Recently in Scribbles Category

It always seems to be the case that after I put a piece out into the world, I realise what an ugly little baby it is. This poem was a bit premature for it's appearance in a local JET zine here and so I took a long hard scribble at it. After much editing agony (I've collected photos of the various pages which I7ll maybe post once I figure out how to), I've come to this 10th or so draft, which I hope is a final one. It can really be torture trying to make something finished and unotuchable... I guess words never are. I've had enough of my pencil squatting in piles of eraserlings and strikethroughs though. The hopefully final edit exists below...

in the winter bleached grass
lies a crooked whisper
and night, having made its kill
caws bold and fed

the wind stands at attention
holding against the gathering
arid blue
                a white pennant jet stream

for where the river was
the morning birds wont return.

there is a memory i still
have no place to leave
of her, with an authority
made from: a door with
her name on it,
a desk and embossed papers
with her name on them
and a jury of books
who's function was
to look worn and
be silent.
gesturing to the waterfalls
the sparkling detonations still
on her shelves, "my husband,
he collects waterfalls" she suggested
and i first thought of a stranger
who took twinkling and made of it
white rivets to fasten something
otherwise uninterrupted
in photo frames
but i nodded to respect
her name and papers and books
and a stranger who's relief was
suspending a collapse
while i was beneath a waterfall
trying to push the river
back uphill - she smiled
while i imagined
sisyphus calling me an amateur.

come
take off your toil,
unlace the lips
of your uniform's smile

i will wash it
along with mine
scrub out the sighs
and hang our sodden spirits
on the line, just

come
to this room i keep warm
it has no roof, no floor
no walls
but my arms.

they emerged from your early
ardent months into the next
doused and salted
the earth exhausted of its blush
while all of us leant from your arms
to the shade

and after the bedsheets in bin bags
return from the laundrette
and spent, you walk us with
soft palms, faithful smiles...
the trees allude with menstrual leaves to
desertion

even while they
with their
synchronised seeding
delicately
nurse their
your
fruits down
hill.

1.
to the town
this key
is the sound of disappearing

a slow blink ends
glass eye opens bright
and then another

2.
the kettle demands
i soothe its screams

i add a notch
to the calendar of cups

the sink and i
share indifferent looks -

both of us can wait

3.
another sap
has been taken in
by the levitation act

the spider's cheap trick
that pays his meals
which i know because
the sunshine whispered its workings

i let him tether
his secret outside
in return
he doesn't involve the clothesline

4.
bright closes
slow blink begins
a silvered surface stranger passes
to who the town and i
haven't spoken

Wait is a cruel country,
an island between the flight paths
of other people's itineraries
where sleep has cut its feet again
on scree memories -
the spill of detritus and extrapolations
becomes an anxious bed
to be lying in
wait
ing.

post postscript: personal terror alert subsiding, post frequency to expected calm soon with a general reduction in what could possibly be personal indulgence. honto ni gomenasai