way the lines on my face

softened around him.


My life before obscured

like the coin that grew green

in my pocket, unspent, useless,

the face on it blurring

beyond recognition.


There was no future, no past,

just this; the time he came out

of the woods, handed me this gift.

something we both understood.


Love; a currency

I had never spoken before, or since heard.

Snake


I recognise your kind

snake dry cold blooded

but warm to the touch


knew your nature was change

a long muscle smooth as breath

rippling time along its back


the mist from my mouth rises

to join yours: two tails

curling in the frozen air.

Allotropes


We are carbon based life forms

in different allotropes.

Insight is to breathe in air

and breath out diamonds,


cold and sharp in the chest,

the future scratching raw

against the insides of the present.


I have a talent for it,

seeing what people will become,

how the weight of pressure and time

will form the diamond in some

leaving others to sleep on unchanged