Sunday 16 June 2013

Fragment #18



le miroir avance
son reflet danse
son ventre en cadence
et les yeux larmoyants

hier sentait la romance
hui pue le rance
comblée la béance
seuls ses petits seins saillants

un souffle en dormance
insouciant et souciante
pleure en silence
et le miroir tressaillant

musique fulgurance
flash d'iridescences
bientôt le fer de lance
dans son ventre tournoyant

Fragment #47



Tout en nuance, sous un paquet de nerfs,
roulés en boule et tout bien chiffonnés,
on ne croirait pas un valétudinaire
Qui fait à sa camarde un beau pied-de-nez.
 

Anon



clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
rhythmical lameness
human vagueness
no one knows
not a single one
not one knows
who's this one
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
now hitting the pavement
then a worthy savant
when he was born
he didn't choose
when he was born
to turn to booze
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
mordant randomness
translucent humanness
now a piddling anonymous
no more joy than what chance allows
now a piddling anonymous
shadow walking among shadows
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
out-and-out tiredness
convenient emptiness
like bearing a loss
the weight of the earth
like bearing a cross
which has lost is worth
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk
clonk, clonk, clonkclonk

Saturday 15 June 2013

PJ Harvey - When Under Ether






The ceiling is moving
Moving in time
Like a conveyor belt
Above my eyes


When under ether
The mind comes alive
But conscious of nothing
But the will to survive

I lay on the bed
Waist down undressed
Look up at the ceiling
Feeling happiness

Human kindness

The woman beside me
Is holding my hand
I point at the ceiling
She smiles, so kind

Something's inside me
Unborn and unblessed
Disappears in the ether
This world to the next
Disappears in the ether
One world to the next

Human kindness


NB (19.06.13) I just came across this line: "Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious  but conscious of nothing -" TS Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker III, 22. Quite an eye-opener, come to think of it.

Spilt milk



spilling the quotidian like one spills milk

the attrite and the contrite like a rubik's cube
shelved as proof of one's incapabilities

the banal and cliché rostrumed as delicacies

the usual ballyhoo over a handful of pubes
the general vagueness over those who bilk

the burmese and thai kids can now play with hashtags
while we must suffer the low men's contumelies
while wallow in slouchy dough old shallow hags
on glossy sensationals in lurid, photoshopped poses

the thought struck me this morn when like silk
over the table ran a dazzling dash of spilt milk

Friday 14 June 2013

Reveller



I master of the revels I wallow in devilry
I paint the town red with my blood
I dead-man I strut with gauche raillery
I choke on a tightly-spun tie-knot.
I devil-of-a-man I spit bloodclots
And die I die fall I fall with a loud thud.

Dire l'autre ment


« Quelle idée, de demander à un poète ce qu’il a voulu dire ? Et n’est-il pas évident que s’il est seul à ne pouvoir l’expliquer, c’est parce qu’il ne peut le dire autrement qu’il ne l’a dit (sinon sans doute l’aurait-il dit d’une autre façon) ? »

Francis Ponge, poète, in Méthodes (1988)

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Spectator-in-the-round



Run-of-the-mill characters from a worse play
Strut histrionically the ironic stage,
Iconic dumbness in stilettoed fancy-dress,
Made-up down to their pared toenails,
The farcical merry-andrews meander
Under the merrier patronage of ridicule.
Their burlesque antics have everyone chortle but I –
My mind's foibles invisible until then,
Until they uttered their pragmatic ineptitudes
Sucked from the paunchy thespian cow's udders.
I, being the only spectator reeling at the centre
Of this immense rostrum,
Look rather like the simpleton,
Quite impervious to their dramatic talent.
I am quite the Aunt Sally really,
Sullied by their sallies,
Quite the middle-of-the-road laughingstock,
The stock-in-trade jack-of-no-trade
That sends the frolicking cartwheelers
Rolling in the aisles – boy what a keeler!

Take me for a ride, jocular jokey jockeys,
For this slapstick world never is as wacky
As when you take turns to make it tacky!

Don't stop the marring-go-round,
We're having so much fun...
I promise that soon
With a red schnoz I'll return
And cook up my own puns.
In the meantime, my belovèd goons,
the shenanigans must resound!

Right is might



I know what I did to deserve this but the penalty
methinks is too high for such a trivial felony.
Banishment is much too harsh.
Harassment indeed's too rash.
E'en though punishment is behovely,
why going as far as calumny?
Man hastens to judge the teacher
when he fancies himself the preacher,
whilst he is nothing but the barnburner,
the barrister, the jury and the executioner.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Phoenix



The ripples people cause draw
riddles in the sand of our soul

Like a torch branding a red gulch in the hours

Some people set alight our world
and watch it burn and walk away

Like a runaway boy affronting the darkness
wrestling the man within mano a mano

Lighting his mind with a singeing fire
no sea can quench no spirit can quell

For this inferno birthed a sandglass

Kick the dust the ashes of those we once were
Rise like a phoenix and burn burn burn

thirty thousand people

The day was torn and grim birds yet began to sing as if they knew nothing’s eternal and old gives way to new that man, one day, will fall t...