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1. we were ten
2. places of happiness (Sylhet)
3. the glue-makers’ guild
4. song of youth
5. vocation
6. underlie
7. poem for mother’s day
8. cocktail reception
9. the night dancers
10. the soil maiden
11. of thirst and decay
12. charcoal man
13. what is broken
14. places of happiness (Dartmoor)
15. the jungle and the bungalow
16. they met among the junipers
17. oboe
18. places of happiness (Dougga)
19. you never thought
20. we have no need of prophets
21. doubt
22. proper to darkness
23. shrapnel
we were ten
skin parts
under a blade
blood welling
is warm above
all things
fear nothing
not the broken-winged owl not
the black-haired child nor any kind
of moon
just say it:
forever will end
on Thursday
places of happiness
Sylhet
we sat high on elephants
in the Lawacherra rain forest
we watched a teak tree fall at dawn
these poems you write
what are they
you asked
we climbed hills braided
with fields of pineapple we walked
the lemon groves of Srimongol
they are some kind of trick
you said as we wandered
the tea gardens
we saw the white bleeding
of rubber trees the great tumble
of the falls at Madhabkunda
will you answer me
you asked
and when I fell asleep
on the road to Chittagong
you covered me with your jacket and held
my hand
the glue-makers’ guild
they labor in sweating cells
in midnight under the city
they glide cowled past each other
their eyes never meet and each
hugs the stain of his own recipe
against the roiling scars of his body
there is no talk in the catacombs
just the stink and boil
of a thousand cauldrons
the glue-makers infuse
rank ingredients won
in appalling ways
for hours they stir and test
and stir again
when the fire banks itself
when the hot ferment
stills to fretful murmur
the glue-makers anoint themselves
with blazing eyes
they don borrowed smiles
and rise into daylight
to hunt with baleful purpose
the clean of limb
the sound of sleep
the laughing
song of youth
we will live forever!
we have birds
warm in our hands and rife
in the bushes they are nightingales
mere brown fistfuls
and small you think
but warm they are
warm
bird-throat pulses
against the sheet iron
of our skin bird-breast
lies soft
against the thorn
of our pointed will
bird-blood is redly
fragrant its splash
the scarlet bard of epics
we once knew but have
forgotten and bird-song
while it lasts
we price it
above rubies
vocation
he thought he was a monk wearing
brown wool wearing
silence
in sweet tenor on four
or five bronzed notes he knelt
on the polished stone
of what was not him but was
wholly him, he woke greatly
to the peal of bronzed
bells, spent his days in thrall
to an oboe
but in his dreams at midday the sun
dropped on him drenched him
in thick
butterscotch in whole blankets
of angry bees
underlie
what is it like living with your body
splayed your whole body
spread tense up to the thin wires
of your brown hair the all of you threaded
through the squirming loam
the itching seas of this
planet
a stick figure with pigtails and
squeaky voice runs back and forth
across your muscle across all your pitched
nerve calling in from Zinguinchor from
Dili blogging from Cali from
Baghdad exploding in chipmunk
outrage in small burning
agony
and you
keep the position taken swaying
like the first like the only
hammock
poem for mother’s day
you ask why
I write of budding
spring and rising
sap would you rather I wrote
of razor wire and cold
scrubland
mother
the chiseled ivory of your sleeping
face your paper eyelids gliding
shut like
bricks in the wall
of your sleeping
face mother the deep miles
of night sky with no moon
the stars you gave out
so sparingly the ones that cost
so much the miles of
tundra the trudging and your pale
face turned up mother always
up to your own
moonless sky
cocktail reception
the room bustles it throngs
with sharp heliconia in curved
orange chic with canna all
ostrich-feather pink and
fuchsia in somewhat
in between but what is the order
is there one in this humming
multitude what is this
hovering needled flitter
of metal green and crimson
that flashes here and suddenly
not there oh wait this is a dance a careful
cotillion
the birds glitter they probe
the flowers deliver
themselves like the nightingale
all soft breast against
heedless thorn
the birds drink
fleetingly but deep
hardly arrived
they are already gone
and the flowers
close on themselves drag slowly
home cradling a slight
new spark using
careful inside breath
to blow on it
the night dancers
would come and get us
if we didn’t go to bed
and stay there Theresa said
they float along at ground level
in white gowns with fire
between their hands they eat dead bodies
all night
during the day they could be
anyone she said they are so good
at pretending
they could be tall Isaaka
