songs for the old guard

calm

2010-09-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

outside - winter rain.
in the dark, bodies stretching
prepare to begin

Hunter

2009-10-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

nights like this you can really feel it
how cold it is
how cold it all should be
how unnatural all this heat is

all these tiny pyres
little rhythms of fire and breath
leaking into the open sky

and fall away with them
if you wish
let yourself rise like clouds

there is nothing between you
and the stars

from up here you can see
all the thousand sputterings
and sparks you left behind

observe the arrangement of lights

the constellations we reside in

up here it is easy to see how they flicker
to remember the space between bodies
and the ways it is filled
how heat is created

how it pours out

with every breath and thought
every word and tear
in every second

how it rises and expands and grasps the night
how it spreads and turns
how it burns
how bright it is

Doppler

2009-10-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

we've been through this so many times before
that I keep losing my place
and skipping to bits we haven't earned yet

shared jokes and days in bed
immunity to rain
no longer asking questions after dark

or failing to notice
that we're past those things entirely

and it's only in watching your hair turn red
that I can know you're shifting from me again.

night porter

2009-07-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

I was walking by in the rain
when I saw you,
back from another night of
risks and failed intention.

You stood in that marbled cavern,
still uniformed
in the hours most refused to wear,

your attention full like the moon

for the footsteps
of a rare visitor to your hall.

I felt it with you,
that thrill of the expected arrival,
the practiced movements waiting beneath your skin

for the moment of their unveiling.

It is an energy more vivid
than the storm which soaked me
as I passed by
in a ragged uniform of my own.

pebbles

2009-07-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

we spoke of risk
in our carefully dramatic voices
and we found it all through the evening

in cards stuck to tables
or ricocheted plastic

or the chance connection of knees

but with the rain
and the many steps home;
blind from the rivers on my face

I knew that taking one step
could not be so hard

mandy

2009-03-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

there are lights that touch you in certain ways
make you flicker like some aging film
but it isn't focus you lack

rather a manner to express the purity you feel
that thing that bursts through every pore
to fill each chair and wall and bottle
with a burning new significance

which you take in with eager eyes
hungry for their movement and their noise
and their contact

and you chase those feelings
through those lights
until you cease to flicker

and in a single glance amidst the crowd
stand still

snow song (9am)

2009-02-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

last night's snow, still melting
on the hills behind our house
(where you lie, still sleeping)

and my eyes are still blinking
you from them,
reluctant to give you up

in exchange for these dead greeks
and their murderous incest

it is the bitter balance of love
they oppose - the necessary anchors of life;
the weight of clothes our skins object to,
the use of words more loud than touching,
unshared breaths

and the interjection of light
into our blissful dusk;
erasing your shadow from my eyes,
striking those hill-tops
where snow no longer lies

walser

2008-12-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

It's snow I think of
when I call you to mind

Clean, white drifts
and you behind glass, staring out;
Christina in her farm house

only it's me, still out there in the fields
staring back at your world
of clean, pressed pyjamas
and regular sleeping patterns.

It's those things that separate us
rather than some difference of opinion
over the latest releases

Believe, me, I've tried to rise with the sun
and straighten my hair
tried paying my library fines
and learning the names of the constellations

but it isn't in me anymore
I lost it around the time I first discovered
the way the sun breaks through curtains
at particular times
started calculating delicate rhythms
whilst sat at cluttered tables
and in the backseats of cars

when I first saw lights in everything

your pure worlds are beyond me, now

I know that's a big thing to be saying
but you have to understand

there are things you can't launder away
which aren't removed in washing the sheets

which I wouldn't leave behind

you could see that, if you'd like

there is a kind of glamour to it
and certainly, it's a good feeling while it lasts

I could show you, but I should warn you
it's not really something you can reverse
so you have to be sure

although certainty's one of those things
you'll have to forsake, I'm afraid

around about the time you let your hair knot
and forget what it was like to get up for school every morning;
when you start to count minutes again
and worry at the little bruises you don't remember

when you start singing in the streets
and lying in the grasses when it rains
just to see if you prefer it to your own bed

when you get used to the noise in your own head
I'll show you

how there's a sort of purity here, too

in the dropped beats and the silences
in tears down the phone and songs you'll never listen to again
in every tangled hair and every mangled word

in every drift of snow

they told us never to build this thing, but what do they know?

