Category: Poetry
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0111: Samhain
Air Won’t Hold Her this air won’t hold leaves,it is to watch a thousandsouls falling. wind.unstitched. I am allof my ancestors. it is as she said,to hold darknessis your last veil. this is the lastof eight days, of Samhain. I remember the yearit snowedon Samhain, the dark arms of treeswidespread. I walked in my footstepsback…
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The Old Woman With No Cat
The Cat Reads Proudhon (Or: An Anarchist’s Dilemma at the Window) The cat is sprawled across a stack of borrowed philosophy, “What Is Property” One paw rests on a particularly underlined passage:“Property is theft!” “Finally,” the mutters cat,“a human who understands.” He looks around the room:at the cushion he’s claimed,at the sunbeam he’s monopolised,at the…
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Stream of Consciousness
Don’t Swallow Your Chewing Gum (in the style of James Joyce’s Molly Bloom’s interior monologue) Woke from a dream those sounds of late night coming in through the cracked window coldish air and a cat prowling the street its voice tightening up into an air-raid siren like what we had on top of my elementary…
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29.10: Everywhere Poems
The Birdbath… …is blue-glazed porcelain,with a fat grey pigeon sitting in it. He does not bathe.He occupies. Another pigeon arrives and stands on the rim,waiting,good manners to prevail. They do not.The grey pigeon sits. So the newcomer pecks him on the head,sends him flapping to the fence, where he watches another pigeon arrive,and observesthe rules…
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26.10: The Liturgy
Liturgy #12 for the Name She Has Never Heard(or for the toast burnt twice, and the ring that tells a stranger’s story) I. The Lock She Does Not OpenThe conservator’s voice stays with her.Do not open it, not yet, not like this,and so she does the hardest thinga curious woman can do. She protects her…
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The Old Woman With No Cat
The Old Woman and the Grimalkin(Or: A Philosophical Pause Before Sardines) The old woman holds her head in her hands,as if gravity might roll away with it. The cat looks out the window,places one paw delicately against the glasslike a tiny, furry philosophercontemplating the infinite. “Look, Old Woman,” he says,“it’s autumn.It’s too early to be…
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24.10: Everywhere Poems
Periphery The world rarely arrives whole.A horn.Tyres on wet tarmac.A crow.Heat lifting from stone.The rest,we quietly build. Everywhere Poems don’t have a subject. They have a starting point and follow wherever attention leads. It’s — go for a walk and see where you end up. Some images created with Midjourney, some are not; all writing…
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24.10: Stream of Consciousness
It’s stormy. Windy. Rainy. Well, windy is putting a British edge on the word; it’s 75mph gusts and 50mm of rain in twelve-ish hours or so, rain going sideways, upwards occasionally by the look of it, although technically I suppose that’s still downwards eventually, everything comes down eventually, except perhaps petrol prices — not my…
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23.10: Everywhere Poems
Where the Tide Has Gone I. The wind sings,weathering ribs of wood,shadows comb their fingersthrough the sand. Beyond, the sea lieswhisper-flat and silver, as though the moon has drawn itfrom the land. II. These old posts keepvigil at the shoreline,holding memoriesof every vanished tide, and somewherepast the quiet rim of evening,water waitsfor heaven to turnthe…
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21.10: dVerse Haunted
Two Poems for the Rain Woman I. Rock-Steady Ice Rock-steady ice.That is the precise truth of her.Not a storm that rages,but a glacier that’s settled in the marrow.The rain inside is ancient, patient,frozen at its core.She is not haunted.She is holding a winterthat no spring can reach. II. The Weather Within The sky is mute,…
