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oh it's my united states of whatever

The glass responds to me and I reflect it. My arm-hair lifts away from my skin like a wave of antennae twitching into me. And where the hair grows thin gooseflesh protrudes and ripples, unevenly and fairly. My body buzzes and my head tightens and my back tenses, when the first shiver comes. My hand leaves the glass and my prints remain.

#liam lynch #poetry

Last ______ he was chewing his cheeks at the top of the stairs casting himself as someone strange someone who stares at gone bulbs and prefers them gone he chewed and sniffed Asleep at home he would pretend it was all connected and he was sure of it despite the chewing and the sniffing and the clicking of each finger one after another Last ______ he came downstairs and sniffed before talking in a new voice he pulled out a book called ‘Good Morning, Captain’ and said it was his name now It was an anxiety or a need and sometimes I think I’m having the same dream but most of the time he’s already there growing another stranger up the stairs.

criminalwisdom

A shrapnel wound of the hand (1916) Via Lindsey Fitzharris

Missing Girls + Commentary (unfinished)

I pin and flatten the wrinkled pages rubbing ink to finger print flipping past worn headlines and surrendered family frames: two girls, eyes tight beneath slender glasses, clean teeth budding behind practiced smiles, bright white things emptied in the woods with heartbeats waiting for the fill when everyone else has left.

Six years broke a path through grey trees, dead crack-loaded twigs snapping with every step off the beaten track. Two thousand, one hundred and ninety nights of torn ragged sleep, uncut nails catching sweat-stained sheets like the muddy claws drawn down half-buried skirts, hot heart pounding with hard bursts of blood that feel too alive and together to leave something so dead and alone. this poem has been a piece of shit for about three months now and i'm ashamed that this is what it eventually ended up being. should be another stanza, and the others need plenty more editing but i'm done with it. it sickens me to look at it. the only reason i'm posting it (with commentary as well (!)) is because i think (jesus, he thinks?!) it's an interesting example of how an idea can change so drastically from what you originally intended it to be. by the 'end' of writing this poem i felt a complete powerlessness and lack of control over it's direction and presentation. begun as a prose piece inspired by two pairs of glasses i found in the woods once, it went through a buncha drafts before distorting into a tiny poem. what should have been nice and quick turned bloated and directionless. the funny part is that i never even got to write about the glasses, which really upsets me actually. i don't even know what i'd write anymore. anyway, i wanted to move on from it without feeling like i had left it in limbo so it's going in the unfinished folder/drawer/container/slot. i know i'll still think about it for a while but i think this is the best way. kind of like a vaguely sincere breakup.

#poetry #commentary

mulch

my family tree trickles up, drawn from flat seeded soil i trip over. clumsily, i will prop the branches with metal bolts and beams rusted black, taken by some disease, because i’m slow and a beggar.

roots can lull me to a living sleep where i will rot dull and fat, i just need their water. roots can lull me to a living sleep, i'll just keep their water. my family tree trickles down drawn to me, i trip over.

#poetry

White Cup

The first day I fluffed for five guys, sucking and suckling, till we filmed the pop. A thousand show-homes later, I’m inside a girl at a national park, slapping against her, completely dry under muggy Easter sun. When I let go, the grass is sticky with what falls out of her.

#poetry

Interval

Spittle hangs from my lip a bubbled vein that I draw back with a slurp.

#poetry

Dirty Glass

It is moonlight and still. The distant drone of the motorway tide comes back and forth. There is a hold on this night, a weight and an itch. I turn, returning to something failed and rejected, a dry waste of an idea. It is a car passing far away, the tinnitus hum of a journey I can’t relate. It is light and still-born, still coming through in waves of swallowed contractions, till it can’t be held in, till it falls out unfinished and loud.

#poetry

Lottery

Gurgling bathtub baby, isn’t a stain from spilt tea cold in a flowery mug, or green veins bulging in a porcelain crib ran too hot. Mother strains white kitchen cloth with TV laughter as bathroom steam sweats the walls and she knots cold fingers tight over winning numbers. Baby crying like her kettle boiling, kettle crying like her baby boiling.

#poetry

Fever

Am I as you imagine me? Awash in mist atop mountain ridge quiet except for feet shifting slate slips. I am shrunken among erect slabs of black stone, forewarning and alien like children of the monolith fallen to fortress. Am I as you imagine me? Quivering hands pressing paper with damp squat thumbs emergency under orange bulb in a bus stop shelter approaching midnight now fresh with smoke. I am low, and no cars drive by in the wet early hours, while I sit and wait, sitting and waiting. Am I as you imagine me? Green in summer-throes, awkwardly squirming into swimming clothes, standing on spotted stone by one valley sunken stream spun from three shires. I am scared of algae slick on the boulders beneath the pool, clear enough to see my toes bend, and that fear is green, because I grew on concrete.

#poetry

Three Candles

Father kneels to winter-kissed stone, knees pointed sharp and red beneath black cloth, joints crackle in his shiver to grace and bony, midwife fingers wring the dry oak altar as he lowers his old body down to pray. Ringless hands clasp each other, as skin wrinkles under chin, thin mouth whispering bright words for an unheard king, and upon the signing of the cross, a shallow, tearful sigh washes away candle flame, and he pretends it was not him. Lover stands to tree side cane firmly in hand, she is old now the woods grown with her, the wind still pushed back by thick black trunks and deep dark canopy, the clearing still kept as it was when they met. Other than a small slab of worn stone, a grave, corner-dipped in moss, where he remains and she still stands, listening to the wind work its way under roots and over leaves before she quietly bends, then pinches, lit candle wick slipping into night again. My son walks the road by graveyard wall, a narrow passage enclosed on either side, where rough alcoves carved into brick hide pools of rainwater and hanging lamps that cast orange flame during the autumn dusk. As if remembering some old trick I may have taught he smiles wide, and opens the rusting lamp, light dipping with the rippling water, before extinguishing in the softest blow of a whisper.