2008-09-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

We've tested and tested this thing, you know.

It's been built to the highest of specifications.
You really shouldn't be nervous.
All the doom-saying is just
superstition.

We know what we're doing. Really.
It's quite well designed.
Twenty-seven tonnes of
superconducting magnets

let us control the flow of protons
and our detector array is unparalleled.

We didn't just jump into this.
Looking for new forms of matter
isn't like shaking the pillows on the sofa.

Except for the fact
that you've no real idea what will fall out.

We can theorize, of course.
There are usually pennies
and the remote you swore you put down just a second ago
and something must be causing all that gravity.

But the technique is much more precise, I promise you.

And when it's done, then you'll be proud of us.
We'll know more than has ever been known,
have reached into deeper spaces
than have been known since
the first fire.

We'll have laid bare the
heart of matter.
Heard the strings that play
so quietly
you might mistake them for silence.
Seen the lights that make the darkness.
Found the forces that bind us together,
the love between atoms,
the secrets of their hearts.

fatherhood

2008-08-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

so I haven't been sleeping again
I'm spending my days stumbling
with caffeine-red eyes,
barely a sideways step from it

from this idyll that grabs me
when I sleep;
snatches of a future
I haven't earned yet

the peace that waits
with my children
the moments I long for
when I wake

dances in ornate halls and dresses
the meeting of breaths
and the clarity
of something yet to be remembered

and now I'm afraid to close my eyes,
to grasp again at something
so easily stolen
by the birth of daylight

and the dying feeling
of a tiny hand in mine

induction

2008-07-27T02:18:00.000-07:00

cramped on another bus,
I catch my own breath
mingled with these other transients'
and wonder if I'll be clean again

I can hardly believe it
with the way these clothes cling to me
overlaying the marks of teeth and tongues
I can't shed

no matter what else I change
they lay so close to me
that no contents are hidden

the last few coins
hoarded and worn
loose ends of tobacco
and the many scars from falling
the words I can't form
and the wishes

the things I want
and how I want to be made clean
forgiven
to stand in the silence of your smile
and be made still

jenny

2008-07-21T03:33:00.000-07:00

maybe it was the motorcycle
that first set me off

the way it gave you entrances like a valkyrie
a roar I'd hear echoing off the buildings
long before your headlamp burnt the road at my feet
the power to escape temporal things
leaning into the wind
taking corners in the palm of your hand

but it's dresses that hooked me

the way they implied fields
and the first fall of apples
an ease with the earth I've never felt

they gave me this idea
that powers higher than your engine
or my legs
had given it some thought

and figured out a way
to clean the city's dirt
from a small pair of hands
and give a voice
to the grass, the trees, the wind
and the pair of wheels
which marked the asphalt where I stand

vows

2008-05-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

I didn't like the idea of god being involved in this whole thing

I thought it should just be
between the two of us

really, that's what this day's about
right?

the two of us

but a friend got me thinking
that it's not the name you put to it

but more the idea of two
minds, two components and particles
becoming forever entangled

and recognising that
in terms of something greater

the final message received by the ship mayflower one as it left home

2008-05-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

and turning through the wider air
my children fall from view
and carry all our grander hopes
of finding something new

may stars shine on their spreading wings
and guide them through the black
they travel on before me, now
with glory at their back

carpet

2008-05-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

there's a game I used to play with a friend of mine
late at night when we were down
to the cheap wine

we used to imagine who we'd be
in ten years
twenty, thirty
what stories we'd tell each other
in this same place
another lifetime from now
(and writing this, I know we'll never meet again
- something we never wanted to predict)

and who we'd know
who we'd have loved

so now I'm thinking of the stories I'd tell her
if, in six years, we met again
on that battered carpet on the stairs
clasping budget french in our hands

and what chains of effect
might yet begin
to lead me there,
what stories and what people
and what loves
I would fill my hands with
what my life will be when next
I carry it to her.

