Living in the Free Lane
posted 27th August 2024
like air . but still you must inhale
Every Star
You are every star
At point, recess, lumination and space-taking,
and that’s just from afar - shapely
In matter of fact, up close, dangerously (Icarus-style),
five spikes flattened to beyond-dimensional ball
(so ball no ball)
And flamey or icey or who knows the score
You Are
all the stars.
All that are.
Every prick of yellow in our black sky
life.
Every drop of mellow on our sheet of fright
Each and every dance of prospect
from a distance on this endless canvas
This thing that wraps us
And again,
when near to, when
Really face at
How alarming, the blinding starness of You
love never came softly
Oh, how happy to see
the suited men
walk down the road and
two hours before back again.
Walk up to the table of
brack and tea,
and they're talking in hush,
and they're talking holy.
It's days have clocked their
objective eyes on these
battered but solid
dipped village streets,
and the men with suit
for Sunday and death day,
and the women folk soft
of skin and speaking
are meeting in chapel
and cottage, up in the morning
and lie peaceful for sleeping.
The to-and-the-fro and
the sway like the old hide of
the domesticised cow
in the field just alongside
says the pace of this place
is all that I need now.
Oh, make space for my limbs
to come to rest,
Cairncastle _ can you?
and when it is time - let go . and when it is not - hold on
Poets, with the duty of words
(are where rested words are at the feet of)
Where speak, under compelling conditions,
forcibly trips
(hide in armpits; flee from lips)
Who carry, in their vocal quivers,
arrow-aiming answerability
(cluck chicks can curl under the worded wings of)
Poets, with much required from,
need not only open the mouth
{are owing a duty of care}
(back to feathers; safe as houses)
Where an impulse to curse can ride
the tongue-horse with such charging vigour,
as much as in praise is; praise, and even
that’s never a hand raised but always
pound-pounding on the blue skies,
both arms drumming, clenched muscles stomaching
every vowel,
prostrating to every refrain
Poets speak with entireties of assembled parts
Every atom musts to learn the lingo, every fibre grabs at every song
There’s no gentle gazing at moonlight
Poets spear stars and suck on the sun
life spent best is love spent
Snow Poem
I hone myself to the ineffable vastness
Of this snowstorm. This life’s sense.
Long lying between its comfort and its coldness,
I trace my place here.
And with husk of jackrabbits
- outlined vaguely against backdrop, barely there -
Peak head in and out for breath, for solace.
While softness buffers against the external
Elements of wind warping - sun burning - toying rain,
I grow in pallor, become like bone.
I know this residence as help and hindrance;
As hand holding and thralldom.
there is a make of human for whom it is love or freedom
constant love
because there'll be a sunrise, smile at the night
Voca
So the sea said: I’ll swallow up the land.
Because its shores exist to harbour my waves.
And space swept at stars and moons
and its blackness claimed their light with a backhand:
Because I was before they were. Before they were, I swam.
And the whales made nothing of the swarm’s fish,
and not just for their size -
Bigger in mass but in singleness compromised,
fish came after, so to them goodbye.
Man lay down on woman. Absorbed his rib.
But before he did: wombs around the world
demanded their birthings back: Because pain like that
should end in glory. What of wars? Inequality?
Autumn held rule, as trees would not release their chlorophyll.
That is how green went from the world. That is how we got to beige.
Repeated across beds, the bright fanned flower folded on its pollen:
What specifically has the bee ever done for me?
Lakes hung in clouds. And so, mirrored in the ground - craters.
Wet above but dry below now with the stopping of the to and fro.
Then a voice that rumbled like gunpowder
on every battlefield of ever at one hour
said: I take back the sea and the land, space
and place; woman and man. I claim green.
I claim gold. I started and end and begin this story.
these are the things that life is made of