Has the time passed when we | will have forgotten this?
Coal dust and roses
Intimate eye, no more truthful | than any other | except | in that it is our eye, this | intimacy: it is | our kiss…
Coal dust and Jack Frost
No, no: my kiss | A thief’s share, always | Then barrels of traffic, blunder and clouds | round and round | five more days | of commuter life… | My kiss, not ours, I take it | in a sack thrown over my shoulder | across rooftops at night | tip-toe and teeter, trot and slide | on clinking tiles | fear like a cat’s eyes glowing | in a sudden shaft of moonlight…
Jack Frost: where are his footsteps?
Burning dry flowers on a fire | in the same grate over time has gathered | the ashes of ledgers | faggots of cherry, oak | peel of satsumas | and slight | satsuma pips | spat through smoky air | lissom with glisten
Why the tears? So smoky in here
How can I put this?
Portents and foreboding
Where can we put this?
Charms, chimes, gleams, games
Where did the wind come from? | blows a vapour of cataracts | from the silenced willows? | The river’s | rifle doesn’t fire | I get so confused | by saints and skaters
An overpowering scent of cold woodsmoke | in mornings cracked from slumber | and a hoar cocoon
Has the time come | for us to forget this?
Thompkins’ barn a black mass | gorgeous | theatre where spiders weave their cobweb ruffs, a spiteful | tractor rusts but did it move? | Did it?
Intimate, belonging only to us, a jewel | locked in boxes of moments and inches | how much | theft is left in us?
Coal dust and boots
November boy, that matters, skews the seasons round a jot | blends the humours | add a pinch of solitude | like an airy yeast | snow | inters Jackson’s ditch | we grow caught up | in the sea’s | transactions with the moon | a life | littered with hidden, personal things
Boots, and fire tongs, and coal dust
And your heart? Will it?
Withered flowers not fresh with giving
Grieving | and the Laceys’ girl borne stillborn | the Carpenters’ girl | born premature
Has the time come
when we will remember this?
••
from the series hypergrammar (open-ended, 2012–present)
(this poem, January 2014)
hypergram 