blood-flow

2008-05-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

and again, you find
the urge wells within you
and you welcome it

because it's the only thing you really know

and everything else is just falling forwards
trying to get back to it
looking for that mark your feet made in the floor

where you stood for half an hour
because you'd forgotten about moving
or rather you'd forgotten about motion

you've never stopped moving

not since that first moment
in that tiny chair in what they called a library
filled with learn-to-reads and bright pictures

since then it's been running
and you wouldn't stop it if you could

because there's a sort of calm
you can only find at that speed

and they tell you you're fascinating
too quiet
hard to read
bizarre, frustrating, damaged

and you smile a little bit
thinking that's just
because they can't quite move at the same speed

marked

2008-05-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

so I was looking in the mirror today
tracing out all the places
it's still sore

all the little bruises and bite marks
where you nibbled me into shape

the little bits that got chipped away
those I hid

it's a funny thing
not to know your own body
to look back across months
years, actions and sentences

and not to recognise yourself

all the nights
and the walks home
the drinks and the conversations and the phone calls

not to see where you fit into them

because you know you were there
you know those were your words
your movements in the dark

you have the marks to prove it
the evidence
the hidden map of how you changed

hollywood

2008-05-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

kisses always disappoint me
and that's not to say I don't enjoy them
far from it
I still remember the stain of your lips on mine
in that cramped attic bedroom
all those stolen moments

but when I was younger
before you reached across space and time
and closed them both between our breaths

I imagined it would be
explosive
the joining of minds we always longed for

that as we parted
I would point at the stars
and see you smile
as I always hoped you would smile
without voice, without thought, without need

with only the wordless joy
I could never give you

surplus

2008-05-17T08:16:00.001-07:00

there is too much in this night
too much to fit these little words

which will not stretch
to catch the cosmos
or shrink to see an atom tremble

which will not bend
to the curve of your spine
or fold into the pressing of your lips

which will not rain
to douse my wakeful mind
or blow the sleep away

which will not find
the places we were happy
or bring lost moments back to me

recollections of a conversation in which the author, for his sins, attempted to explain his muddled views

2008-05-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

imagine the odds against the creation of the earth

against the climate and the air and the water
against shifting plates and tides and weather

now try the odds for life
for that spark
and that perfect soup of chemicals

and again, that man should come from such beginnings
evolve these eyes, these thoughts
these frail hands

and then each birth, each person,
as a chance so tiny it can only be fate
which chose this sperm, these genes,
the glance which brought them together

now two such creatures meeting,
such flukes of chance,
and you ask me why I smile,
even now
as all the wonders of creation
are between us

fireferns; or the things my father told me

2008-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

Take yourself
On the last unwashed night of the year
To the forest which grows at the crossroads

Do not forget your salt
Or the courage which your father taught you;
The demons have many voices.

You must wait
Until you see the first flower
As it prepares to open

Then cast your circle round it
(Never widdershins, my child, never that way round)
But do not listen to the many voices in the dark.

Now as the flower
Blooms at midnight, do not glance away
Though its light may burn you

For only those
Who have seen the fire-fern flowering
May take its bloom

So take
With charred, unseeing eyes, the flower
That you came for

The spirit
That you capture with my science
Which I taught you

Reach in and be renewed;
The light which burned like Hell’s
Now softly glows

Reach in
And learn to speak the tongue of beasts
Acquire time and life as your prize;

These are the gifts
For the brave men who can win them;
The things you earn with your fear.

