Thoughts of words and snows  

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Words are like snow. Duplicitous. Empty and uncarved, so, paradoxically full of possibility. Arbitrary and laden with meaning. He sees me as nothing more than a scrambled dictionary. An assemblage of words; lacking coherence, not harnessing verbs. I'd think about arranging myself linearly or in an alphabetical order if I thought i'd make more sense. But maybe I just am who I am. A woman made from words. They've become my identity, my ice barrier, even my shibboleth.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


My Body: A Love Story  

Thursday, May 27, 2010

I wrote love on my arms
to honour my feelings.
There were nights
I awoke
to traces on
my pillow
and creases on my
cheek that
mimic the
clefts tearing
the ocean bed.
Love spiralled through
the choir's song
echoing the
patterns dawn's rosy
fingers traced
creeping across the sky.
And scratching at my voice box
as it raked over my skin.

I felt love in my bones
on quiet days when I looked
at the river.
You could pick over
them like a carcass;
each one you
felt holding a story.
The clavicle he bit;
searing a bruise I'd not forget.
The clouds of weed smoke
danced tendrils in my olfactory hallucinations
and still conjure his broken eyes.

I slew love into my skin
The scratch of razor blades
atop the ulna
spoke of the one
who taught me the most
and cut me deepest.
He smelled of his mother's laundry
and grapefruit;
his fingers
tapped out rhythms as
he practised music
and shaped my future.

I gouged love in my eyes
trying to veil away my pain.
The scars of dirty needles
and a youth so misspent I can't even play pool.
The cigarettes he ground into my cheekbone
just below my eye socket.
His vitriolic words burnt a small hole in my heart
and left behind the scent of ash and blackened spoons.
He gave me stolen gold and blood stained sheets
but taught me forgiveness.

I smuggled love into prison.
Tasted salty blood in the back of my throat
with broken incisors and
cracked ribs. When I smell washing up liquid
and talcum powder it's him I see.
Scrubbing my skin red raw
and trying to turn his white.

I never wanted that trade.

I toured love around Europe.
We slept on railway platforms
and bathed in heavy rain.
I shattered my calcaneus
and he carried me;
never complaining
about his metallic navicular.
He learnt to dance with fire and
smelled of petrol and sawdust.
Our shattered ankles echoed
our fragile hearts and he taught me loss.

I etched love in the sand;
our angry walks on windy
days when the sea spelt out words
and in pathetic fallacy; raged against the rocks.
She has an infectious smile
and every word she says
is crafted like poetry
in the gentlest voice.

I tore love away from my soul.
He massaged my sore jaw bone
and watched me cry in pain
whilst he masked his under our blanket of lies.
My heart still fissured from
his emancipation
I tried to learn
life
and adulthood
and bled from my womb
whilst I wept into his tears
of Elska not being our baby,
but the cells of cracked hedonism
and delusion. I broke his heart
and he still fixed my broken body.
I saw a bright horizon,
I saw a northern sky
in the darkest depth of winter
in a country laden with larva and ice.
I missed the shattered tibula
and massaging his skull.
He filled me up with chorales
and facts about the universe.
I hoped that he'd forgive me
and I hoped he'd want to
try. But his love
meant more to me than
summertime
and I knew that for all the bones I've injured
I'd break a thousand more
to save his heart.
His face is etched in concrete
in chalky crumbling shores
in every time I pass the rhyme
of tides. In the whistle of the wind.
In every worn pebble of Serpentine
the scent of gorse on the cliff,
The chasing of dragonflies,
and all the words I write.

I stole love from myself
in the hope that he'd find his.

I committed my love to the sea
when the water was my shibboleth.
I chose to hide behind words
and he knew which ones would bruise me.
Sometimes on quiet days
by the river
I smell the woodsmoke
and diesel
and find those words in the mud.
Resting in the suture
where Integrity used to be.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


Parts of the Heart  

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I wanted to crawl into your aorta
seek refuge there; sipping on vena cava
whilst gripping my pulmonary vein
which traverses time and distance.

Atrium lilies grow at the side of
ventricle lake.
I once made some out of paper napkins
blotting them with my words
and mopping up your bleeding
head when you fell off the wall.

My bicuspid valve was tied in strings
like the ones I bought for your guitar
when they were the only ones attached
to our relationship.

Now, in my upper chamber
your image is a beat
of butterflies wings
underneath my ribcage.

Our arteries play archery
and I'm close to cardiac arrest.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


'Ear is you...  

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Surfing along your auditory canal I can
bring you notes. Though mine
will always be
more Proust than Strauss.

I hover around your vestibule;
an irritating buzz of feedback
like that old punk club in London.

My heart's beating like a hammer
dipping my quill into your incus,
I then stirrup or stir up with
the mellifluous sounds of metronome
echoing through your cochlea.
Your robust fingers picking out chords
and aurally feeding my oratory.


You create a humming inside my auricle;
it growls into my being and holds me still;
a forced silence.


You are sibilance and music;
a smouldering underground jazz club
somewhere sexy like Paris.


