Jack Oates, 9 maja 2012
Can I see you now?
Can I?
Here, now, and then not.
A flicked switch that brought the moon
under the eaves.
But where did you go
when the spring flipped the cam
and cut off the flow?
Farads fall from a burning wire
and I am drawn to you.
I bump my muzzle on the glass
with a plink-plink.
Just a silhouette, you are,
bleeding into the tungsten hum.
I am blinded to the future –
a tented charlatan
with an imprint of a coin upon my palm.
Can I see you now?
Can I see?
Ah. I see you now.
Pressing lightly on the Mojave air;
Dustbowl pretty in the purple shade
as the sun sighs behind the rocks.
It leaves you counting stars
until the numbers run out
and the coyotes rush in.
The sandstone red that runs in your eyes
mirrors the roll of the long iron mile;
a bell rung railroad
that rocked you down from those Toytown malls
and neat, new fingers
to this quiet, prairie dog reverie.
I have known those lines before –
swaying in an amber skin
with a clickety-clack,
a heartbeat from a foundry
wrestling with that burning ore.
Can I see you now?
Can I see you?
Wait. I see you anew.
Standing mute in the ballroom swirl-
beautifully choked like a drawstring purse.
Glitter stuck to your puckered cheek
from a Bowie streak upon your brow,
beside a look that says the dance will be slow
but short
and your heels will wear down
before the bowstring sheds
the last of its mane.
Scuffed soles brush your tender toes;
the white noise of the waltz grows quiet
as the darkness swallows you,
and you swoon into silence.
Jack Oates, 29 stycznia 2012
We are all waiting for it:
our swoon of moon in June.
We take our ticket and join the queue;
shuffling, expectant, envious
of those who depart
clutching their proffered gifts:
A gaudy bauble; glittered, brittle,
hollow as a promise.
A granite obelisk; unyielding, eternal -
an everlasting certitude.
A first edition –pages crackling
with crisp innocence.
A duck down pillow; for nestled slumber,
not threshing in the throes.
A greasy Buddha, glistening
with divine, tantric potency.
A red roman candle - a whizzed, fizzed
scintillant snort of pepper.
A broken clock; no tick nor tock
nor hand nor face nor chime.
Time slips by unnoticed,
days become months become years.
We shuffle some more and whisper,
“I wish, I wish, I wish.
Fingers crossed, toes crossed -
star cross’d - me next, me next!”
We have pennies in our purse,
thrifted through our thirst.
We have toiled through the grind
and groan of lost love’s labour.
We have been promoted, exalted,
displayed like a sequinned mannequin.
We have been made redundant;
set down gently on a bed of clichés.
We have signed the contract,
then watched the paper curl and burn.
We have earned our wage -
this swooning, mooning June.
It’s our turn now;
heart fast, eyes wide, skin flushed.
Hands reaching out we cry,
“Is this the one? Is this the one?
Please, let this be the one!”
We are handed a note:
The item you requested
is currently out of stock.
The moon waxes and melts on the floor.
December winds sting like a frigid teasel.
Jack Oates, 29 stycznia 2012
I had a dream, a simple dream,
‘bout little leaf floating down a stream.
She wound her way past flower and tree
unashamed of her anonymity.
But the big boulders
that blocked her merry path
did mock her mediocrity,
and laugh.
The little leaf could not be riled
and, as she danced and swirled o’er the water
she smiled.
For, with the new day,
they’d still be there
but she’d be far away.
Jack Oates, 7 stycznia 2012
Where do we go, when the night is done?
When the leaving lights are on
and new flesh inspected?
A baffled pallor the neon corrected;
our mucky urges distilled
to melted ice and flat ginger,
collected and scrubbed, no time to linger -
the cattle drive begins anew!
A rub of rib beneath the chiffon
or downy brush the greeting drew.
You thought her eyes were yours,
her soft ears gilded plenty
and cheaply bought and nibbled gently –
but no, not so; on this night
(a night that’s nearly done)
the rub was thumbed
and flicked by a Danish nose
and all of your enchanted prose
did not a folio fill, with the stage so full
and the audience too indisposed
to make the players earn their sacks of wool.
What a poor playhouse for a scrivener.
Mules and quickstep and glances,
repeated lines and pregnant, ugly dances.
Hands do dare, yes dare,
from time to time,
to hover near and risk impropriety
when lips, lean and lent to enquiry,
conspire with wheat and vine
to subjugate the tresses. What a fiasco!
Methuselahs they will be before the maid professes!
Mirror, mirror on the ball,
Morse code on the ruby wall, dots
not “M’aidez”
but “Dash it all, abandon ship!”
Rats: run the rope before the sink!
Seek the wharf before she takes to drink!
Ashore,
before the drunken tug that thumps the tub
hits the hull and spills the cinders;
before the lumps are smeared by shambling fingers
and slight shifts stripped and dismissed
upon the strange twist like boneless mannequins
and clavicles bit and femurs cinched
and follicles fraught
and honour filched,
and blood rushes you to indiscretion.
Ashore,
before the dawn forgives your blushes -
naked among the reeds, flattened by your impression.
Rusted mariners in slingbacks and Chelsea’s,
seeking a dry dock,
seeking to be locked
and berthed on oaken block;
finding only squalls, doldrums,
stoic tea and taxis.
The baton is tapped to a hush, then.
Coda for a cor anglais,
solo doulo cuts the air like a putdown -
well met at this hour, but not often;
no story here, eager men,
no tale to set the flagons frothing,
no; this yarn has made a poor cardigan.
