all of a sudden passion suddenly

[The_Fool]

tt doesn't matter to me what medium
I find for words

they are just words
sometimes without sequence
often without meaning
offered in a rambling fashion
similar to stories told by my grandmother
of the old times when things were better
when things were worse

sometimes offered sparse
like the stories told by my grandfather
told in measured monotone
interspersed with the relighting of his pipe
with little emotion
other than what one read
from his eyes

 

[vampiredust]

Aeroplane​

Dad's periscope eyes watched me
as I passed a miniature aeroplane,
thinking I wanted to buy it.

Haggling will get you everywhere.
Forget charm, smile. Haggle.

I switched on my sonar tongue
but was sunk as soon as I started
to speak,

this is not my sea and I have no
lifebelt.

 

[vampiredust]

This is how it goes

I spotted her on the club balcony,
a girl with a pickaxe for a tongue
and a pvc corset for a stomach.

Rubbing myself between her
and her beer, I smiled and turned
into a bird.

She wasn't impressed and shot me
with her rifled bellybutton.

I coughed up spent bullet casings
when we left. Lead has never tasted
so good.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Lamps

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

Hiding in the Cloakroom

......

 

[tungtied2u]

I am learning
to breathe without benefit
or interest in existing

paying attention to the rise
and fall of flesh, pale, lifeless
brings pain in rhythm

what once was enticing
now resides as an afterthought
an also ran, brokendown, discarded

purpose is for othersI
I await with anticipation
the finger of fate beckoning me

the drama which sustained me
has played it's final scene
the curtain drapes the stage

ticket stubs, discarded playbills
sit in sodden aisles, witness
to a truth that never was

 

[annaswirls]

the rainforrest sings in my sons bedroom
ice melts and settles in my glass
Nina's tags ring and I hear everything everything
these love songs and lullaby promises although you may go off on your own
to find your way ever more will I love you ever more
ever more

I say stop
he steps out
and out I way wait
he turns
and runs
I sit for a moment alone
and certain as a phone call
he appears, suddenly I am necessary

he whispers I love you so much it hurts
I love you I am sorry I love you so much
tender fingers I am the most beautiful girl in the world
hhe paints my toes pink
puts silver on my fingers

but again something switches
and I am somehow the cause of every pain
problem slip on wet limestone brushburn
frmo across the park still
still it is my fault
I am stupid
I am bad
bad
and you tells me
I hvae to teach him someday
how to be a man
I think
he already knows

 

[vampiredust]

Kilimanjaro

You could see Kilimanjaro
in his eyes, its peaks
cold and blue like his lips

when he started speaking.
I did not know his name,
that never seemed important.

He was always that guy,
the one we would nod to
at work. No one asked him

whether he had climbed
its peaks or felt it climbing
on his back. These questions

were unimportant. All we were
concerned with was whether
he did his job, scaling floors

with his mop and bucket -
a climber with built in wings
and no safety harness.

London must have been
the biggest mountain to him.

 

[vampiredust]

The Lizard House, London Zoo

Tourists snap and point
at avocadoskin lizards

reclining under rocks
and UV light. It must

feel like Vegas in there
but without gambling

and women. Grab your
shades and dive in.

I've got a lucky feeling
tonight.

 

[vampiredust]

Funeral Arrangements

I watch the priest start. Grabbing
a handful of glass dust, he throws
it over the wireframe corpse. Men
follow women and children,

no one has told me who the body
belongs to. That is not customary
here. Flames follow, creating black
silhouettes. Nobody has started

weeping yet. Perhaps if I look closer
at its face I can see if it's someone
I know. Then I would be able to
forget all this: the stamping of feet,

the veils and black tiles, black shoes,
coffin and fire and undelivered eulogy.
All I would have to do is be silent
and watch stars cover the corpse,

delivering it silently to that place
I have only seen in the spaces
between sleeping and dreaming.

 

[4degrees]

warmth of a thigh
set too close to mine
conjures instant compromise
a promise in a mind
a hole eaten away
delicious decay
subterfuge self because
its okay.

 

[vampiredust]

How to conquer space and time

Gravity unclenches its fist
for a moment and we fall,

human propellers dressed
in plastic and cotton.

Some scream, others drift,
watching brightly coloured

jellyfish push them towards
the earth. We all land upside

down, still dizzy when its time
to go.

 

[vampiredust]

The bones of my Grandfather

Whilst disassembling my tape recorders
bones I came across a message

written in electric noise, pictograms
drawn in static and hiss. It was a picture

of a human heart with a star chart
tattooed across its skin. I never understood

what was buried underneath, watching
it burn as stars started to scar naked fields,

creating a path to you.