With mine
I earned only wrinkled hands and an old guitar
Broken strings and dull eyes

But old bards
Still can sing, and in their songs teach
Younger men who are not yet burned

lotus

2008-05-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

there's a dream I have in which one man
shows a lotus flower to a crowd
and another man smiles

and it says a lot if you've had it before
it's that smile I long for every second

when I look at you sitting there
and imagine the galaxies of atoms which make you up
and imagine further dark expanses within all of us
and further still

to the smallest imagined space
where a tiny blossom sits
silent and still in our hearts
smiling.

glass song

2008-05-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

we stood on a beach
and you asked me if I preferred your hair straight
and I wanted to tell you I liked the way
it got caught in the wind
and my fingers

but then we saw the place that lightning struck the sand
and the glass there
and all I could think was

last night I dreamt of twelve men
who did not know why they flew
until the moment that their teeth hummed
and the pilot threw them into a turn so tight
it tore light and time

I awoke to find him dead
which fitted

although the shards we trod on
no longer would

and then I thought of how these moments
turn away so quickly
that their shadows hang forever
and I wondered if
in trading places with
any of those twelve

I would see something
as memorable

as your hair
caught in that breeze

addendum

2008-05-17T08:04:00.001-07:00

the poem I just read is incomplete

when I sleep, and it buzzes through my head
(as these things will, when you learn them hard enough)
it has other things to say

new lines, new notes
that I cant find the words for now

and more than that
you'll never know it

not the light in the room where I wrote it
or the faces I thought of

not the tongue that I use to speak it
or the reasons I don't use it more often

not the streets that it walked
not the streets that it walked

or maybe this is just me
pretending there's more to me
than you think

to make you look harder
so that I can feel your eyes on mine

fac. 2509

2008-05-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

so last night I sat up
to watch this documentary
on factory records
til 3am

even though the pills had
made me drowsy
and even though
it was a story I'd always known

one that had walked the same streets as me

I watched it
mainly because it made me think,
which is still a novelty

it made me think about
all these people who do the stupid things
they love to do without thought

until one day they end up on the BBC to tell their story

and about the ones that never will

and about that time we smiled at each other
when their records played in our local
and I thought that would be a story we might tell one day

and about how we never will
and about catalogue numbers
and how each one is someone who danced like this
to this song and how each one is a story I thought I'd tell
and about what they're all doing now
and if they still dance in the same way

and about how they turned the whole thing into
apartments when it all went tits-up
and how they put the plaque with its number 51
in the lobby where people could see it

and about the people our parents knew
who were there, but maybe they didn't know it at the time
and how it must have seemed back then

and how the people we know now
might one day be names we drop
to impress our kids
when they are old enough to stay awake
to watch someone else's story on the BBC
where we'll never tell ours

recursed

2008-05-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

I write poems because they seem to be
an easy way to impress people
and I like to be impressive

I think it's because they seem
mysterious - as though they were
anything other than words in an order

I guess I'm not that sure myself
how it is they come to get that way
and why people like me so much when they do

I don't like mysteries.

So I put this poem in alphabetical order
to help me figure out just what the hell
it was about it that got you all so riled up

About all alphabetical an an and and anything as be be because

Maybe it was the way that the frequency of the letter 'Y'
was exactly 1.618:1 of the frequency of the letter 'E' - which is the golden ratio.
Apparently that's an aphrodisiac.

Because come do don't easy figure get got guess hell help

Or maybe it's the fact that, in placing the dissected piece at the end of itself, I had the poem twice,
which mean I had to add in all the
new words again to the alphabetised list.

How I I I I I I I'm impress impressive in in is it it it it's just like like like me

Which I then had to repeat.

Me much myself mysteries mysterious not order

Which I then had to add in again

Order other out people people poem poems put riled seem seem so so so sure

So now I have this poem which is
copulating with itself
recursing like a golden rectangle

Than that that that the they they they they they think this though

So now it's gotten so big
that the original version, which I'm reading now
(and god I'll have to put these new words in too)
it like the square remainder
and the work which may once have impressed you is just
spiralling out of my hands
into a list of words which never ends as each one I add spins off an infinite tail
like a child's face caught in a hall of mirrors,
and I've written 'and' so many times that I'm drowining in the damn things
christ I thought this was supposed to be the easy way!

To to to to to up was way way were what when why words write you

Damnit. Now I'll have to start again.