The Chiming of a Perfect Chord

Day Three

You can (add9)

to an A minor

and it peals, like

a big, simple agony.

I always knew that chord

I think, before I held

the axe in my hands.

Before things

bade me lie down in its bed.

You can't (add9)

to a dovetail joint

nor palm-mute

a database, oh,

I wish I knew how

to be open-voiced

in appraisal.

I could have been middle-management by now.

Paint Poem

 

Day Thirty

I like a poem because it's not like a painting.

Because I'll confidently cradle something

stainless; hold the exceptional eye of it,

which is sarsen grey. It's accurate masonry.

A poem is trapezoidal.

It will sit on the ground, you can walk

around, point prosodic

right at the solidity of the stanza.

The straight line in a meter, go -

run your thumb assuredly

all along the perfect surface;

Any line with a defect

lies forgotten in the quarry.

That's why I like a poem. At least

in theory, shaped pure and

fine-finished as a citadel.

But I wonder if Machu Picchu thinks

- or even knows - about the faults

in her foundation. She's sitting up there

on the nerve of a natural defect,

and she don't give a damn.

So I did some painting, to be like the Inca.

To be painted, myself, whimsical-like.

And the acrylics were so alien, they

were such a clamour of colour, they

were howling! All striving -

Idiots! - mucking and muddling

and setting themselves too previous.

I almost kicked over the easel.

But, like the Inca, I learned

a bit about building. About drainage.

I began to see the sky bloom purple,

fruit ripening in stone,

an uncertainty of green in the grass.

I built something new, and I found 

I did not so much mind the cracks. 

 

Okay, it's a little skew whiff.

My brush, he forgets the meter;  

only knows a ruffled rhythm 

of colour, that might?

breathe life to a sarsen stone.

Even, perhaps, in purple tones,

refute the sky and its blueness.

So step back, squint your eyes;

It looks just like a poem.

The Underestimated Lettuce

Day Twenty-Nine

People call me

The Underestimated Lettuce

Not out loud but

I see it in the way

They discard me from their burger at the barbecue

 

An Uncoupling

Day Twenty-Eight

With the tiniest throbs and wobbles,

the Moon is slipping from our grasp.

Incandescent with rage but

carefully swept clean.

With a very precise curve,

she might make herself invisible

or a puff of distant gossamer,

perfectly arrayed for the creation of stars.

She has suddenly found out about the wind,

setting hurricanes to spin off like tops.

In some sense, gravity does not exist.

It makes the Moon no less interesting,

or odd, just more explicable.

The work of science is at an end,

like confessing a murder.

How stupid of me not to have thought of it -

the single best idea that anyone ever had;

to merely predict future events exactly.

She won't reach the Oort cloud for another ten thousand years.

Assembled from notes in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

The Fox of Gluttony

 

Day Twenty-Seven

It had been a hot day

And Lizzy was glad she'd worn linen.

Having put in a jolly good shift, soon,

the sun would be heading for bed

and the blackbirds, 

with the conclusion of their encores,

sang Goodnight, God bless.

Then, a peculiar quietude

slunk into the evening.

As though the venerable ash

had taken up, lightly, a knife and

crystal flute, and tinkle-tapped the day.

There was not a soul at the bus stop.

The air hung, as if trampolining.

Into this stillness, there sauntered

a fox. Brazen as the moon is full and

russet, with a deadpan panache.

From the clasp of her jaw was slung

an extraordinarily plump hen.

The fox noted Lizzy by the bus stop.

And seeing there were no buses

nor cars, nor dogs, nor children,

and seeing that the dusk was ripe for walking,

she stepped oh-so softly into twilight,

taking home her remarkably fat chicken.

Portrait of an Un-known Woman

 

Day Twenty-Six

Let me exhibit a woman,

it's not important who.

Notice her hair has altered since

it was familiar with my fingers.

Her cheek is very bare, due

to the removal of my thumb.

Don't you think it's troubling, how

her glacier eye will not meet mine?

Just forget about who she is, and

don't ask what made this

wrinkle manifest.

All I know is a cruelty

around her mouth,

always asking

Why did you not kiss me?

 

Cactus Flower

 

Day Twenty-Five

I'd lain so long, bones in the sand,

desolate. Bloodless. How - 

a morning mutes the half-light

(just twinkling) 'til

the detonation of a blackbird.

Such a fury/joy eruption, I've

not felt since I was startled

by the cactus flower.

Clarion plume from the habit

of a Mandarin duck, fanning

an eye (sudden) at the sun.

And I blazed orange,

like the cock-of-the-rock, and

gnashed my teeth white-

hot, delirious with

the waxy fat of a succulent

squeezed between my fingers

(juice running).

Come dusk, the show was over.

The flower left me

mute as the morning,

A palm full of spines.