glistening blue-black in
the vegetable garden chasing us
off carrot beds knocking down for us
the pinkest guava the ripest
mango
or hard-handed Theresa herself
smelling of wood-smoke wiping
noses on her apron telling bedtime
stories of Kintu the first
man of Nambi the first wife
they could be
our thin tired
mother tapping
her soft-boiled egg at breakfast our square
father mutely rehearsing
his jury plea for the week’s
court case
and so we went to bed and
stayed there
marveling
at their beautiful
subterfuge
all of them just waiting
for floating white night for fire
between their hands and the rich taste
of dead bodies
the soil maiden
she came to us in spring
from the city
grandmother said
she needed rest
she was like a ribbon
a tree sprite
like winter mornings
she did not speak
stevie and I showed her
the horses
the cherry orchard
and the ten acre field
it spread out thick
and choppy
at our feet
a dark soil sea grandfather
had just ploughed
she pricked up
like a collie’s ear she stood
at its edge in her
thin dress and
breathed that soil
in
she looked like a hostage
selkie she looked
sick
and grieving
I told stevie we should
not leave her alone with
the ten acre
but that afternoon
he came hurtling home alone
and big-eyed
she just took off her dress and
dived in he said she dived right into
the soil
of thirst and decay
Leviticus 25:35
you are a stranger
from fire-raped country
my gaze alone is tearless
before the twist
of your scorched skin
you say I am your sister but no brother
ever clenched a sister in such arms
from such dry hot sleep
you rear awake in thirst from thick linens
turn on the wellsprings of my body and suck
as if to end all moisture
we are well my brother
for the heat of your grasp
speaks the blistered name
of my thirst
charcoal man
when charcoal man married
ice cream lady he hoped
for smoothness and
melting
she hoped for backlit clarity
and a boldly-drawn world
their early confections were
charming: chic charcoal
whorls upon thick vanilla
ice-tinted dollops
on chiseled obsidian
charcoal man introduced ice cream lady
to charcoal lore
Lascaux Roufignac
Rembrandt Degas there is
freedom you cannot draw
fine lines with charcoal
he told her in long evenings
of his lives as an artist’s medium
as an adsorber
and there is
adsorption he said for which
the use of poison gas in war
created an urgent need
but he did not tell her
of him the first pile of wood
covered with damp dirt
and set on slow fire
so it was a hot it was a searing
surprise to the iced lady
when he said
stand back!
the temperature rose
and ice cream lady stood back
but not far enough
what is broken
there is a crack
in the green moor edged
with white limestone
the air it breathes
out is cool it is
earth fresh and you may
tunnel through it
in breathing darkness to deep
basin caves which are
theaters of mime in gold-brown
rock which have mounds
fantastic built drop
by limestone drop over
eons and when your thought
stands back thousands
of years you see
this roiling stone
cavescape is cover for ancient
catastrophe for gargantuan
rock-fall
the bleeding and the moan now
stilled the splinters
smoothed and high
many feet high
above your head there is another
earth-crack and the sky is blue
and on the moor a lark
is singing
places of happiness
Dartmoor
in June we lolled
in heather in bright gorse my head
on your chest
you read to me my cosseted
ear heard your inside
voice all the voices
of your nerves listened
to the sun heat
your bones listened to it simmer
your blood which was
my blood heard your breath
heard you drop the book
and there you were all over me
dragging open the buttons of my shirt
my shorts your burning fingers
fighting with my bootlaces
swearing hot golden curses
and I all pliant with orange eyelids
on the open moor listening
to the choir of your breathing
and the skylarks with the sweet purple heather
crushing itself against my cheek
the jungle and the bungalow
jade lamps flare
in her eyes when she looks at him
he draws weeks of living strength from a single hour
by her side on the jungle trail
his hand warm on the black
silk of her shoulder blades
while she hunts
but he has a day job so they move
from the jungle to his semi-detached
bungalow with one bedroom and
a fireplace
she fills the rooms with
the engine of her purr and the
pouring movement of her cat
muscles she curls richly
around him
but the house is small
and one night they quarrel
a spitting green arc scorches
the sky above the house
she bursts
through the wall shedding splintered glass
and shattered brick along
the driveway leaves him hurled
and crumpled by the empty fireplace
clawed lacerations oozing deep
in his chest
while he heals she runs
the jungle trails alone
they live plaintive lives apart and watch night
after night the same thick moon
