White steps fail above the plane the minute you rise
imminent, thick fog around the wings, don head-set, blinkers
while I pace and turn at interior’s remains; the sway
of warehouse postures could be
typed shadows, retreating data, dancing
And event. Intimate
as a corpse, I bear resemblance. The crook in my neck press’d
’gainst hardwood’s bronze plate To the memory of. . . Who
frequented this. . . clasping duration by the nape of a caress
Men ascend clumsily on the device by those tight-hooded lips
where I lay in draft last bathroom night, while you slept on
under borrowed blankets, a fly-trap Cleopatra. Some share
scrambled pride, liking them, but not like them. Soon you’ll be
little more than tresses
No bottomless Bloody Marys to paddle sore
unsure what balance includes silicic folds of herbal evenings
and disarrangement left penetrable. The sea-green waltz
pallid features that clutter the air about us, tranquillise the subject of
winter threats as if skin gives a lifetime performance on the receiver
blunt end to tarsal bone, so she will not identify pleasures I take in
pigeon-calls. Strange how a nettle can distract you
to the point of charity. How an escaped whisper may effect
the least sudden proposal. Mascara on my heaart-mind, black hair
dye hint of rouge, timidity. Somewhere in polite Sami society
a snowmobile takes [a] life
Neither will allow what has gone to go on
Wishes lie outside fortune’s means, regardless. The buried costs
negligible, permit surprises as thoughts flit against a starved backdrop
Scatter-birds form a circle-pit in the sky. Snowleaves stuck to a trainer
I’ll not forget the story reposed, the evening your sister suddenly
froze at the table, falling dumb, stuck with grave stare; then
(how) she was led to the hospital after which the matter was
never raised again
Your face slipped amidst red geraniums
*
At bottom I envy your false art of pain, thrilled to exact this much
How quick the force to erase ‘you’ subsides, finds a likely print
to pin excuses. Pity we do not subdivide further, carry the moment
into a head of collapsing strings, to squeeze us back in. Teasing ribs
account for their strained necks. Hours pass as decorative shavings
What regrets stir in the loused dogs become my universe interrupting
the world as the far-fetched glimpse of green eyes from bushes
foaming overtones. Though I think ice when I see breakers
In stance of rest, resistance, feeling a way to the nineteen year old
with a three-and-a-half grand nose, pupils wider than a dry purse
These cobble footpaths a fast-forgotten surrender to supplicants
of chemical animal and plant life. How I envy their welcoming in
collapse. An amorous book containing seasonal elegies lends
itself to crack processing. The notch will wiggle, as opinionated threads
rebate conjunctions, the removal of triumphant
primrose pubes, numb and hovering to smell gum, leftover resin
Detours rather facts reorganize descriptions no less real than
the life applications following a third eye into the park, the clays
may yet have interesting properties on the end of the spade
distinctly not uncircumscribed feelings formed
from sentiment, but painted by a denying body not quite in the picture
Under cover of bottle #4 — mine red, yours white, sky flushed
— we held each other’s waists, listening to panting waves, in sight of
an ignored but informing host. Collared doves lit beyond alarmed
panes like seasoned dumps quivering, restless blocks of impression
Saclike, secure, the meek test and touch signals. Then think
wish better. Ambition could not wet or weed a bed of ambitions, green
bract broken where the aster did not grow. Then sister, now brother
to a sediment. Now lichenous Monday caters lavender cents
mint-and-compost, short determined accents pass the pulsing marks
I see a tawny haze under soaring figures
“Only I want. . . the myriad ideas of you”
to be so much like “sober thunderclouds seduce a threadbare regard”
Come lunchtime — around 5.10 — the blind garden will embrace gold
flexed bottles of White Lightning, single mums with twin-seaters
Em’s dolphin smile, eyes you’ll want others to see again and again
closer yet, as a suet of advents become you
Pimpled, yet kittenish, you exist. Shiny rings, lasers, copiers
conquests to be cut later; worlds of desert storms and closed circuits
ignoring a wild chime at the divisive moment. So the steps
slow us no more, when leaning in to whisper words like
‘skinny-fit’ and ‘grunge’. Pink peaks held with night-shirts
from a mutual telephone worker’s fund. You must delight in so
much that greets you, though I say the shapes astound, go farther
on through the welcome of loose-strung graft. The bane of my love
has been impatience which amounts to expectation of gas-
powered glare on either side the desktop bare, wild late, later, like pubs
entered penniless you exit
steaming. We’ve smashed the finer parts with your merest
patterned hopes. After the single moment shared alone
after so much emptying space on either side
lust supplants
the plural of entering, within, leaving both dry, included, blind
― without veils. Could it be a cenotaph was delivered here, yesterday
or last weekend, when the bench was still-warm, without encryption
We could not find the veranda again if we tried
Eyes of sufficient birds
have nowhere else to go; greedy going there hurriedly with our dreams
13. 08. 01
