The stained lips of luxury
And of beauty, indeed, of yes yes yes
I can forgive all: I can forgive any
Lies, enchantments,
When those lips are stained
With the bruises of your glass.
euphoria
foam and glorious chaos
sweeps me up in sweet desire and release
i am lost and dissolved
and tiny tiny tiny millions of stars
eufoamia,
sweep and scatter me
I am an ant nest of excitement
a coral spawn of joy
butterfly cluster of ecstasy
I swarm and whirl
and the air whistles over my many wings
eusporia
i am dispersed
i am the salt spray
the window’s storm of drops
silver mist
I bumped the candle reaching
for my glass and it wobbled
and sprayed wax across the
white soft wrist and set in
hard pink droplets and you thought
I must have been in pain
and I was
so I did it again.
The wrist went pink and red
and I peeled away the wax
to see underneath and then
I did it again.
The candle made me
wait and ache until
more liquid was ready and
yes I said spill it
and I made you take
the wrist and the candle
and do it again.
Learning scars backwards:
I have wasted candles
without using them
for all I should.
Do it again.
We stayed in a cabin, rustic
meaning shaby and fell into
the kind of sex that comes
when you need to generate heat,
meaning love. The cockatoos
picked at the flyscreens and
shrieked at us but did not
fly. We walked tracks and
found them green and silver; we saw
the city and found it grey;
the sheets were damp when
we got back and we made
soup and slept on the
couch instead, wrapped in love
meaning sex. The smell of
wet waratah came through
the gap under the door.
Tadpole kick and whip;
Tadpole tail squirm;
Lushly housed in caviar;
Black and beating sperm.
Break down the gel;
Break through the sac;
Push away the rich soft cell;
And to the chill stream take;
Surrender the given;
Surrender to chaotic pull;
Learn the art of turbulence;
Grow quick strong and full;
Tadpole kick and buck;
Tadpole crawl and squirm;
Bend the waters to your aim;
Thrive in currents’ churn.
I delight in used birds’ nests,
Discarded cicadas
Anthills and dropped wasps’ paper combs.
A lone feather discarded and left on the lawn.
A tuft of wool on the sharp fence torn.
I love river round rocks,
And stones with shards of quartz;
The smooth dry fishbones on the beach,
And broken crab claws.
I, grazing, follow the prints left by
The activity and scattering fluster
Of life animalian/avian;
Of forces erosive/aquatic;
I sniff the air and marvel.
Nature’s offcasts, scraps and shells
Dispersed disparate treasures; my show-and-tell.
Poor punctuation does not a poet make,
Nor clay-stained fingers a sculptor;
Metaphors are not always literature,
Critics and authors may both mistake.
So though I grasp both sonnet and rhyme,
I cannot thus claim fellowship
With lofty scribes or howling bards
And voices that transcend time.
And I haven’t found any thumbprint divine
Neither halo, talisman nor scar;
That sanctifies my right to write
And makes effortless my practice lines.
I have neither ecstasies nor visions,
Just a mass-produced pen and ticking mind,
And an occasional string of words glows for me:
Enforcing the addiction of wordy ambitions.
She was appalled by the sunset:
It meant the end of working hours,
Time to down-tools, up-toes, settle in,
Rest, commune, restore, repower.
But how, doing so, would she show
Just how useful she could be?
How was she to prove to all
Her presence necessary?
And so she came to dread the close
Of the day’s task tickbox roster,
As though her family might suspect
Her essential status an imposter.
Convinced her weighable value lay
Entirely in how much she did each day.
I wondered, lonely as a n00b
that floats upon the interface
and worried o’er the many risks
that riddle the perilous intertubes.
(posted from emacs)
There has been a bit of silence around the Crayons lately: around moving house, grieving for a friend and undergoing some other life challenges, poetry has been nudged to one side. It has been disappointing and frustrating for me to do so, but I would like to reassure you that I have not lost sight of poetry, nor have I stopped thinking of it or seeing it around me. But my time has been constrained, and rather than slap up poor quality stuff with my nom de blog on it, I would rather take some time away from the poetry schedule and come back refreshed and ready to keep going. I’ve got some new ideas about where I want to take the Crayons over the next year or two, and I’m excited about sharing them. Just give me a week or two.
See you in July!