hang sluggish and too low
in the sky
until one day he sells
the bungalow and builds
a tree house with an internet connection
ninety feet above the ground
she climbs to him after the hunt and enters
the tree house at night with the jungle
breeze she pours
the black silk of herself her flaring
jade eyes through the open window
she rubs her head against the thick
scars on his chest
and they sleep long hours
on the engine of her purr
high among the trees
with the fruit bats
and the fireflies
they met among the junipers
where the hot earth was red
the juniper berries thick
in angled blue
she said they should go higher
to the white aspens to their shimmered
leaf spells but he said
wait
they became thirsty but
wait he said
she broke forth in a hot night
mad with thirst for hill
height and leaner air
a new gape carved the air
at his back and he dreamt
thickly among the junipers
of the green rustle the liquid tremor
of the aspens
oboe
you are the beauty of bound
reed or better
numen’s breath passing
through reed into African
blackwood or better
shaman’s fingers on silver
keys you are
oboe
and I the heart drawn
behind you out of body
up spiraled paths into
purple hills and
flayed alone
in chill wind
on a hilltop this is
what I do
for you
are oboe
places of happiness
Dougga
do you remember the Roman remains
at Dougga do you remember
the olive hills of Tunisia all
bright air and luminous
like holy water after the fonts
are emptied for Good Friday
and filled again for Sunday
do you remember
how we argued through
the olive grove and
the Baths how you folded
your arms and leaned
against the Doric column
in the Capitol and I collapsed
laughing at how little you looked
next to Jupiter and how you chased me
under the arch of Septimius Severus
all the way to the temple of Juno
and caught me there
and when all your body pushed at me
against the marble wall of that temple
all your body was somehow
crying and a sharp bitter thing just
evaporated that was what happened to us
in the hills
at Dougga
you never thought
that I could rear so high and bite
your head off your shoulders like
puffed corn that I could grab
your life like some
shirt from the dryer snap
shake out your life fold it so
small drop it off so
easily at the thrift store
striding by
on my high long legs
headed
for Jupiter
we have no need of prophets
we live where they come from
the brown air of our country
rattles
our mountains are gray with
sleeping our babies born
without ears
let us hang our harps
on the willow close in
among ourselves and ask
is there nowhere some slight
fallen spark we may carefully
blow upon
doubt
your dry hands push me hard
through thick layers
of swamp weed and
muskrat they assault me
with blasts of amber
and nightjar song
with the slipping wind dance
of sand dunes
your hands ply me
with cicada-thrum with aloof
Amaretto and a lonely oboe
in the hills
tell me again why you call these things
evidence
proper to darkness
you left me where the dark twists
a small shoulder blade in one hand a set
of eyelashes in the other
they were sky-cut fresh like the silver chain
of high laughter in my pocket
and the squirming fairy bones
under my arm
in bending hoops of night
I put them down
carefully one
by one
I walk out and here I am again
putting them down carefully one
by one walking out
carefully here I am
again
shrapnel
she would joyfully
hack off her legs with
an axe for yours gouge out
her eyes with a fork
for yours but just now
she would like to go
mad throw herself
out of the hospital
window howl all the way
down anything
to stop all of this any
of this but because you ask
the way you asked
when you were six
she makes slow
mommy circles
on your burning boy’s
forehead with
her fingertip and sings to you
through pitched
throat through churning
knives in her chest she sings
to your cracked lips and bandaged
eyes your hard white
arms held motionless up
high she sings to the flat plain
of the sheet below
your knees
2 Comments
Love your poem: ‘what is broken’.
Thank-you, and thanks for taking the time to say so! Best, Nic
3 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] five to ten seconds to let it sink in. Perhaps I would’ve done better just to read the poems one by one on the website and click the individual audio players for each, but I find light text on a dark background too [...]
[...] good because it led me to break some of my own rules and branch out in a new direction. This is the opening poem to Nic Sebastian’s nanopress collection Forever Will End On Thursday, and “condense[s] [...]
[...] the footage, but after watching it several times, I decided I already had the perfect poem – you never thought, from Forever Will End On Thursday. To me the poem and the animation had the same sense of hustle [...]