Latest
beam engine: displacement
if what you’re beginning feels like the end,
maybe it’s time to
move
forward
left right
backward
Water Features
I.
I was not cold the first time I almost drowned
I was warm
I was warm
I was so warm
And the lake swallowed me in as an old friend
as I sank into her
“It’s been a long, long, long time”
“Yes”
“This is what it feels like to stop breathing”
“Yes”
II.
cartographies –
making stained glass out of paper
cutting faces and lilies into maps
three lines to show elevation
an open P-L-A-N-E for a P-L-A-I-N
a scene in fragmented miniature
the Madonna breastfeeding (one plane for the breast, two with a nipple)
a chubby conglomerate of small round segments
as she, flanked by bored lecturers
ascends to the roof of the tower
where there is not actually a helipad.
.
A Tree Does Not Lie (Probably)
hidden
at the back
hollow
shaped like
a cleft of alien skin
gossamer remains
where spiders built
their summer homes
now torn
and filling with dead leaves
(hand inside
silk line
tap tap
nothing
she is dead or sleeping)
inside
orange hedge
a plastic scrap
garbage hanging
limp over a branch
“This Pepsi contains 0 calories”
or something else draped
in flag’s colours
(among
leaves
one feather
pigeon coloured
memory of the bull pigeons
making
Elizabethan necks
now gone
hiding from so many trampling feet)
scattered over
soggy ground
a dotted line of white
like bones leading
(underneath
pale leaves
broken mushrooms
split down the middle
by a footprint
cover back up
for modesty)
above
in beak
bird carries
back to nest
a large round thing
(caught wandering)
a snail, maybe
forgot to stay
hidden
Stream Through Campus (partly)
@ A back of A Gas
Research Centre
in a Holywell Woods
(on a univers(e)
it(t)y town’s shade-tinged
rim of flickering histories)
a stream’s
wet thesis (will)
be
(gin)gan/gins
•
at a stream’s rising
a naked shape gives
& takes steps (is
(in a flash
-glimpse (in
a gap
between branches (seen
by an uplooking laid
low creaturely
eye))) a
dark letter X against sky)
•
a shape startled
a shape shifted
from undergrowth so
trembling fracture’s
a shape’s spell
at a stream’s
westerly beginnings
a shape’s dirt-smudge-steps
enter a ropey
trail see-through & murky
wet’s twine of stained cords all
wriggling liquid chaos
bare feet hurt
in a stream’s flow
feet quiver out wet steps
heading away from west to
follow a stream’s pass
age to gain
an entry easterly
to pass through
a gap in ground
on a rimland campus’s westerly edge
a shape’s steps slosh
as a stream’s clear flesh is
strolled through
a brick is a toad’s fossil instinct
a brick’s emotion is of
course oblong a toe slips
soft fumes of ditch-rot
now death-stench
harsh & sharp
as hot light
in nostrils
yet dark
as bog-sludge
a twinge of ancestry
flicks a shape’s left
Achilles’ tendon
chiffons polythenes
& ripped silks of water wrap
a shapely syllable’s walking
the passiveness of scum
holds other worlds
a culvert swallows a whole
town’s molten silvery windows
gleaming ropes writhe
all that’s
is seen
smooth slick
of slime over pebbles
a shape’s soles press
into an un
seen (sea) bed
jagged broken brick
clots of silt &
dissolved footnotes like
smoke blown through water
a shape’s fingers graze
a blackbird’s drenched dead frame
splayed in the stream
feathers like ink-jelly
needling pricks of fractured bone
plasticky quills of
course discourse
gets stretched
as twiggy sentences dangle strands
of intellecutal algae caught from
floodwaters’ carress
(through a wobbling lens
of a stream’s rippling skin
a shape’s shape
blurrs to a
fuzzy X seen
by a low-lying fish)
weed is a stream’s muscles
rubbing on a streambed’s bones
a drain-grille an organ of un
known grief
anxious at a grille’s mouth
weeds’ wavering green flags of
love(s)
thee willow once
was a novel exp
loded its leaves
its pages its trail
ing twigs a failed
structure but now
a kingfisher’s bright
blue myth told for
ever in a millionth
of this second
wet earth’s clean-dirt perfume
a shape’s toes press through
mud’s gritty ooze clear
water’s metal tang entwined
with faint
grilled beef burger
students eating
on grass in
sunshine knowledge
a moveable feast’s napkins
a young weeping
willow lets
tendrils scrape wet reflections
a shape
dissolves its letter X steps
through complete & gone
as sleep(’s)
Holywell at Night
Iron lights pout
from stands be
tween parked cars. A
work of physics and
corporate hospital
ity. Reception-desk-wel
come. We save.
Energy.
Swansculpture model
swanlife. Water feature’s
a safe haven.
Refresh batter
ry. Dayworkers pull a
way, driving out to
hermit cells from anchor-rage.
***
The forest plays with orange upland
rock, switching dark
feathered shapes across
the hill’s back. Here,
dusk rolls down the fields
to a concrete belly.
The upturned lights reach
into it, begging
to be taken home.
Open-Air Swimming Pool, Dug by Students, 1929-30
Shovels stroke on
sunken walls.
Liam Tancock doesn’t know
the rolled-up sleeves of spadework,
the wool coats’ collars in mist
against a backwash of trees.
Before the water, volunteers,
had tea for digging,
for stitching
the benches framing the edge and raising
a wind turbine.
His team never saw the detail of plans
hand-drawn: the fencing,
after the excavation,
down sweat lines.
The gala of dolphins:
a cascade
of divers,
water-braced,
against pitch ribs.
Motor-cars applauded
as they breast the avenue of careful poplars.
Now the coach sees information
streaming: his racer’s places moulded.
The solar light,
the second’s heat, the hour’s crawl, the call
of pennants
down each sweet lane.
The dolphins wait in the car park
for a long-exposure photo,
a medal, in July.
The door of a changing-room slams in the wind.