Where did you go,
when the night was done?
This life in bottles,
silica sand scorched and blown
or trickled down
past the shoulder – callous caressed
and turned to face, or faced away -
down past neckline and hourglass
to the rump
to the sump, the grape and grain coalesced.
Petal dropped, hat topped and flipped
and frisked for bouquets.
Nothing dismays, makes one so blue
as a trick of the beady eye,
sleight of hand of shuttered spy,
that turns in time not to be true.
We are paper caught in the swirl by a Turkish eatery,
a Jew embossed on a riveted seam.
We reek of the scent on a neck of an unwelcome distraction,
slit with a stiffener in a candystriped collar.
We are unleavened bread in a castaway hull,
hackneyed and wordless and borrowed from Gaia.
We crunch to the cave where the masks are hung,
swaying like leaves on the Bodhi Tree.
We are under the blanket and tranquil and finished.
Jack Oates, 4 stycznia 2012
The queen is dead, they said;
the hive discordant,
fractured into counterpoint -
rumours like oil slicks
of mordant moles
among the loyal drones.
Beneath a veil assassins snuck,
crept in cells and stole her breath;
nectar laced with nightshade traces
from foul blooms
that smirched the humming glade.
Crystalline the hexed halls,
pollen dusted attic floors,
petals strewn among the eaves,
sweet comb broke below the firs;
frost pales the gabled faces -
sugar smeared to hide the traces
of soft shells scattered in lattice.
Soldier ghosts
in nameless trenches;
workers’ hollow wordless howls
curl like softwood scented shavings
on the empty dented benches.
And while she slept, they wept;
opiated gasps that drew them down
beside the feathered cot.
Grey light cast between the lead,
smelted down to pewter drops.
Grave globlets
dribbled like honey from loose lids,
glid over gilded cheeks,
bleached their limestone lips,
whispering wishes of an end -
or no end,
or amber rain
to wash away the residue.
Sinners one and sinners all,
stacking yarrow on the breach;
kneeling before arcane spirits,
yet finding no levee in balm,
nor kiss,
nor homespun sonnets,
nor dark confession,
to halt the leech.
And all the while her frantic bairns
suckled on her puckered throes,
seeking slivers and fleeting glimmers
of the flax that pricked her
into royal repose.
Sallow stalks;
tulips dry as cracked wax,
cornflowers in her hale gaze
shrunk to pinholes in the papyrus.
Golden curls on a laundered pinafore
hang like sodden cobs
in her lauded dreams.
Straw drawn veins course
with fair thee wells unuttered,
with platitudes unmuttered,
lost to the past and pinned to posts
tied with lines of dew strung silk.
The queen is dead, they said.
Blood sticks, syrup thick
spittle thick, sweet glue drips
down the drumbeat;
brittle bones on a dry hide
draws her pulse to a pause.
Sonorous the bell blue air:
silently they gather.
No words to paste
to the peach flock walls.
No breath to waste,
no crack to crawl too small.
No tongue to taste
her lightly minted maw
no more.
Jack Oates, 3 stycznia 2012
Meekly, then, she reaches the edge,
denim rolled in perfect folds
of symmetry;
her long limbs
have the pallor of teacups.
She tests with a toe,
then laughs along
as we register her surprise
that the polar melt
has bitten her well-tended feet.
As she flees the foaming sea,
the saturated sand
borrows her impression,
and then, with reluctance,
commits her memory
to the air.
Jack Oates, 29 grudnia 2011
I see the sea the sea is me and up above the sea the sky -
the sky is I -
and in between the line unseen.
The sailor’s stitch, the traveller’s twitch,
the fisher’s dish,
the broken hearted gazer’s melancholy wish.
We three: the me the sea the I the sky;
the endless brine,
the high azure, the green allure,
the maw and caw of teals and terns.
The line discerns
no others but the brothers in our holy trinity.
I dive. I die.
A tattered trine.
Just me, the sea; no sky. No I.
A tightened twine,
a hook, a fly.
A gift divine - I bite the lie.
A pull. A cry.
A stranded break; the sea forsakes
the I, the sky.
From death, to breath.
The line is broke - I churn, I choke.
The tendon's torn.
A yawp, a yawn.
I am reborn.
I see the sea the sea is me and up above the sea the sky –
the sky is I –
and in between the line unseen.
The paddlers play, the Sadhus pray;
the peddlars hawk
their nuts from huts beside the burning flesh.
We three: the me the sea the I the sky;
the shuttered spy,
Varuna’s lye, Surya’s wings.
The rani sings of humid kings
and gods up high
stretch the string to keep abyssal monks at bay.
Jack Oates, 29 grudnia 2011
Well met on the slipway, negotiating the rain:
two sodden paths
that led to brief infusion.
A leant in kiss before the plunge,
smooth stone peered down upon the humid dance.
He got bored and swam to shore;
she watched him disappear behind the reeds.
He left behind a tamanu;
it floated over the meridian, found a virgin beach.
Green shoots searched for probability.
_________________________________________
Sapling now, she survives; arching up with impatience.
Boughs bent to futurity,
no doe return or quiet muse
that plops in puddles of solitude - the whimsy of oaks and limes.
He creaks in the cold and gazes from afar.
A curl of leaf
or slope of bole
reminds him of himself, but no more than that.
They are both shadows in the forest -
too late now to whisper on the breeze.
All that is left is driftwood, perched on the bank,
beside the lapping lake.
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