I am the poet's corner of a café
too many awkward chinking
coffee spoons clanking
choking on ejectives.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


Summoned  

Monday, May 24, 2010

The sun may have woken me first,
but I'd had a night of fitful gasping.
Operosely orectic I'd been persuing 'O's
and wrestling with wonderous workable 'W's.
So it seemed the dictionary had called me to wake.
I was teetering on the edge of the book;
poised and ready for exploration.
All I had to do was jump
and I could find myself
cleansed under words and their powers.
Sibilant sounds of swishing as I search
the pages for suppletives and suffixes;
their fricatives tiny hooks tugging
on my hair like a little boy in the
playground.
My rubiginous freckles resting on the riparian
banks of 'R's and all their purring glory.
Transpicuous water tumbling over my inept toes
I rise to the surface only to see
that it's cold up there and I bit my
tongue in the arc of conversation.
I dive back in. Rippling through ribbons
of rudimentary 'roonerspisms', which always make
me giggle and deliver a blushing crow.
As I turn fathoms to leagues
my stories are collected;
drawing into me other worlds with their
metonymy and morphology
and showing up through my skin like veins.
Each carrying a tale.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


Word-a-flies  

Saturday, May 22, 2010


This project was a poetry installation I created in my home town. Its message was to illustrate the existence of poetry as an ever evolving entity. To demonstrate the fluidity of language and its ultimate ubiquity.

I took words from a selection of poems and wrote them on the wings of wind-up butterflies, which were then placed onto the leaves of a Budlea bush in an open space in Falmouth; my home town.

The idea of the butterflies being an installation was that as time went on people, the wind, weather and possibly the birds and other wildlife would begin to take their place as poets: rearranging, removing and reshuffling my words. The further the words managed to be spread the more successful the project since its nature was to demonstrate the evolution of poetry and language.

Below are two word-a-flies poems that could have been created at first. I liked that this would change as time went on.

Word-a-flies #1


Umlaut
misplaced
echo
chasm
rhyme
Zugunruhe
distilled
rifts
cleft
fathoms
carve
unscathed
silence
violence
magnitude
mimic
instability
with
oscillation
orange
fantastic
universal
binary
rippling
precipitation
muscles
reluctantly
responding
bitter
reply
lure
opens
suture
scattered
leaves
circling
bound
shibboleth
ribbons






claimed
osmotic
chaos
allelomimesis
metronome
incision
under
over
through
capsules
energy
wings
duck
monarch
bee
chance
play
aphasia
synaesthete
linctus
scribble
hieroglyphics
sand
hurling
cries
velvet
moon
compass
orientation
east
integrity
aching
solitude
feathers
pirouette
gibbous
necrophilia
sentinel
listless
specious





capacious
unrecognisable
swollen
truth
tumult
electrify
me
you
it
freckle
quietly
ejects
utterances
past
undulations
collecting
tendrils
dancing
as
checking
altitudes
indicated
sibilance
asunder
parodies
sky
flavour
framing
spirals
fragility
hidden
particles
sunfire
matter
landslide
whisper
rattles
permeating
gravity
bones
laden

Word-a-flies #2

violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence unrecognisable swollen truth tumult electrify me you it freckle quietly ejects utterances past undulations collecting tendrils dancing as checking altitudes indicated sibilance asunder parodies sky flavour framing spirals fragility hidden particles sunfire matter landslide whisper rattles permeating gravity bones laden leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence responding bitter violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly reply lure opens suture scattered leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette gibbous necrophilia sentinel listless specious capacious Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe distilled rifts cleft fathoms carve unscathed silence violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly responding bitter reply lure opens suture scattered responding bitter reply lure opens suture scattered through capsules energy wings duck monarch bee chance play aphasia synaesthete linctus scribble hieroglyphics sand hurling cries velvet gibbous necrophilia sentinel listless specious capacious unrecognisable swollen truth tumult electrify me you it freckle quietly ejects utterances past undulations collecting tendrils dancing as checking altitudes indicated sibilance asunder parodies sky flavour framing spirals fragility hidden particles sunfire matter landslide whisper rattles permeating gravity Umlaut misplaced echo chasm rhyme Zugunruhe violence magnitude mimic instability with oscillation orange fantastic universal binary rippling precipitation muscles reluctantly leaves circling bound shibboleth ribbons claimed osmotic chaos allelomimesis metronome incision through capsules energy wings duck monarch bee chance play aphasia synaesthete linctus scribble hieroglyphics sand hurling cries velvet moon compass orientation east integrity aching solitude feathers pirouette.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


Circles - For Khalid Jarrar  

Tuesday, May 4, 2010


he told me how you get pairs
of stars
who are forever in orbit
how circles make up the
base
of any relation[ship].
he likes how secrets are
like melons
whose insides can be sweet
and pink
and juicy
or dried stringy
white
and the many more circles you collect
the less pressure
each one has.
And when he pulled me closer
he made my circles unravel
creating fragile spirals
half a world away.

I have been talking to a good friend who helps me understand things in a different and more innocent way sometimes. This one's for you :)

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


 

Design by Blogger Buster | Distributed by Blogging Tips