#poetry

Aber Falls

Shredded bark flesh tree-shells turned sheltered sheep-dens landmark grass valley trails like nymphic watchtowers, remnants of old expansions retreated and left to it, some life that lived and faded in the falls. Lambs spring along stone edges, babe cliffs lapping at the furthest reaches of mountain spill slide sketched to the curve of wood-side paths valley-centred with tip-toeing water flowing below, hunched under tree-flushed, root-ridden rock-top. Bird calls join the hush every so often, whittling a lover’s day away within dry lively forest dressed beneath cancer black peaks. Deeper, boulders shaped through wheezing earthfall slump brotherly by layers of citadel stone, solid rock scatterings scaled above tree tops kneeling by the tap of crevasse feet, already mouthing fresh words unspoilt to the sea. Water beats down, emitting flicker throbs of green beside the freckled cliff-side, splits of frothing streams follow smooth stone hips into clear, spray-shrouded pools that turn the valley heavy and humid. Thin tubular crevices, algae thick, trickle as the falls drop three times over calcified rock drips eventually sloshing through moist mist spread over the basin’s mouth, filled with a large paddle pool you can look right through except for a small, still shadow. Rope appears to float from the shape, drawn to the surface and expelling a soil brown fluid, as water nudges a nodding rock parting quietness with slow rhythmic knocks. Sheep wool writhes in the wind, caught on a rusted twist of barb-wire, some life that lived and faded in the falls.

#Poetry #Aber Falls

Listener at the Night Stop

A train, not stopping, blasts through deeply in— haling as it passes leaving black wires vibrating, sss— spinning into repeating, tiny circles; bzzzzzzing, crawling— like a fly finding its way up your spine. Nasal, in/out, tinned speech half-speaks, half-drones across the platform, as train lights search out the station; eyes of a beast hissing and humping in the tunnel. Engine hum, hum, hum— mmmmmmmmmmmm, winding down, as wheels grind piggy squeals along the tracks to a huffed, sighing stop and a woman’s heels clack, clack, clack. Doors open slowly; parted metallic red, smoker’s lips with a small, wispy gasp of engine breath, nobody gets off and the woman gets on.

#poetry

Memories of Space

Carina Nebula’s heart beats golden into pulsing blue artery arms that throb in bold, million colour sound bound to high powered, satellite photos of cosmic morgues mulled through wet holes in head-sides. Arced outbound jets of orange-red flicker-flame coral twirl like life-size membrane snaps in electric shock spectre haze, inner upstarts of eventual cool grass-vine fumes distinctly word shy of mite stutters. Every black space unlit by sprawled star maybes’ rattles unsatisfied on shrunken pink shores, lay upon with dry, short tongues void-loving and still lacking. Wisp clouds cast yellow disconnect the night sky from memory, and every year more lights fade from naked eyes loudly dressed in city-sleep glow, all over a planet completely alone.

#poetry #space

Seagulls

Four walls, taller than me, framed our old garden as a small, cramped space— needing only an equally confining concrete roof to become a windowless cell. A flaking wooden shed took up one corner, full of trash and deserted spider-webs, mostly rotted by the saltwater breeze and sea-born storms. Our new bedroom comes painted in washed out fleshy tones and the dark pink carpet, dabbed black with mould stinks of cigarette smoke and ten years ago. A walk-in wardrobe groans as its spine judders open, and I drag my teeth to the drawn out sound. Before we leave the old garden, emptying dripping black bulging bags of trash, we surprise a seagull, injured and trapped within those tall, four walls. He wobbles on a broken leg, shivering quietly in the corner with one large faded yellow eye watching us decide to leave. Too big to kill, we said.

The next night, I lay awake in our new bedroom, feeling sick and more washed out than the walls listening to the seagulls in the graveyard across the road giggle and chatter into a screeching crescendo. I stared at our wardrobe, and thought about how great it’d be to hang yourself in— high beam thick rope door kicked open by feet pushing off a stool and a shape turning slowly in the dark, as that moaning, sad creak fills the room. Dropping off the keys at the old house I squinted through the frosted glass back door, into those four walls to see a white shape lying rigid and still.

#poetry

Rejected I

Sheets of rain arrive daily, flowing through pale yellow trees into road-side streams dammed by mulch-clogged drains that soon bulge and burst spitting up half swollen, slick brown, baby bundles of discarded leaves. Distantly, mountains flex behind the mist that rushes in wetting their scree-skin knuckles on the reservoir’s rim, as the city rumbles up close with spasmic car engines herded through midnight light shows, to the sound of the radio’s murmur about rumours of life in the waves-- waves that grind their teeth on pier feet, that slosh round and drag down drunkards never to be found, all while the mist descends and the streets become clouded and white; street lights dripping yellow beside three eyed, three coloured machines, glaring into the fog at an aborted, street-side painting of autumn leaves.

#poetry

Pen(is)

I write on Thompson for stability, lustfully tasting the sweat on my lips with each scribbled word, and I avoid Thoreau as he dips his shaft deep to the pond floor within winter curiosity, expelling the subtler spirit he witnessed. I return to my tent in Dylatov Pass, already fondling the creases in my journal’s spine; (Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath is where I keep my lube), and I let out a quiet whine as I stain the page with ink. I tear through black polyester; gasping in fear and pushing snow tufts into the air like a Ketamine sneeze, biting off my tongue with my last unit of inspired breath, and coughing up a howl before I freeze-- naked and hard.

#poetry #sometime archive #sylvia plath #hunter s thompson #henry david thoreau

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