Brief
History
Tumble of wings. The
broken bird
faces nothing. Is a blamming of shoulders against panes,
wings, tail, bunched to the heart's bursting force;
a mop of black feathers in which blood fists and scrubs
and fists
against pain.
Afterwards you lift the
bird and its eye's sealed
as if resigned to your weakness. As if resisting
the stillness which opens like glass to show
yellow silk creased at the lid, blare of blood on a beak.
Pull the flick-flack stretch of a wing and let it go.
From: "Hotel
Casino" (Aark Arts 2004)
The Secret Flowers
Line opening its
testament
its urgent revelation.
In the astonished street
your white shirt's a sail folded by wind
your face bright as text
behind the fountain
- white invisible letters
X
fragments -
polished winter branches
spring
rosettes bouquets frilled ribbons of here
to crowd your chest.
Your petalled throat.
Pull back the curtain:
hot-mouthed poppies
ingress of breeze.
Far-off lament odour of
grass
bending.
The meaning of flowers is
form
is outward movement
moving out of nothing
to nothing.
Cell added
to radiant cell.
Touch
the hammock of membrane
flexing glimmering
fish-belly
heart-fist
starting
X marks the spot
day-moon hangs in the
corridor window
agape
a line flowers in loops and serifs.
And eyes
violet roses
press against me
in your hands in darkness
eyes are
crushed
night moths among the curtains
among the ceiling-shadows.
Turning back white
lifted lips
of pavement
meeting the intimate
current
of what-is.
The sexed, secret,
lived-in face
opening with meaning
opening in light
in darkness
under the luminous sheet
the underworld where wild
flowers grow.
Patiently
I enumerate you: skin
hair nails
your eyes' lit jelly
also the way your bones and lipid organs turn
towards themselves towards embrace.
Here it is, here is the
metal bolus.
Trees flower in your
face,
their shadows are fingers.
Darkness, conturbas me.
Turning back
the café door a shutter
falling
lights slide
bitter tongues of coffee falling silent
your eyes hide themselves
under leaves.
Outside
the grotesque
beautiful city.
My thief hand under your lapel:
space by space
the inchoate unknown
slowing to presence.
Daisy-heart.
Word branches to word.
Read my palm:
a life
changing itself under your eyes
daisy-chain.
Your sigh
comes from far away in the Caucasus.
Wind rushing across a
continent.
Slowly, slowly
the inward which is
outward
turns itself towards us.
Touch me.
Light rushing over the
globe.
In the window
lindens swaying
sweet rind on darkness
streetlights in soft places darkness
between trees
your thumb a hook in my
mouth
your mouth squeezing my lip
till it loses itself
till my mouth blurs
conturbas me.
In the compartment with
its rattling door an attendant
brought sweet cold coffee
on a polished tray.
Turning
in the dark room your
nipples
concentrations of darkness
shrink
flex
starfish crawl your
chest.
When I bite them they tighten
fish-star-buds.
Somewhere a wardrobe door
slams
undressing you is opening
light, darkness,
each time newly shocking. I begin to sweat.
I want -
You stroke the sensitive
arch
of my thighs they open
like a vowel
turning
your eyes under their
lashes
entirely black
my breasts stretched and tender
setting the white
enormous sheet
flying
when I lean over you
your lower lids rise over your eyes
your arms stretch out on the mattress
to hold it back
to topple forward.
I can't -
smelling the private
metal smell of wanting
hear me breathe
in the new quiet
day sucking itself back
from us
Where are
you?
and
your too-big thumb rubs my belly-button
I swallow
my finger sliding along
the hidden skin
under your jaw
at the end of a hotel
corridor
blind thumb
in belly button's rubbed daisy
all day on the boulevard
catching the gut strings
and arches of my stomach
sobbing
X
white angel of the sheets
river-fluck
your lips squeezing my
ear are small soft animals
your breath a warm finger circles my ear
your eyes smelling me
in the room gone too
heavy
bruise-shadow of curtains
as I turn my face
struggling the big
many-headed thing
nipples' bruising pebbles
growing in our arms
your honey-jar arse
growing out our arms
loaves of your buttocks
out of and through our bodies
labouring
the hundred flights of
sky deep humming blue your hair licked with heat
your hands grip my waist runway smudged with roofs and
streetlights
sky above and below us pale as bone, as ash, as snow,
colour leaving your mouth
and
into the collapsing
in-roaring room
and
through rooms beds
windows open or shut
through days opening closing like desert dunes
like doors
water
through the long neutral
corridor
the mind's eye
that perfect flower
yearning black-tongue stamen
touching
with our spread hands the
key
its silver tail flickers.
The room's dark.
(From "The
Distance Between Us", forthcoming from Seren,
2005. An earlier version of this poem appeared in
Poetry London, Autumn 2003.)
