dead cat crawled or
thrown
into the
gutter
definitely
dead
half out
the wet road,
tongue
hanging out,
he's black
& white
no older than 3 and
rained on
rigid,
tail
straight like a railway signal.
what were you
chasing, so
hard that you
didn't see the
zeroes coming?
where's your collar?
ripped off
when the
fast lights
hit you,
running
headlong
after rats
midnight trying
to eat itself,
hungry
for the last time. continued...
shotaway dave
he followed us
into the pub,
arran zipped
at the neck,
thin wiry
dreadlocks
and down lidded
ratty slits of eye;
one of some amputated tribe,
rat assed and burned away,
heliocentric theoryon my right hand,
didn't hear me talking
while you
waited to speak,
how old are you?
30 three
plus ten years,
he replied.
jerusalem was the circle
above india and england,
between
a beermat's curling
up corners.
mumbling about qwark reversal
to my right,
impossible to read maps
and seeming alone wherever he drew
further off,
mumbling from cardiff,
aberyswyth, economics,
as we began to feel unease,
to move towards the cold outside,
helios and midnight
coatsleeves,
arms.
green notes (part one)
thin boned above my head and clinging to electricity, like black punctuation on a winter page with no words. or silent morse code: from left to right, dot, feather and dash, solitary and seemingly deliberate twos and threes. i see them and the pylon, but whatever power around which their claws clench is invisible, wired from building to building through giants' cold and steel sleeves, keeping us upright and our lights on.
we're on the shoulder of november. the air has cracked and come round cold. someone told me that when the swans fly home, it's winter time. i don't see the lightning in front of my face and i don't see them either, but someone believes in them enough. enough to tell their story. cars parked where they should be. dogs with their masters at work and two magpies ankle deep in crisp emerald. these i am allowed to see; earth tapping, divination, a hunt and quick, knowing that soon the frost.
often wrong and once again, to call winter dying. a slowing of breath, instead; a seat beneath the willow. thin and dry yellow shreds of concert it gives to the wind, confetti in an empty churchyard, conciliatory whispers. this is nothing, save life. worm in beak, beak in dirt, worm in dirt. no death and no rebirth but a pulse which we must stop and animal cock our heads at, to feel. and for an hour, i am allowed. an interloper in this still lush pocket, green as the baize beneath reds and colours.
i am allowed
one of the lying,
on the cathedral steps of honesty
one of the liars,
one of the become.
i am allowed
to sit and listen
to no clock tickingf
or all of us
in this long afternoon of seasons.
under the flowering ash
walking to work, eight 30 a
m and already
the sun
has its hot
sarcophagus mouth
over england.
thorns through
the morning's thin yellow,
it seems we're wasting
summer gifts,
walking to work
taking up
our small positions,
keeping chewing gum
dotted pavements under our feet,
like boulton and watt
told us to.
the bus carries me
and a one eyed child
to the hospital,
sun still beating down
like rain, like a hot
hammer pounding
mostly thoughtless
nails into the shape
of a cross.
between two squat brown hospital offices,
a young flowering ash has found the sky
and i stop at the door,
forgetting the code,
to watch it not move.
not much taller than a sapling,
really, but its green lollipop more living
than briefcase, suit and the hour i spent getting there.
then, in the office toilet for a piss
and someone was already here,
getting rid of yesterday,
leaving its breath for me to taste
and i think,
is this even a question?
spending our smiles;
drones in summer
and winter the same?
tithed to chewing gum
dotted pavements
and ticked off days?
flush and exit,
my piss and his bowels
in the air like the shadow of smoke.
a young flowering ash has found the sky
while we're inside,
allowing this to continue
under the clock
under the bones of the hand.
your eternal soul, the field and the road and my wiry body hair
the pharoah's cat
puked furball, dried
mummified breath,
badger grey and white
across my shoulder and back
in unfaltering wild trespass
as thin cotton on my head is picked
by the invisible hands
of each waking up,
each going to sleep.
keeping
of our promise.
inside the clenched fist
versus everything else(
like an old man with glasses,
interviewed after the crash
and saying,
"i was lucky,
someone up there
was looking
after me
when if faith wins,
and there's
a whoever
who created
saturn,
tadpoles,
us,
dying in cars
they probably wouldn't
know too much
about the stuff.
your small press
i don't want to read
another hamfist lumpen
nothing poem
about what you want
this jigsaw life to become;
i don't want to read
another sick limb & boned
nothing poem
about what you think poetry is,
one blood fat tooth, split drum.
i don't want to read
another profane shopping list
nothing poem,
wandered down charles cul-de-sac
and off curbs into empty gutters;
i don't want to read
another one-sided equation non-sequitur
and nothing poem
of thin milk or binary: cool, vain attempt
at art through intellectual stutter.
i want to read
the moment you unwrap a tdk d90,
heaney reaching out his hands for dead, blue eggs
or dawn clouds salmon breath pink poetry,
its writer swinging
quiet claymore words,
the tools of a dream,
cutting into life
all
magic,
bang, leaf veins and lightning.
Born in a barn in England, 1972, Ed Churchouse has never shut a door in his life. He currently lives on top of a bluestone at Stonehenge, writing redundancy letters for the Ministry of Defence.
Last update : 10-01-2008 10:32
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