 

[vampiredust]

Glass Parachutes

Where have you transferred from?
Brighton, Oxford, Chichester. Name

two guilty pleasures. Sex, poker.
Where are you from? places heard

only on the radio. Tune, retune.
Where are you going next? Ignore

the questions and watch smirks
falling like glass parachutes.

 

[vampiredust]

Funeral

Start with a shovel. Dig deep,
feeling earth slide from its tip.
Work hard. Quickly now, the
body will rot early in the heat.

Start lowering. Not too fast.
Cover it with earth not tears,
that will come later. Blame is
never allowed at this moment.

Tissues, tissues. Open them up
and weep. Put your glasses on,
avoid rain and sunlight. Wait.
Do not think about past events.

Start walking away from them,
ignore their words. Simply imagine
a man dragging stars across
empty fields. That is him now.

 

[Sara Crewe]

I am a trinity of body,
heart and mind. Redwood,
rose and tap root grafted
by a greater hand. Look
under the earth and to the sky
to see the scars
that explain the mystery
of three in one. To realize
strong and smart does not mean
I won’t cry when fingers crush
my petals. Trunk and root still stand
but there is a pain that grows
when it’s denied by you. A blight
that spreads from the outside
in until I join you in your disbelief
and denial and we die as one
who lost faith in three.

 

[vampiredust]

Reading Creeley on the Tube

A lizard pops out of its hiding place
when we stop at West Brompton.

A couple of metallic chameleons
on the platform flick their tongues

before rolling them back. Clouds
start playing ping pong with the sun

before throwing it down on my page,
ending with a splat. Orange metaphors

taste good in the morning.

 

[TheRainMan]

I am a trinity of body,
heart and mind. Redwood,
rose and tap root grafted
by a greater hand. Look
under the earth and to the sky
to see the scars
that explain the mystery
of three in one. To realize
strong and smart does not mean
I won’t cry when fingers crush
my petals. Trunk and root still stand
but there is a pain that grows
when it’s denied by you. A blight
that spreads from the outside
in until I join you in your disbelief
and denial and we die as one
who lost faith in three.

 

[Sara Crewe]

It’s harder than you think to climb
up on a cross with only the persecution
in your mind giving you a push.
It’s exhausting to strike through bone
and wood without the proper angle
so you have to balance the need
to self-flagellate with the nails
in your mouth. Becareful not to drop
them, the hammer or your self- pity
or you’ll have to start the whole ceremony
again and I think you’re all out
of vinegar and the stores just closed.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Writer's Engine Block

.....

 

[wildsweetone]

i nearly know you

nearly ten in a row
you have become my obsession
where all nouns wrap their limbs
around you. i want to know
the layers of your skin, what
makes your heart pulse
and whether your brown eyes
see beyond tomorrow. they
think they know you, but
i watch how you step back,
how you carry yourself erect,
taut, a wall barrier
that protects your soul,
stops it from bending
to His will, stops it
from accepting the inevitable
passing of time. i know
you're not ready, never
will be. i know you won't show
the doubts that are jam-packed
into your mind behind the shield
of bones, for if you did
there would be no stopping
the oozing of grief
and now is not the time to grieve.

 

[vampiredust]

Trees do not fall here

The train ploughs through empty
tracks, ignoring a pair of cranes
practising tai chi. That is not
its destination. It must move on,

away from this rubber landscape
of concrete skyscrapers and artificial
satellites hanging from hotel blocks.
Those are just distractions, things

to be moulded and thrown away.
Work is the only word allowed in its
consciousness. And then when night
paints sky black everything starts
again. It always does.

 

[Sara Crewe]

...ignoring a pair of cranes
practising tai chi....

Love that line.

 

[vampiredust]

Nebula

She carried night in her womb,
a bastard child of the crow
and chisel. Somebody mistook
it for a spiralled shell,

not looking at billions of eyes
staring at visitors from the inside.
They are the real zoo here,
something to laugh and point at.

And then when it slowly started
dying, stars began to drip out,
forming a constellation of places
people had forgotten.

 

[vampiredust]

Atlantic

Papa swallowed the Atlantic from England
to West Africa, before ending up in America

and spitting out everything he had traded:
fake antique elephants, faded dollars, old hard

drives and motherboards. A copy of Heart of
Darkness, pages thumbed and annotated.

And when he slept, I could hear his lungs
pumping out its soul - a melody plunging

deep into my head like a plumbline searching
for a water in a never ending well.